#165. The Double Sermon (4 warning signs)
Apr 20th by JonSometimes Pastors will execute what I call the “double sermon.” You might know this as the “encore sermon” or the “I am so hungry sermon.” There are really just two primary causes for this event, either the Pastor planned for a really long message beforehand or he feels led to keep going long after the message reached the original conclusion.
I am fine with the double sermon. This isn’t a criticism so much as a warning guide for people new to church. If you can learn these four signs, you will be never be caught off guard by a double sermon These are the four warning signs you need to know, because knowing is half the battle:
1. Fear the word “today.”
If a Pastor says “Today I’m going to talk about” twenty minutes after he’s started talking, then you are in trouble. What he is saying is essentially, “those first 20 minutes were just lead up for something that hasn’t even happened yet.” When I hear that, I want to cry out. “No, don’t say ‘today’ or ‘in a few minutes we’ll talk about ____.’” Let’s live in the now. Tell me what you want to tell me. Let’s leave the future out of this.
2. The “preview.”
There’s a reason that when you go see the movie “Iron Man” they don’t show you the trailer for the movie “Iron Man” before it begins. You’re already there. You’re ready for the movie, there’s no need to preview it. But sometimes Pastors will say things like, “this is just a brief look at what we’re going to dive into” or “read the first verse, we’ll read the rest as we proceed.” A 30 minute sermon is too short to need a preview though. I’m already with you. You’ve got me. Let’s get to the core.
3. The promise of brevity.
A few weeks ago I spoke to a men’s group. I told them I had a simple Bible verse, with only 9 words in it to speak about. As soon as I said that, an old man in the back groaned. When I asked him why later, he said, “Whenever a minister tells me he has a simple point or there’s only a few words to listen to, I know he’s going to preach for about a year.” He’s right. Sometimes when Pastors know they’re going to flow for a while, they’ll try to convince you it’s actually a short message.
4. The touchdown dance.
This one usually happens after you’ve had a guest speaker at your church. He or she has just spoken and your Pastor gets up under the assumption that there’s about to be a short prayer to send you home. But instead, he launches into his own sermon, like some sort of dueling sermon competition. It’s as if the guest speaker just scored a touchdown and your regular Pastor ran off the bench to join in the touchdown dance.
As with any list I create on this site, this is grossly incomplete. Your Pastor probably has unique ways to sneak in a double sermon. Fortunately, most service times these days don’t allow the Pastor to speak too long because the next crowd is waiting on the heels of the first one. Unless you’re attending the last service of the day. Be very careful about attending the last service of the day. It’s like the elephant graveyard of double sermons. They flock there. I promise.
Update: The comments for this post so far have been hilarious. Thanks once again for forcing me to raise my game with such funny responses. Love it.
(Thanks Joan for the idea.)
Comments
the pastor at the church i go to at college has a different series every frickin month. and they all have a cute title, they’re not book of the Bible series. it’s so annoying. just once i want to beg him, please preach one sermon that doesn’t need a sequel!
oh, and they have those fill-in-the-blank notes in the bulletins for good measure.
Our pastor preaches 15 point sermons. Right when you think it’s lunch time, he adds, “and now 3 more ways this applies to your life” and makes 3-4 subpoints for each point! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Three different Sundays, our pastor has uttered a variation of this phrase toward the end of his message: “As we close” or “my final point”. Each of these times, I have turned to the person next to me and said, “That means it’ll be 10 more minutes until he closes in prayer.”
I have been accurate to within 60 seconds every time.
Not sure why everyone here complains about the length of the sermon. I really don’t mind an hour-long sermon as long as it floats my boat. I mean I don’t see a sermon as something I have to sit through just to complete my Sunday morning. I actually enjoy listening to some speakers (And I’m a worship leader so most of the time I want the entire service to be music). I have a harder time getting enthused about notices. Why do we need them??? And why do they need to take 15 minutes??? Aaaaaarghh….
Here’s my favorite: the pastor will start talking about people becoming familiar with Christianity (other people, not me). “They forget how much their salvation cost.” (my salvation cost a lot, I know that. I saw The Passion.) “They’ll forget the pit of despair and sin that they were pulled out of.” (I certainly had a deep pit of sinful despair and despondent sin. Should the pastor be ending a sentence with a preposition?) “They’ll stop caring about the presence of God.” (I love the presence of God!)
Now, for those of you watching from home, this has all been a trap. The pastor then says, “They’ll complain about the church and the air conditioning and how long the services are!” And there’s the spring. You’re following along nicely, and all of a sudden, you feel bad for noticing that no sermon in the last six months has ended sooner than twenty minutes after they should have dismissed, except for that one missionary who visited and ended when he should have. This gives the speaker, and really every speaker, carte blanche to ramble on with their mispronounced Greek until Monday, because anyone who dislikes it must be ungrateful for what Jesus did for them. They should watch the Passion of the Christ again.
Re the kids: My home church doesn’t have “children’s church” or any other thing – some parents use nursery, but most don’t. The kids are there the entire time.
I never mind if the sermon is long or if it is short, I just want it to be good and full of Bible. I absolutely abhor pastors “preaching” these warm, fuzzy stories that are supposed to “touch our hearts.” Give me the real deal – that’s what will touch my heart.
i may be telling on myself here, but does anybody else’s pastor say “who will give me five more minutes” after like an hour of preaching and all the newbies or visitors raise their hands “AH! Great lets see thats [counts hands raised] five, ten, fifteen, twenty…”
I've been to a lot of retreats where there is a sometimes funny, sometimes awkward interaction between the preacher and the camp director. One of the usual preachers will often say, "I should be done in about 20 minutes or so," knowing that he has an hour and will use every minute of it. It usually gets a laugh, but he does use up that hour.
I say it's the quality of the sermon, not the length, that matters. I don't mind a good sermon being long – in fact, a really good sermon rarely seems long. But if it's mediocre, of course I'd prefer it to be short. Does a pastor ever realize he's preaching a bad sermon???
I attended some house churches in Moscow and they had an interesting "free" format, wherein people they would alternate the "other" parts of the service with several speakers. The pastor would give a sermon, but so would one or two other members or missionary guests. These services were 2 1/2 – 3 hours long, but they didn't feel long, and I rather enjoyed them.
OTOH, sometimes a 15 minute sermon feels too long, when it's not so much a sermon but just a long personal life experience story…
I know that this is someone late… But my pastor back in Orlando would have a Pre Communion Message, a Pre Offering message, and then came the regular message, usualy with some lengthy post message wrap up…. Services were usually always 2 hours, bare minimum….
The great thing is he would have year long series, and would always start the message recapping the previous 27 weeks worth of message…
Until you’ve spent a year in 1 Peter, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Might not be a double on just one day, but the effect is just as scintillating.
if you hear “lets just let the holy spirit have his way today,yea?” or something like that…thats when you know its about to go down.
My sergeant from basic training could make it through a 40 minute lesson plan in 15 minute flat. His secret was to sit us all down, and tell us we were going to be going "fast and furious" and bast through the lesson. I intend to make use of this style, however it requires an exquisitely crafted lesson plan.
This reminds me of my wedding. My husband and I are both PKs . We asked my dad to do the actual wedding (with brief message) but asked his dad to open with a greeting and prayer and do the whole "who gives this woman?" thing so dad could walk me down the aisle. Well my dad did do a nice message like we asked – a bit longer than I'd said, probably around 40 minutes, but he's a good, funny, speaker and the majority of it was telling childhood stories and the fantastic God story of how hubby and I got together. My father in law, on the other hand, is a mind numbingly dull speaker and his "greeting and prayer" was a 40 minute long sermon on… something… I think the gist of it was – marriage sucks but you're just supposed to trudge through it and hopefully yours won't be too bad, you seem pretty good for each other, and I like Elizabeth but it probably will be, most are, just remember initiating a divorce is a one way ticket to hell (directed at my mother in law, his ex-wife) – at least he didn't remember to turn on his mic so most people couldn't hear it, it's not audible on the video anyway.
my youth pastor does this! except it is at least 3 or 4 messages long. And because it is a youthgroup, he can go late, take out worship and announcements and everything! drives me crazy. his messages are like craaazy rabbit trails
i love this post so much. i have seen so much of this throughout the years. the offering sermon, the close bible fake-out, the remove watch hahaha no really im not looking at it move, the list goes on. LOVE. IT. haha
I grew up in a church where a LONG sermon was 25 minutes. In fact, my entire wedding was about 25 minutes and we had a bunch of music, plus my dad (also my pastor) cried for about 5 minutes.
My pastor now is pretty good about staying on point and not rambling, but when he is gone the retired pastor from our church often preaches. And I often volunteer to keep the nursery or work in children's church. He preaches about 6 sermons, all of which are too long and not well-organized. I can hardly bear to listen. Because my dad was an excellent teaching pastor, who still kept it short and never boring, I'm a sermon snob. But don't judge me, so is everyone else, they're just not saying it.
Erin K, you took me back to my jr. high/high school days as a Sunday School teacher's assistant of itty bitty kids. We had a 3-hour service from 9am to noon most Sundays, with the kids sent off to Sunday School during the sermon. During one memorable period, the pastor started preaching more like a two hour sermon instead of the usual one hour. Finally, the Sunday School teachers just made a pact to take the kids back into the sanctuary at noon, whether church was over or not. We trooped them all in and lined them up in the back of the sanctuary, and the sermons started shortening up.
And then in youth group (at a different church) we had a skit that touched on the same topic…all the players pretended to be in church, except instead of dialog, we just said what we were doing. We shook eachother's hands and said, "Greeting, greeting" and sang "Sing, sing, sing" to the tune of Amazing Grace or the Doxology, and then the person playing the pastor got up and preached, and that was where we really shone. "Introduction, introduction, introduction. Preach…preach preach <for a while>In closing, in closing, PREACH, preach preach, and finally, preach preach." My brother was a great preacher. He could spin it out with quite a few different "closing" variations. I'm thinking the point of the skit was something about how we treat visitors…sadly, I don't remember.