Optimum Worship Time?

My blogging friend Ben Arment has written about worship times and what is the ideal.  He quotes from Nelson Searcy’s new book “Launch” in mentioning 60 minutes.  Steve Sjogren also advocates 60 minutes in his book “The Perfectly Imperfect Church”.  Most churches I talk to hover in the 75 minute range give or take a few minutes.  So what’s ideal?  How long is your worship service?

I’ve never been one to be a slave to the clock but I also see the benefit in maximizing the time.  Just because my friend’s church service is running 90 minutes doesn’t mean I’m any less spiritual because I’m trying to shorten our service to 60 minutes.  Like my church friends, our service was at about 75 minutes but at the first of the year, we made a commitment to shave time off the clock to make us a bit more efficient during the worship time.  A few things we’ve done include:

• Mentioning “plugs” for various church activities in “headline” format.  We direct our people to the worship folder (nee bulletin) and encourage them to review the details there.  We also have slides running before service with the same information (time saved, about 2-3 minutes).
• Transitions are tighter.  We plan our transitions a bit more than we did previously and move from one element to the next.  People who are involved in the service are given a “cue” and they need to be on time to move ahead. (Time saved, about 1-2 minutes)
• We actually start ON TIME.  This was a biggie because we encourage fellowship but what happens is we have many people in the hallway of the school we use eating snacks and refilling coffee and many times, we were starting 5 minutes late (Total time saved in the these three areas, about 10 minutes!)
• I decided to try to tighten up my messages as well.  I love Steve Sjogren’s statement about not feeding the sheep too much since they will puke.  Over the last few months, I’ve tried to sharpen the focus of my messages and by the first of the year, my goal was to shorten my preaching time by 5 minutes or so.  I purchased a handy little tool from the Toastmasters speaking clubs called a “pacesetter” (Again, this was recommended to me by Sjogren) and I love it.  The pacesetter is a small timer that you clip to your belt that can be programmed for up to three intervals during your speech or sermon.  It has the option to beep or vibrate (obviously with preaching, I’ve used the vibration mode) and will gently remind you to move along as you preach.  I’ve set mine for an introduction, sermon body, and a close.  Once your time is up, the device vibrates twice to let you know you’re done and starts timing up so you can see how much you went over your prescribed timing.  The first few times I had to get used to feeling a vibration during my message (Some thought I had gotten the spirit! *G*) but now, I expect it and it has helped me to sharpen my speaking skills.  I’ve taken about 7 minutes off my sermons and we’re now finishing on time in about one hour give or take a few minutes.

Those are some ideas we’ve used.  I’m sure there are others.  We do mention that we are beholden to this method.  If the spirit leads, we will go on if we feel led but overall, it’s helped us to shorten our service times without losing any quality.