TommyMertonHead writes:
I mentor and work with my preachers here, and there are a couple of problems we work on a lot. One of them is repetition. When I listen to a sermon that goes on for too long AND feels like it….there’s generally quite a bit of preacher repetition. Preaching is interesting in that it has it’s own kinds of rhetorical rules that may not be obvious. Just saying the same thing 2 or 3 times rather than once is incredibly common in preaching. For a lot of preachers, needless repetition and meandering illustrations are the difference between 25 good minutes and 45 tedious ones.
I’m hoping Bob was being a bit facetious. I think Driscoll is a much worse preacher since he decided that the one hour barrier was there to be broken. He needs a month of Fred Craddock. In their good days, the mainlines produced great preaching (Craddock, Buttrick, Willimon) who all knew how to preach a great sermon with a point and good application in 25 minutes. Evangelicals decided to emulate the Puritans and measure good preaching by time. I’ve heard hundreds of preachers that I’d like to punch for wasting my time when all they had to do was work a bit harder themselves in the study, especially on editing. Believe it or not guys, everything you think isn’t worth preaching. If you can’t revise and edit to a more focused sermon, you’re probably being indulgent.
And yes, there are always people who tell you your sermons are wonderful. Thank God for them….and don’t pay any attention to them. Have your own standards that you’ve learned from good communicators.
