Featured How long should sermons be

I went to sermonaudio.com and made some observations.

Looking at the sermon lengths of representative preachers this is what I found.

Don Green (from Ky)
44-85 minutes. Most of his are in the 60-some minute range.

Alistar Begg
26-64 minutes. Most of his are in the 40's.

Mike Renihan
38-93 minutes. Most of his are in the 60's.

Sinclair Ferguson
29-80. Most are in the 40's.

Al Martin
45-82. Most are in their 60's.

Joel Beeke
29-79. Most are in the 60-some minute range.

DMLJ
47-62. Most are in the 50's.

Now these "sermon lengths" sometimes included prayer time. But the prayers normally were not long.

 

If it's a good one an hour or so is fine. If not it's too long no matter how long.

 

Old Joe preaches much longer than 20 minutes.

 

:thumbsup::thumbsup:...these God called men have something to preach....no little sermonette...a few jokes...and see you next week:laugh:

 

When you Strike Oil .......

......quit boring :laugh:

 

Our team preaches 30-35 minutes on Sunday mornings.

We might go a bit longer on Wednesday evenings in our prayer service because of the context of the meeting.

However, we believe that if you can't make your point, prove your point, and ground your point in 30-35 minutes you aren't getting to the point. We want to be a good steward of our folks time and believe this is, for us, the proper time frame in which to work.

I've served with men who preached for 45-60 minutes on a Sunday morning, and other who have preached 30-45 minutes. For our context, 30-35 minutes is the best frame.

 

Yep:

"Spend more time in the study that you may need less in the pulpit. We are generally longest when we have least to say. A man with a great deal of well-prepared matter will probably not exceed forty minutes; when he has less to say he will go on for fifty minutes, and when he has absolutely nothing he will need an hour to say it in." —Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students

 

People don't retain that much information in one sitting, so unless they're recording it or taking really great notes, longer sermons are rather pointless.

Just go look at studies that show how much information the human brain retains from x minutes of input. It will make you feel dumb if you didn't already know.

I tend to sit there and read my Bible when it goes too long, back and forth between that and what he's saying. Usually because he'll say a verse and I'll start reading and get interested in the rest of the verses while he moves on. Then if he gets my attention, I'll snap back up. LOL

Best way/where I got most out was when it was more interactive, but that's not possible everywhere. He'd sometimes ask questions, we'd answer, and we were free to ask questions, but we were tame, not interrupting. He'd break us off into groups and have us all read the same passage and we'd come back and one person in each group would say what conclusion our group came to. Stuff like that. It wasn't just sitting there listening to one man give his opinion with no input or discussion about it.

I'm at a place that goes long now. About an hour in, I am fighting really hard to stay awake. Really hard. I tend to get stuff out of the first fifteen minutes, about five minutes of the middle, and about five minutes of the end.

And I usually break a movie into three days...and highly doubt most people get a lot out of watching a movie anyhow. I've gone to a theater before and they're too very loud and bright (yet I still fell asleep, lol) so it makes no sense to compare. You're eating, drinking, able to freely get up and leave to use the bathroom, not worried about shifting or whispering to the person next to you, dressed comfortable, and usually no negative stress in being there, which tends to be present in a religious type of gathering. (do I look appropriate, don't whisper even if what he just said is really interesting, don't laugh, hold it in longer if you need to pee, are they going to notice that I didn't tithe as much this week, what if they ask me to do nursery while I have this cold, did anyone see me do something wrong during the week and are they judging me, etc..)

 

Oh, pleeze. God gives bread, but it still has to be prepared. Apportion what "god gives" according to order and decency.

 

Yep:...........

 

I have heard some preach for an hour and it seemed like 30 minutes, and I've heard some preach for 10 and it seemed like an hour.


As for me, I try to keep my message in the 20-30 minute range, but have gone way less than that, and upwards of 45 minutes. I don't like to take a lot of time, because in the ORB's, we usually have 3-4 preachers preach, so I take less time, to give my Brothers more time.

This last sunday, I preached from Romans 5:1-12, and did so in ~30 minutes.

 

The way the ORB's, some UB's, and some PB's do it is this. They have church one weekend a month. They rule by saturdays. If June 1 is on sunday, that's considered an odd-sunday, so the 1st weekend would be June 8-9...for an example...it's kinda complicated to those who aren't accustomed to it. My home church meets every 1st weekend, the third sunday only, and every odd-sunday(only saturday meeting is the first saturday afternoon business meeting). Some of these churches do like us, and others meet only one weekend a month. The saturday meeting is the business meeting, with preaching, singing and prayer involved.

Now, on sundays, some ORB churches use strictly three preachers. Others will use 4...we haven't used more than, that I can remember. By having church once a month, or even two sundays a month, it frees the preachers up to go other places, and allows the laymembers to go to other churches.....

 

Long enough to get to the point, but not after saying the same thing the same way a lot of times. I would rather the speaker not talk if they can't say it right or well.