Are Sermons Too Long? Pastor Ed Young Weighs In
Is there such a thing as a sermon being too lengthy?
Pastor Ed Young from Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, addressed this topic in a recent video on Instagram, discussing the ideal sermon length. Young, 64, had a moment of clarity following his second service at Fellowship’s Frisco campus.
“The first service I preached 36 minutes. Way too long. The second service I did it in 20 mins and 43 seconds,” he mentioned. “And guess what? The second message, the 20-minute message, was better than the 36-minute message.”
Known for his vibrant and visually dynamic sermons, including a notable 2012 sermon on marital intimacy, Young emphasized that many pastors, himself included, tend to extend their sermons longer than necessary.
“Preachers, we preach too long, I guarantee it. Just look at yourself,” he stated. “I preach too long. Once a sermon gets past 25 minutes, I’m so [attention deficit disorder]. I lose it.”
Young admitted to “boring” himself during the first service and encouraged fellow pastors to “keep it tight, and everything will be alright.”
He continued, “I mean, I’m going through the book of Romans. Twenty minutes, are you kidding me?”
In 2019, a Pew Research Center study analyzed sermon lengths across different denominations. It revealed that sermons in historically black Protestant churches averaged nearly four times the length of those in Roman Catholic churches.
Data from about 50,000 sermons from over 6,400 churches during Easter 2019 showed the median sermon length was 37 minutes.
Catholic sermons were the briefest with a median of approximately 14 minutes, whereas Mainline Protestant services had an average sermon length of around 25 minutes. In comparison, Evangelical sermons had a median length of 39 minutes, and sermons in historically black Protestant churches were the longest at about 54 minutes.
The study noted that while Evangelical and historically black Protestant sermons had a comparable word count, the latter was 38% longer in duration. This discrepancy might be due to additional time taken for musical interludes, pauses, or congregational call and response segments.
This article was originally written by www.christianpost.com
