Sunday, May 29, 2011

Timing Worship

We have a man at church who is of the opinion that God only wants worship services to last sixty minutes. He gets that idea from his memory of worship when he was a child. He is not happy that our worship service usually last about an hour and a  half and each Sunday he spends the worship time recording the time for each section of worship.


According to him the congregational prayers should only take two minutes and the sermon ten. He was in shock when I told him that my first preaching professor told us that a preacher who preached for less than thirty minutes was NOT doing his job. In the early days of our country Sunday worship often lasted four hours in the morning and another three in the afternoon. Things have changed. People today have had their attention span reset to television’s ten minute segments. It use to be fifteen minutes but more commercials lessen the time available for program.


My friend in church is missing the point of worship by being focused on the time it takes. Our worship is so good that for me the time flies by because my soul is involved in the act of worship. His time goes at a snails pace because he is focused not on worshiping God but on keeping track of minutia. When you spend your worship time – timing worship – you miss out on God’s time and the joy of praising the Lord. 

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