I’ve made and heard other pastors and Christians in the past make negative comments about other churches because their services, sermons, or singing were either too short or too long. The more that I think about it however, the more I realize that any standard placed on any church apart from textual warrant stinks of legalism. How long should a worship service last? The answer simply is “as long as your pastor(s) wants it to last.” Since your pastor(s) is the leader of your worship service, he should be able to decide how long your worship services last. So, which church does better, the one that worships for 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 120 minutes, or 180 minutes? The answer is that none do better! For readers that affirm the Regulative Principle, the elements of worship must be present for worship to take place; however, cannot all of these elements take place in under 30 minutes?
I can remember listening to one pastor preach online at a church in Louisville; he had a PhD, but only preached for 15 minutes. I remember thinking that he wasted his time getting a PhD if he’s going to be preaching “sermonettes.” Me = legalist. The reality is however that there is no such thing as a sermonette if the pastor preaches the text in front of him; whether it lasts 5 minutes or 105 minutes is really irrelevant. Pragmatically, I prefer preaching sermons that go 5 or 10 minutes past the attention spans of my audience, because I want them to listen with effort for a brief period in the sermon. I personally think that every sermon should remind the hearers of their responsibility, even of their responsibility to listen to God’s Word because it is God’s Word. Thus, I believe sermon length should be determined based on biblical implications (human responsibility, preach the Word, reprove, rebuke, correct, exhort, etc.), rather than arbitrary thoughts like ”I think that a sermon is only a sermon if it is minutes long.”
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