Excellent. I had been encouraging the notion of a “one-point sermon” with a local pastor I was assisting, but it never quite happened like I hoped. So long as there is substance, less is often more.

I wonder what Rob would make of newly bold Reformed churches that are proud of 50 minute expository sermons? I’m no fan of Driscoll or Piper or friends, but they have lots of fans. Perhaps they’re successful despite rather than because of this?

The sermons of Rob Bell have been a very meaningful part of my life these past few years. I like that they are long. He keeps my attention. It’s just really interesting that Rob is the one to insist that sermons get shorter. Does he mean shorter as in – not 45 minutes but instead thirty minutes? Or even shorter? Interestingly, last year we changed our sermon format such that I have twenty minutes to preach. I’ve found it to be very liberating and creatively challenging.

not a bell fan!

i absolutely agree! moving from mega-church evangelicalism where the sermon is the.main.thing. to a fairly high church liturgical context has been thrilling for me, largely because i regularly hear 12-15 minute sermons these days that are infinitely more finely crafted than most of the 50 minute sermons I heard every week! i think there are times, contexts, conferences, and intensives where long sermons are appropriate and necessary. I don’t think that corporate worship every week requires it.

If the motive is to accomodate the culture of inattention and being seeker sensitive I would disagree. I’m also not a fan of long windedness = spiritual depth. Tho not a part of one, liturgical services can have shorter sermons because more gospel is woven throughout the liturgy. If you shortened the sermon to have some structured interaction at the end that would be fine. Many of the Spiritual fathers of the past have written many books with 2-5 page chapters vs. 20-30 pages of today. I think they said much in the few pages they wrote but require deeper contemplation to unpack the meaning. I’m afraid it’s more about cultural accomodation which will over time only contribute to even shorter attention spans.

I think Rob doesn’t refer so much to the length of a sermon as to it’s quality. You could have a short sermon that is bad and a long sermon that is actually great. The key here is EXCESS, the clutter – as Rob calls it. If you can deliver your message in 25 min, why speak for 45 min? Truth is, it takes more preparation for delivering a “leaner” idea.
I venture to say that most preachers think of their sermons in terms of the time slot they have to fill than in what it is they have to say.

Couldn’t agree more. Too many preachers love the sound of their own voices. Lengthy sermon often mean lack of preparation and/or discipline.
kgp

This is just basic professional editing: make a more powerful impact with fewer words. (Don’t be redundant; be succinct).
“Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.”
? John Updike
“Revision is just as important as any other part of writing and must be done con amore.”
? Evelyn Waugh
“The best writing is rewriting.”
? E. B. White

I could not agree with Bell more! Thanks for the post.

I’ve been making a conscious effort to do just this in recent weeks. I have been amazed at the number of people complaining hat the sermon has been too short, as if they have paid for certain a number of words. Funnily enough, it’s the same people who are the first ones to start snoring.
It seems some people cant be blessed unless they are bored.

I agree with Rob. Short and sweet – as long as it is truly as sweet as it is short…

I call BS. It’s not just about the message. Their is an act of worship all its own in being able to sit attentively through long sermons. I’d be willing to bet that the average sermon preached in the country is already under 20 minutes. The only thing I’ve found short sermons do is to encourage ADD in congregants that are hungry for lunch or want to watch football. I’ve tended to find in my own experience there is a direct correlation between the amount of respect a congregation has for the Bible and the amount of time it is willing to spend absorbing and reflecting on the word of God delivered by the pastor. Besides, I doubt the early church was as short winded as Bell suspects. There are very few books in the Bible that can be read in under 17 minutes and reading the word was very important to the early church.

totally agree..i think i heard somewhere 19 minutes is all the mind can hold, after that your hearers lose what was said b4 that. it is also true, so i have heard that shorter sermons are more work but i for one will forward this blog to my preacher!

Last year I completed my Masters in Divinity at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. My dissertation was by far the longest, and I got 83%. A friend of mine’s was by far the shortest. He got 85%. Ive read some of my thesis again and I would definitely make it shorter. There is good content, but to much to sift through to get to it. Why would anyone else but an examiner read all of it?
It just seems to support what Rob Bell is saying.

How much would you pay to go to a 17 minute football game or travel for a one inning baseball game? Would you pay $12 and be content to view a 17 minute movie? At $300-600 a credit, would you be content to take a college course for 30 17 minute sessions? How about sending our kids to school for 17 minutes because its all the mind can take? How long have most of you been on line? The problem is that we, even as believers, have lost our desire for the Word. Jesus would not have had to perform the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 if He had only taught 17 minutes. No one would have fallen out the window when Paul preached if his message had only been 17 minutes. You can fill a church with 17 minute sermons, but you can’t train disciples with that mentality. May God bring revival to our churhes.
churches -s

I teach Professional Business Communication and the students find out how much work it takes to be short and crisp but how much more effective it is. Once they see it, they start putting in the work. Longer sermons are given mostly by lazy pastors.

And BTW I find all the junk this website throws my way distracting.

For those of you who are so sure that longer sermons are the result of lazy pastors/preachers, what is the evidence for that?
Some of the very best and most meaningful sermons I have heard have been long ones in which it was apparent the speaker was anything but lazy in his or her preparation. I get weary of the short sermonette.
I rather doubt that the Church is suffering from an excess of time spent in a biblical text during times of corporate worship. Perhaps we could use a bit more.

I love this concept! It even inspires me to want to preach again. I got put off because of the expectation of having a 45 minute – 1 hour sermon, when I could actually say what I wanted to in about 20-25mins!
If you think about how much you actually remember when you walk out of a service, you could summarize it into a few lines anyway. So why don’t preachers just get to the point – it seems to have more impact!

There’s a reason for the 17 min. sermon just like there is a reason for other forms of succinct communication. They are unable to sustain interest over the long haul. And why is that? Lack of content. Lack of story. Lack of poetry. Lack of beauty. Lack of all things that make the communication meaningful.
R.G. Lee’s famous sermon “Payday Someday” is longer than 17 minutes because it is tied to a skilled narrative: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNoMuCspTKE
It isn’t time, it is punch that makes a message effective. Listen to MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm or “I’ve Been to the Mountain” http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm and see the power of a message in 5 min. or less.
Like message #15, some things require length in order to be enjoyed because it is the change over time that is what you are there for. As a Central Ohio resident, I can tell you that it is the entirety of the OSU v. U-M experience that gives the event meaning, not the highlights from the game. If preachers could provide meaning over the entire length of their sermon it would make little difference if they preached 7 (as MLK did) or 17 or 70 minutes. Could this story have been told as a 30 sec. commercial or did it need the whole 4 min?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Um9KsrH377A

Listening to Shane Hipps’ church sermons have been some of the most formative for me and they rarely go beyond 25 minutes in length. From my experience, the longer the sermon is the less likely i am to go away with something challenging buzzing around my head for the week.

I connect with what Rob is saying here and there is much truth to it.
Preparation is the key that leads to clear articulation in preaching.
No doubt, Rob is a great communicator – both written and spoken.
However, does anyone else find a inconsistent dichotomy between Bell’s writing (approx. 4 sentences to a page, short, lean, succinct, etc) and his teaching (most Mars Hill podcasts find his teachings to average between 40 and 50 minutes in length and his speaking tours 1.5 hours long)?
Maybe this inconsistency based on his quote is worth-while, but I think it at least begs the question…

I’m all for a long sermon when it’s excellent. But the problem is, too many of the ‘long’ sermons I’ve heard over the years have been filled with illustrations of illustrations with very little meat or old-fashioned exposition. If what we’re talking about is length for length’s sake, count me out.

What about the leading of the Spirit? I’ve heard long sermons that were edifying and that kept me engaged. If the Spirit is in it, length shouldn’t matter. I realize that there is the practical element of people’s attention spans, which seem to have gotten shorter. However, I would hate to see churches give in completely to the clock and people’s lack of being able to sit still for any length of time. Maybe our place is to teach a discipline that for many will be new rather than giving in to the pressure to please. By the way, how many of those who we feel can’t sit for very long through a sermon, will sit for 1.5 to 2 hours in a movie theatre or longer for a sporting event? I think it comes down to what we give priority in our lives and let’s face it, in many ways, God gets short shrift many times.

This whole topic requires an understanding of what the sermon actually is – until this is decided the question of appropriate length is premature.

Rob isn’t just speaking about the sermon here. It’s more in reference to a variety of communicative forms. His new book, video’s, a new project he is working on, sermon, etc. Bell’s sermons and tours are a good length (as has been mentioned), so he’s not attempting a new length format for the sermon or for a book. Just a reminder that less can still be layered with more. No matter, if that’s making a two hour sermon into an hour sermon, or a thirty minute video into fifteen minutes.
RJS. Bell shares his thoughts on how he understands the sermon at the end of the original article. Not only how we understand the sermon but how well are we discerning the Holy Spirit. Something that can easily be forgotten.

I suspect from all the comments there is no right answer.
RJS — perceptive IMHO This whole topic requires an understanding of what the sermon actually is – until this is decided the question of appropriate length is premature.

I sometimes write magazine articles where I am assigned a certain number of words. The best writing practice I have learned in doing these is to over-shoot the word count by at least 25% because it forces me to go back and pare things down to what is necessary. (Obviously, I don’t do this with my blog comments!) Doing this is the difference between a flabby, interesting, but maybe not quite worth the time piece of writing and one that is clean, compelling and begs to be read through in one sitting. I think that something similar is what Bell is talking about here. If I had to guess, I would say that a lot of pastors write sermons until they fit the time allotted and leave it at that. No doubt, many of those sermons would be much better if the pastor were forced to reduce the material by 25% or more.
Also, if the sermon is shortened, couldn’t this be an opportunity to use time in church to include other practices? More corporate prayer, communion taking, reading/praying of psalms perhaps? It could be an opportunity to reclaim some ancient practices that could add new dimensions to church life rather than a way to get to lunch and the football game more quickly.

rather ironic for Rob to suggest that we need shorter sermons since his are almost always 45min+
Not that I mind. I really enjoy listening to Rob and am fine with his longer format. On the other hand, I hate listening to a preacher go on and one when they just suck, or when they’re just working through one of those stupid 3-point alliterated sermons based on disconnected and totally out-of-context ideas that they’ve somehow extracted from some random verse (which I think they must teach at most Baptist seminaries as the “ONE AND ONLY RIGHT AND BIBLICAL METHOD FOR PREACHING”, since almost every sermon I ever heard growing up was that sort of outline.
Anyhow, my point is simply that whether or not sermons should be long entirely depends on the quality of the sermon, IMHO.

Good article and great discussion. In my experience, most sermons are longer than they need to be… just because it seems that a certain just IS a certain length (40 minutes). I think there’s lots of fat in the Church to trim, and this is one of the areas that deserve a little more critical analysis.

I have a good friend who taught me the “osmosis” trick…. He says–10 years into weekly preaching–that midweek he often realizes he’s dealing with 2 sermons and it’s time for osmosis. Turn it into 2 different, baby! I’m still pretty new– 2 years regular preaching and I still haven’t built in enough time in my preparation to keep it as short as I want it.

Forcing my web content into 400-600 words has taught taut content-driven messages. Succinctness has helped me re-evaluate my verbal content as well.

Not to mention that whatever the topic is, we’ve heard it preached a hundred times before.

The scientific nitpicker in me has to tell Marc #31 that the word he is looking for is “mitosis” (the word for a cell dividing into 2). Osmosis has to do with diffusion so as to equalize what’s on both sides of a membrane or something, like what I might hope would happen if I slept with a commentary under my pillow to learn it.
We already have enough trouble with preachers embarrassing themselves when they try to talk about science

AHH (34): thanks for clarifying that. I had trouble trying to figure out what he meant until you pointed out it wasn’t a problem with my frontal lobes.
Oh, and is the sermon really necessary? What’s the point of a sermon? The reflexive answer of course is education. My experience is that it is usually a mixture of education, indoctrination, with a touch of hero worship (for the priest-figure delivering the sermon). Oh, and in many churches the sermon is the vehicle used to beg for money from the congregants.If it’s a matter of education, can’t bible study suffice and we can focus on worship instead?