The length of the average sermon has changed over the past century. Even 4 decades ago it was not unusual for a sermon to last over one hour. Today if you preach over an hour your congregation will grow restless and a lot of people will even get up an leave. What has changed?
Two main factors have changed in our culture that effect the length of time people are willing to sit in church and listen to a sermon. First of all I believe that people have become more impatient. We live in an instant world. We have instant grits (I am from the South) instant potatoes, instant coffee, instant tea, instant cameras, fast food restaurants, fast lanes and now people need fast sermons. We have become accustomed to having our news condensed from a multipage newspaper to the Headline News chanel where you get 'all the news' every 10 minutes. I am not surprised that our congregations are impatient with long sermons.
The second factor is that we are bombarded with an overload of intensly stimulating entertainment. Almost everyone is addicted to TV and its hyper-stimulation of our senses. For a show to become top rated is must be bigger, louder, more action packed than its competition. As a result we have become numb to the more subtile values of speech and personal relationships. A sermon doesn't have the sensory impact of a TV show. As a result the modern, over stimulated, listner soon loses interest in a sermon. So, what are we to do about it.
First of all we need NOT to try to compete with the worldly entertainment industry. Bigger, louder, more exciting and more 'show biz', is not the answer. Preaching and sermons are not to be entertaining. However, they don't have to be boring.
Sermons need to be interesting and they CAN be if the preacher will spend the time and energy to properly develop them and relate them to the congregation. The biggest problem with sermons today is that they are delivered to the wrong part of the human body. In general sermons should be aimed at the heart, not the head. They should be delivered from the heart of the preacher not his head. This means that he needs to be intense and intensely believe in the message he is delivering. Sermons are boring because the preacher is bored. The same preacher who will scream and holler at his son's football game comes to the pulpit cold and without passion. A sermon delivered without passion is just a speech (a boring one).
If we are to overcome the short attention span of the modern listener it will be because we grab his attention with our passion. Be passionate, catch fire, and preach an organized message with fervor.
Of course it takes more than wildfire to win men to the Lord and it takes more than unbridled enthusiasm to build a church. I will speak more about this next week. Until then, I suggest you check out the sermon and preaching course called Preaching with Power. It will teach you the techniques that allow your passion and enthusiam to be harnessed and applied to the sermon.
You Face a Gigantic Challenge Every Week.
You must preach, one, two and possibly three sermons to a congregation that has already heard you speak many times. This is a gargantuan task because your congregation expects your sermons to be fresh, interesting, dynamic and challenging. They are looking to you to bring them a fresh insight from the Bible. They are looking to you to bring them guidance for their lives. They are expecting you to challenge them, inspire them and motivate them. They want a personal message. Not something generic, not something canned or copied. They deserve to receive God's message for them for that particular moment.
Not Enough Hours in the Week
To meet this challenge requires hours of research and study. It requires time spent secluded with God's word, mining its riches for just the right nugget for that sermon. However, there is a problem. Your ministry has other obligations also. There are visits to the hospital and visits to prospects in addition to organizational meetings, civic meetings and the many other administrative tasks of the ministry. With only one hundred sixty eight hours in a week, how can you do everything expected and required of you and spend the necessary time to properly prepare your sermons?
Do You Borrow OPS?
Many good preachers rely on using the sermons of other preachers. You may find yourself in a pinch for time, so you open a book of sermons or a collection of sermon outlines and you copy a sermon. The sermon you borrow doesn't exactly fit your style, it doesn't exactly fit your congregation's needs, it isn't exactly right. But it will do for this time.
The problem is that this becomes a habit. You find yourself relying on OPS (other preacher's sermons) more and more. In this age of internet access you can subscribe to sermon outline services, you can download collections of sermons. You can get sermons with power point presentations, illustrations and the total dog and pony show. But are these what you really want or what your people need?
Whooping and Rambling
Sometimes you enter the pulpit unprepared. You have an unclear idea of what you want to preach and you are not organized. You do not have a sermon, just an idea. So you begin to preach without a clear directions and soon start rambling. Sometimes you lose your way in a sermon and start whooping to fill the time. This is not what you want.
What You Really Want
You want to be able to write your own sermons. You want to preach sermons that speak to your particular congregation, not some generic congregation. You want to be able to preach to your people about their situation. You want to be able to study rapidly and effectively and produce quality messages for your people. You want to be able to preach with power and effectiveness.
Cut Sermon Preparatin Time in Half
What if you could find a way to cut your sermon preparation time in half? What would that be worth to you? Suppose there was a technique that would supercharge your ability to see the natural divisions of a scripture and come up with perfect points for your sermon. What is that worth? What if there was a method of organizing a sermon that would make your messages perfectly clear to your congregation? What if I could show you a way to preach so that your congregation will respond to your sermons? Would it be worth a few hours per week to learn these methods and techniques? You bet it would.
If you only saved four hours per week in preparation, that is over TWO HUNDRED hours per year! What could you do with that extra time?
What would it mean to your congregation if your sermons became more pointed and effective? What would happen to your ministry if your preaching was more dynamic and interesting?
Your Ministry Will Grow
Let me tell you what would happen. Your ministry will grow! Your influence will expand. Your effectiveness for God will increase. My friend you cannot put a price tag on that! The Preaching with Power course can transform your preaching.
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Original Sermons continued from home page
The second reason is that you need to be in touch with God's message for you and your congregation. The sermon you get from the internet was written by some other preacher for some other congregation. In fact many of the outlines you get from the internet or from the books of sermon outlines have never been preached. A lot of these were written just for publication. Your congregation and your situation are unique in many ways and God can inspire your mind with a unique message for that particular time. Many times you feel the inspiration and instead of studying, praying and seeking your own sermon you begin a search for some other preacher's sermon, in hope that you will find one that 'almost' fits. This is like going to the trash dump to find a pair of shoes. There may be some that are usable, that almost fit, but they are not precisely what you need. They don't feel right, they hinder your stride and are not comfortable. Preach your own sermons because you need to be in touch with God's message for your congregation.
The third reason you need to preach your own sermons is that through the process of studying and developing a sermon you gain new insight into God and God's word. Preaching is a dynamic interaction between the man of God, and the Lord. You owe it to yourself to grow in the knowledge of God. When you take the short cut of preaching another preacher's sermons you miss out on the interaction with God's word and you miss any new insights God might give to you.
The reason I wrote the preaching with power course was to help preachers develop their own sermons. My purpose is to give the essential elements of sermon preparation without a lot of complex theory. It isn't difficult to learn. I believe in putting the cookies on the bottom shelf so the kids can get them. Preaching with Power is written in an easy to understand style. The exercises are designed to allow you to practice the skills you learn so you can apply them to your ministry.
After completing the course I guarantee that you will be preaching powerful sermons that your people will appreciate. If God is giving you a message, the preaching with power course will enable you to get it into the heart of your people in an interesting powerful way.
Sermon Outline Course
Want to learn to write your own original sermons. Check out the Preaching With Power course.
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How to Preach
