Church Service Length

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RAIDER

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We have all set through short, medium, and long church services.  The services at FBCH were almost always lengthy.  I remember a couple of posters on the old FFF complaining about the length of Schaap's services.  What are your thoughts on service lengths. 
 
RAIDER said:
We have all set through short, medium, and long church services.  The services at FBCH were almost always lengthy.  I remember a couple of posters on the old FFF complaining about the length of Schaap's services.  What are your thoughts on service lengths.
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Japheth, with his clocks, has passed his time of leadership.  So much the MORE assembling, as you see the day approaching.  Holy Spirit vs. Schedule  now appearing at a 'service' near you.

Anishinabe

 
I think length of service is purely cultural.  For instance a service in a predominately African-American Baptist church last 2 to 2.5 hours on average while a catholic service in the same context lasts 1 hour and a "full"-gospel- of any sort service last 2.5 to 3 hours.
 
I have always felt like there needs to be a little common sense used.  Recently I was at a church for a special day.  There was a large crowd of visitors.  Many church members had invited friends and were planning on lunch with them after the morning service.  There were several baptisms scheduled. 

I believe in this case the pastor needs to make some up-front adjustments to the service.  He knows that all the "extras" for the big day are going to take time.  In this case....not so.

The morning service started late (what a dumb thing to do on a big day).  There was the normal three congregational songs with three verses of each.  Normal lengthy hand shaking time.  Normal lengthy announcements.  Normal special music numbers.  Add to this the special recognitions for the big day.  The pastor did his best to shorten his sermon, but everything was way behind by that time.

Long story short - it was pushing 1:00pm when the service finally dismissed.  People were getting up and leaving from the invitation time on.  People had plans.  Was it a great day?  Absolutely!  Was the attendance good?  Absolutely!  Were there people frustrated with the length of the service?  Absolutely!

This is a good example of not using common sense to make adjustments.  No need to sing three congregational songs.  No need to start the service late.  No need to have hand shaking time.  No need to have normal announcements.  Everything about the service would have been just as great.  I'm sure there were visitors that thought, "I'm not going back to that church.  There services are too long".
 
Our Sunday School is usually 30 to 45 minutes. Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wed night is exactly 1 hour long, even if we have the annual budget meeting or communion. My Pastor doesn't ramble, no bunny trails, we do the normal three songs, announcements and offering and he gets to preaching! Does a great job in that amount of time. Sunday morning we do add a choir special and a singing special.  Only time it goes over 1 hour is if we have a special speaker that has no respect for how our church is run! Or maybe never gets a chance to speak to a big crowd!
 
I teach junior church so you know where I stand on this subject!  ;)


Seriously, I don't mind long services but I do feel badly for nursery workers if the service is extended.
 
 
kaba said:
Our Sunday School is usually 30 to 45 minutes. Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wed night is exactly 1 hour long, even if we have the annual budget meeting or communion. My Pastor doesn't ramble, no bunny trails, we do the normal three songs, announcements and offering and he gets to preaching! Does a great job in that amount of time. Sunday morning we do add a choir special and a singing special.  Only time it goes over 1 hour is if we have a special speaker that has no respect for how our church is run! Or maybe never gets a chance to speak to a big crowd!
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I feel that the focus of the service should be the sermon.  It seems like so many pastors spend forever on the preliminaries and then do one of two extreems - have no respect for anyone's time and preach as long as they like OR rush their sermon to get done in decent time.  Personally, I'm not a fan of either one. 

I use to have a pastor that would preach for 30 minutes.  He told me that he loved to preach God's Word, but he felt like he lost ground in his sermon and lost people's attention when he went longer than 30 minutes.  Now there's a guy who, as Clint Eastwood would say, "Knows his limitations".

The one thing all of us would have to admit is that Dr. Hyles was not a boring preacher.  He could preach for an hour and it seemed like 30 minutes.  The problem is, many preachers don't have that ability yet they still go an hour.  After they preach for 30 minutes it seems like an hour.  Preachers need to know their crowd and their personal abilities. 
 
JrChurch said:
I teach junior church so you know where I stand on this subject!  ;)


Seriously, I don't mind long services but I do feel badly for nursery workers if the service is extended.
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That is a great point.  After the service someone must have said something to the pastor about the nursery and Jr. church workers.  During the evening service he had them stand and he apologized.  He gave each of them a gift card. 

If he would have made the proper adjustments in the planning of the service, this would not have happened.  This is what I mean by a "little common sense".
 
Sitcoms are 30 minutes for a reason. I'm willing to stretch a little more than that...say 35-40 minutes, but anything more is puffbaggery.
 
Norefund said:
Sitcoms are 30 minutes for a reason. I'm willing to stretch a little more than that...say 35-40 minutes, but anything more is puffbaggery.
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Just to clarify, you are talking strictly about the sermon rather than the whole service, right?
 
I had never considered the plight of the nursery and jr. church workers until I had children of my own. I think these people get the short end of the stick when the service runs long.

My wife and I get to visit other churches a couple of times per year, and we find that long evening services are inconsiderate of families with little children. If a service starts at 6:00 pm and goes past 8:30, the kids in the nursery are a mess. Their normal bed time is 8:00 pm. Special meetings that start at 7:00 and go past 9 are so much of a headache that they do more harm than good (you leave the service frustrated rather than edified).
 
RAIDER said:
kaba said:
Our Sunday School is usually 30 to 45 minutes. Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wed night is exactly 1 hour long, even if we have the annual budget meeting or communion. My Pastor doesn't ramble, no bunny trails, we do the normal three songs, announcements and offering and he gets to preaching! Does a great job in that amount of time. Sunday morning we do add a choir special and a singing special.  Only time it goes over 1 hour is if we have a special speaker that has no respect for how our church is run! Or maybe never gets a chance to speak to a big crowd!
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I use to have a pastor that would preach for 30 minutes.  He told me that he loved to preach God's Word, but he felt like he lost ground in his sermon and lost people's attention when he went longer than 30 minutes.  Now there's a guy who, as Clint Eastwood would say, "Knows his limitations".
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Years ago, an old preacher said "If you can't say it in 30 minutes, you can't say it." I try my best to make my sermons in the 30 minute range.

I also find that the more prepared I am, the easier it is to keep the sermon under 30 minutes. This is because I don't get distracted and I stick to the point (having planned out everything I will say).
 
In the body-turned-business model, the evangelical builds his brand through the Sunday Morning 'Service'.  In the NT Church, the assembly is for the believers, and God builds and adds to the church, while his disciples preach to every man, outside of the assembly.

Anishinabe

 
Bob Gray of Trinity Baptist church in Jax would have his sermon last for a hour. Too long. Most ifbx preachers could have their sermons down to 20 to 30 minutes if they did not talk about themselves.
 
Sermon length has been a problem for quite some time...

Ac 20:9 And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead.

:)
 
Boomer said:
Sermon length has been a problem for quite some time...

Ac 20:9 And there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead.

:)
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Eutychus was the first recorded Hacker.  :)
 
Boomer said:
Norefund said:
Sitcoms are 30 minutes for a reason. I'm willing to stretch a little more than that...say 35-40 minutes, but anything more is puffbaggery.
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Just to clarify, you are talking strictly about the sermon rather than the whole service, right?
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I am.
 
People routinely sit through hour long blocks of instruction in all levels of school.  I am curious why some seem to think that on hour would be too long for biblical instruction when we readily accept that format in most other instructional environments.
 
How many of you have ever sat through a few of Dennis Corle's preaching services?
 
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