On length of sermons...

adrian reynolds
3 Comments »

"When my wife and I visited a surgeon to discuss what to do about my cancer, he spoke to us for what we would later realize was close to forty-five minutes, but in the entire time neither I nor my wife checked our watches to see when he might stop....Therefore, I suggest that it is not the case (as is so often argued) that people have a reduced attention span today, and that is why they object to the length of sermons. People may well have a reduced attention span, but even so, they have no difficulty giving attention to a discourse they deem important and well organized. Bad preaching is insufferably long, even if the chronological length is brief."

T David Gordon in Why Johnny can't preach.

I've thought this for a long time, prompted by watching some teenagers follow a David Beckham press conference absolutely mesmerised (even though it lasted 45 minutes). Their parents told me that they couldn't sit through long sermons as they couldn't sit through anything. Rubbish.

3 comments:

dave bish said...

I hear it from students occasionally, who spend all day in lectures that last 60 mins or more...

9:39 AM
Dan Green said...

Surely a David Beckham press conference is more boring than even the dullest sermon!

10:42 AM
Andrew Cook said...

The 2 best lecturers I had were both from the East End of London, one made Statistics come alive (impossible mais vrai), and I remember another one talking about Socrates being duffed up in the local nick (alwight!?) Sticks in my mind. There were of course absolutely dull ones - like the one who made Chinese and Indian political history as unappealing as a proverbial undertakers convention (to quote one of the the above Eastenders).
Should we be comparing university lecturing with preaching though. Not the same thing, is it? Yes communication techniques come into it, but preaching involves communicating (objective) truth to the heart (emotions), to an audience that differs in background on a range of levels (education, social class, age, gender, life experience...) So hats off to you guys who preach week in week out, making the word come alive.
There's also a responsibility on the listener to listen well. My wife's found Christopher Ash's booklet on the subject useful (Listen Up! A practical guide to listening to sermons - from the The Good Book Co) By your future colleague, Adrian, so must be "good".

12:10 PM

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