How long should a pastor preach

Just reflecting on that which is rarely addressed. It would be interesting to know the actual service length as well as the sermon length. Great question. I may just have to research this too. Most churches only post the sermon online.

That is a great question. You may have just sparked an idea for my next batch of research. Good stuff every Pastor needs to hear. However, there are other factors involved in why churches are growing. Worship Style, Music, Programs, etc. It would be interesting to see a study on Content. That too is important. Disclaimer: I am not judging, just sharing hearsay, which is always dangerous.

Sin is real, Hell is real, Heaven is real, confession is vital, rebellion is evident in our culture, and Salvation is available to all who seek and ask. These are topics that may not be popular and left out so as not to lose parishioners. Again, thank you for this valuable report which certainly serves as a guide to what works.

Blessings Joe Ramos. Great data there to consider! Truly appreciate the tone and info from your work. Thanks for nerding out for us. Keep it up! Very informative article! Love the use of data in decision-making, even in the area of preaching, as long as we ensure the Holy Spirit is ultimately in charge.

Amen, Saundra. Very good article. I like that you articulated a range of time that is optimal. Whether the sermon is a little longer or shorter from time to time is understandable, and the work of the Holy Spirit can powerfully over ride our norms.

However, there is wisdom in learning what works best, and your article provides that wisdom. Chris Colvin on March 15, I recently wrote about how long it should take to prepare a sermon. This week, I want to cover the next logical question: How long should your sermon be? Preachers want their sermons to be long enough to get their point across, but not so long that they lose their audience.

So, how do you know whether your sermon length achieves the right balance? In an online poll by Thom S. Rainer, the most common sermon length reported was 20 to 28 minutes, and the second most common was 45 to 55 minutes.

These figures suggest two things. First, it seems preachers generally either go long or short — with fewer sermons falling somewhere in the middle. Second, less than 30 minutes is more popular than more than 30 minutes in length. However, these statistics may be a bit misleading. Justin Trapp researched the average sermon length of 10 well-known pastors. The shortest sermon length was John Ortberg 32 minutes , and the longest was Rick Warren 57 minutes. There is no magic number when it comes to sermon length.

But there is one rule that applies in all situations: The measure of effective preaching is not length but depth. Some people think it always takes a long time to explain and express the rich theology of a text.

Proponents of exegetical preaching are especially prone to favor longer sermons. If it takes an hour to get to the depth of your passage, fine. Take all the time you need. We'll send you an email with steps on how to reset your password. We have all been in services where we wondered when is this message ever going to end?

As a person who has been teaching, preaching, and speaking publicly for more than thirty years, if you care about your audience then you are always wondering about the length of your messages. Some churches are known for long services and long sermons, while other churches are in and out in a little over an hour.

In these churches, the messages are never more than thirty minutes. Regardless of which type of church you go to, I want you to think about this for a moment — how long should a pastor preach? To be clear there really is no Biblical answer to this question, so my thoughts could be perceived as subjective.

But based on the nature of the topic I think that is okay. As we examine this question right off the bat, let me share with you what someone I used to work for said about public speaking. Always finish talking five minutes before the audience stops listening.

I am going to try to translate this thought to the pulpit and preaching by sharing a few ideas and hopefully you will find some truth and humor along the way. I remember I went to hear a pastor speak who I enjoy listening to, and he spent forty-five minutes doing the introduction and laying the background to his message.

He then proceeded to preach another forty minutes to make his points. That was way too long and too much information for one message. By the time he got to the end I could barely remember what he said at the beginning. Invariably, the mind and the brain are going to wander, which means if you are a pastor or speaker your audience may not receive all those wonderful points you spent so much time preparing.

I heard a pastor preach a sermon series and every week during the series he took the same points and just reworded them. In fact, in the same message, he kept making the same point over and over again. I remember sitting in the audience with my wife saying this message could have ended twenty minutes ago.

Sometimes if a pastor is not well prepared, they will use filler to stretch the message. In some churches, there are phrases that any pastor or speaker can use to get a response from the audience. Some pastors judge the quality and effectiveness of their message by the length. Unfortunately, some congregants do as well. These two things have nothing to do with each other.

If all you have is a twenty-minute message, then make it twenty minutes.