How Long Should a Sermon Be?
Recently our worship service looked to be shorter than usual, so I joked that I’d be preaching for an hour. As is typical, there was an obligatory chuckle from the good people of my congregation. But there was one vocal dissenter. An elderly saint in the front row thought I was serious, and declared ”No!” with as much conviction as Luther’s “Here I stand.” It reminded me of a simple question that is pertinent both to pastors and to every person in the pew. Is it better to preach 12 minutes or 45 minutes?
This is not a new topic (a Pauline sermon once killed a guy named Eutychus – Acts 20). At the risk of burdening the issue, I’d like to seriously consider the topic of sermon length. The question may appear to be simply practical, but underneath are substantive issues. What do we believe about the Word of God? What is preaching? What is teaching? What is proclamation? Who should preach publicly? How can the Word be preached in a way that is most effective for God’s people? So here are a few thoughts on each end of the spectrum:
Make it 12-15:
It’s obvious that a monologue format is difficult to pull off these days. See my blog post “Don’t Lecture Me” on how educators are declaring “the lecture” ineffective. Of course we believe that preaching is more than simply lecturing, a rote transfer of information. But we must admit that our people let very few individuals deliver them a monologue for an extended period of time. Comedians, politicians (maybe), and preachers. This is to say that there are some practical and sociological reasons for shorter sermons (consider the children and teens).
Theologically, a Lutheran tradition of preaching is clearly centered on proclamation – that in every sermon we are “giving the hearer Jesus.” We clearly proclaim Christ and his work, and personally apply it to the people. It’s more than information, or teaching. The sermon is an encounter with God. A concise sermon lends itself to a focused gospel proclamation.
My preaching mentor once told me, “Preach so that your people can preach the sermon to someone else.” There is something about straightforward, focused speech that allows our people to hear it and then repeat it. The sermons of Jesus that we have recorded in the gospels are clear and focused with memorable lines: “Blessed are the poor in spirit . . .” “I am the vine . . . the Good Shepherd . . . the resurrection and the life, etc.” “A sower went out to sow . . .” “The kingdom of heaven is like . . .” The word is heard, and then easily taken into daily life.
Make it 45+:
My preaching mentor preaches 45 minutes a Sunday (and he’s Lutheran). On the one hand, you have to earn this right. Your people give you their attention when they trust you and believe you’re “gonna give ‘em the Word” that day. For their first sermon, I ask my seminary fieldwork students to keep the sermon 8-10 minutes. One student preached his first sermon with rapid nervousness and was done in 5!
While it is not in our recent tradition, there are benefits to an expository style of preaching that is more teaching than proclamation. First, it provides a depth that we just can’t bring in 12-15 minutes. James McDonald takes 20 minute sermons to task in this article on preaching (see #5). Typically for Lutherans, preaching has been for proclamation and the Sunday Bible Study hour for teaching. But increasingly, people don’t revere the Sunday morning Bible study hour. So should we incorporate more teaching in our preaching? The issue here is discipleship, and what venues we use for teaching our people.
Second, a longer, expository style teaches our people how to read the Scripture on their own. As we work through the text, we showcase our hermeneutic, demonstrating to our people how we approach the Bible. Third, many people are looking for deeper, more substantive meaning from the sermon. We are finding many Christians longing for deeper theology, honest answers for their questions, and serious treatment of the Biblical text.
Fourth . . . . OK, I realize I ‘m going a little long here. I’d like this article to take you 5-8 minutes to read, and not 45. So, “Amen.”
Marc Engelhardt
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Jeff Cloeter
Tom Eggebrecht
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These are great questions. I’d also like to raise the issue of a third way. Every seven weeks we do a Creed (or Catechism) service where I lead discussion. These usually go long but include input and questions from the congregation. Obviously, there ends up being a lot more teaching, but I usually like to prep such that I can end it with a very brief proclamation.
There are some people who dislike this because they don’t want to hear from others. There are others who love the interaction and feel more engaged. There have certainly been times where people say things that are off the wall or need correction. But I find that I need this feedback. It helps me to know what I should be tackling on other Sundays.
How can an approach like this help or hinder people’s understanding of God’s Word? What kind of training can we do in order to best carry out this style of proclamation? What benefits or pitfalls are there to changing things up from time to time (even just with the length of preaching)?
I find “changing things up” helpful – sermon length, style, structure, etc. I have not yet done a totally “conversational” sermon. But I have done formats that you mention (Creed, Baptism, etc.). Actually, with some inspiration from your time in Milwaukee a couple years ago.
Yes, it’s always risky to open it up. I preach in two different contexts. For one it wouldn’t work. For another, maybe. I have done “open prayers” in worship, and there are always moments where you cringe.
You mentioned some of your people uncomfortable with your change up in style. I’d be more concerned about guests. We have a number of guests every Sunday – friends, college students, etc. I’m always mindful of their comfort level, and I do a lot of explaining throughout the service.
I lean toward expository preaching (I had the same mentor as Jeff) but I do it in two different venues.
One venue is my mother church. This has the typical rhetorical format that is found in most Lutheran churches but it contains exposition. In this situation I let the text dictate how long I am preaching. I have done 10-12 minute sermons up to 25-30 minute sermons. It all depends how long it takes to unwrap what is happening in the text.
The other venue is my church plant. We intentionally keep our worship groups smaller so that the sermon can be interactive. In this situation the people dictate how long I am preaching. They are encouraged to make questions and comments about the text as we walk through it. I always have my Law/Gospel ideas and statements prepared. Often, someone else will lead me into these and set me up. If not, I deliver my proclamation at the end. A few times, I have had to wrap the conversations up so that we don’t go beyond that 40-45 minute length. Most times the message is 15-20 minutes long. Once again though, the length is normally driven by the needs of the text, but also in how quickly the people are getting it.
I think that taking an expository approach is very helpful in discipleship. Specifically in my church plant where I get immediate feedback from the people. This is one of the benefits that Ryan mentions about his creed services. One of the difficulties though is one that Ryan mentioned some of his people don’t like, that is, hearing from people other than him during the sermon. After all, who gave anyone else the right to speak during the time of the sermon.
It takes a certain disposition and preparedness to “control the madness” that can occur when someone is way off target with their input. However, if done right, I think this approach actually establishes the authority of the office. It is isn’t for every context, but I think it worth experimenting with in many contexts to see if it is beneficial.
Regarding our preaching mentor. I always admired the way he essentially did expository and proclamation. He is always bound to the text, and fleshing it out. Yet, there is always clear proclamation of the gospel (when he starts getting sweaty and louder
.
I have tried to work this balance, always treating the text seriously while at the same time having structure (often narrative in nature) that has a clear goal. I don’t believe that expository means no proclamation, nor does it mean there’s no clear goal.
I do echo your word about discipleship. What other venues do we have in which everyone is gathered?
Great read man!
I love the change-up.
Right now I am doing a sermon series called “Why Church?”. I started off the sermon series by interrupting the congregation in the middle of confession, giving the sermon, and then we continued with the confession and the rest of the service. My sermon was maybe 10 min. How and when I did the sermon did most of my preaching for me. Adults need disorientating dilemmas.
Hence… the cross.
I think it depends on the topic that is being preached on. Some topics could be explained in a few minutes while other topics may take longer to explain. I do think that 45 minutes is too long because you lose people’s attention and then they are not listening anyway. I have never timed any of my pastors including Pastor Jeff but they all do an amazing job preaching every Sunday. I never leave church wondering what in the world the pastor was talking about.
Having been blessed to sit at the feet of the same mentor, I took from him the realization that the congregation should and does look to you to ‘give them the word.’ This is a great comfort to me when I am in the preaching position. At my present location, I have not preached over 20 minutes, but have never limited God’s word to the *expected* time allotted for the sermon.
For me, the indicator of my sermon length typically comes from my limited prep time. I know Pastor Schmidtke regularly devotes an amazing 20+ hours a week to his message, something that showed clearly in his preaching. The length of my sermon is typically limited by the amount of prep time I have, typically less than 10 hours.
That said, some of my lengthier sermons have come from lesser prepped sermons.