In order to maintain attention, avoid being too long. An old preacher used to say to a young man who preached an hour, “My dear friend, I do not care what else you preach about, but I wish you would always preach about forty minutes.”
We ought seldom to go much beyond that–forty minutes, or, say, three-quarters of an hour. If a fellow cannot say all he has to say in that time, when will he say it? But somebody said he liked “to do justice to his subject.” Well, but ought he not to do justice to his people, or, at least, have a little mercy upon them, and not keep them too long? The subject will not complain of you, but the people will…There is a kind of moral compact between you and your congregation that you will not weary them more than an hour-and-a-half, and if you keep them longer, it amounts to an infraction of a treaty and a piece of practical dishonesty of which you ought not to be guilty.
Brevity is a virtue within the reach of all of us; do not let us lose the opportunity of gaining the credit which it brings. If you ask me how you may shorten your sermons, I should say, study them better. 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.
– Lectures To My Students
Yes.
I listened to a friend preach one Sunday evening, long before he was ordained. It was one of those practice runs where pastor-wannabes are given control of the train to see how well they handle the crash, which is inevitable. When he reached the end of his sermon, he got all giddy, and said he wanted to share one more thing, but maybe he shouldn’t. And then he did.
I did not chuck my Bible at him because a pixel Bible causes far more damage than a paper Bible, would you believe.
I sat helpless, watching in slow mo’, as my friend performed a diving double axe handle and left his sermon out for the count.
Resuscitation would not be able to bring that puppy back to life.
Afterwards I told him he should have stopped when he heard the “Ding ding ding!”
He did that thing with his mouth politicians do when they’re caught out, and admitted that he knew he’d erred the moment he went beyond what he’d intended.
It was the perfect example of keeping it only as long as is necessary.
🙂 Yes, there’s nothing worse than when the preacher assures you that we’re on approach, the landing gear is down, flaps are up…and then a second before touchdown throttles those engines up to maximum, pulls up, retracts the gear and circles again. At those moments, one’s inner hijacker is even stirred.
😀 Right, that covers Trains and Planes. Anyone care to give us an Automobiles analogy?
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