Treacherous Ground: The Length of Sermons

Several years ago, I did a two minute radio program every day Monday-Friday right before lunch time, when I lived in Texas. We lived in a farming community and it was one of those stations where they still read the obituaries and the farmers all listened to the radio at lunch. The program was right between Paul Harvey and this guy named Rush Limbaugh who had only been on the radio for a few years. The program was heard all over the area where I lived. The program reached even into the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex. It was a popular radio station at the time because it was the only station that carried Limbaugh live at the time. We actually had people drive 50 miles to worship with us because they had listened to the program.

One Sunday morning, one of our members and a good friend (?) of mine came to me all pumped about my radio program. He started pouring it on about it being the greatest two minutes on radio, and how my topics every day were so relevant and what a great job I was doing with it. I mean he blathered on so, that I was actually embarrassed (I just knew he could see my head swelling) until he said, I am going to the elders and see if we can't go to that same format for both services on Sunday.

The length of a sermon, be it short or long, doesn't determine its depth. The late and highly esteemed R.L. Whiteside (1860-1951) once wrote, "Some sermons are long at 15 minutes and others are short at an hour." The truth is, in most cases, a 45-60 minute sermon is a lot easier to prepare than a solid 25-30 minute sermon. A fact, I learned years ago, while doing that 2 minute radio show. Namely, that preparation is the key to getting it said well, whether it is 25 or 45 minutes. Preparation takes into account the audience on many levels and with many factors to evaluate (including parents who are having to wrestle with small children near feeding times). If our objective is how can I reach the majority of my audience with truth about God and who He is then, the audience must be taken into consideration in our preparation. If it is just about me getting a sermon, or to show the audience how much I know, well sadly, we have all heard those, even sadder some of us have preached those, and they are NEVER very good.

I do not know many Bible subjects that cannot be dealt with in 30 minutes or less (to be sure, there are some, make no mistake about it). There are not many preachers today I know who can hold an audience's attention 45 minutes or longer every Sunday. I am not sure what that says or if it needs to say anything. It is just the reality of the world in which we live.

Furthermore, most people who visit from the community are limited in their Bible education. Thus, ill-equipped to understand or get much out of a 45 minute plus sermon every Sunday morning and/or every Sunday night, about some obscure passage that has piqued the preacher's interest but has little relevance to the visitor's greater need for knowing God and who He is (to large extent that is probably true for most us).

I know some are going to cite OT and NT examples of how long people stood listening, or how long people preached, but let me remind them, I have a bible and the world of the OT and/or NT is not the world I live in. The onus for learning the Bible is on me personally to study and read it, and not on how long I have to listen to someone preach.
 
This is not meant to be personal toward anyone. However, if you take it personally do me a favor and ask yourself before your respond, "Am I guilty?" It was meant only to get us to rethink our strategy in becoming more effective preachers of the word. I am not saying my philosophy is better than anyone else's nor is this an exhaustive treatise on all that is involved in preparing a good sermon. It is dealing with one aspect of homiletics the length.

Take your best shot. Please be courteous if you disagree.