Earlier this month, Pope Francis issued an advisory that homilies should be short, approximately eight minutes, “because after that time attention is lost and people fall asleep, and they are right,” he said.

I couldn’t agree more.

I was first introduced to the short sermon at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis in the early 1990s. Christian Century had asked me to write follow-up articles for the twelve “great churches” the magazine had profiled in 1950. Most of these mainline Protestant congregations had fallen into decline in the forty years since they had been anointed “great churches”— declining membership, attendance and giving— tales all too familiar on the American religious landscape.

But Mount Olivet was an exception. Under the direction of the late Paul Youngdahl, the congregation flourished, so much so that they offered four services on Sunday mornings (and many more at Christmas and Easter), all on the hour. 

With limited parking at a downtown church (something that had tripped up other “great churches”), each service had to be short enough so the 8:00 congregation could clear the parking lot in time for the 9:00 gathering. That, in turn, necessitated other concessions: only two verses for each hymn, a ten-minute sermon and what I characterized at the time as a recessional trot. 

When Youngdahl invited me to preach on Reformation Sunday several years later, he carefully instructed me to abide by the ten-minute restriction. This was good advice, which I have followed into ordination, a couple of rectorships and long-term supply preaching.

Why? There are several reasons, ranging from theology to culture.

Culturally, in this internet age of social media, attention spans are short. For better or worse, most congregants can no longer abide long, elaborately argued sermons. 

The Puritan era of three-hour sermons every Thursday and twice on Sunday is long past. So, too, is the classic three-points-and-a-poem sermon. It is better to give the congregation a thought or two to carry through the week rather than a long-forgotten theological disquisition.

I don’t mean this as a jeremiad about the dumbing down of American congregations, although I’m sure a case can be made. It’s simply a recognition that amid the flurry of distractions in modern life, preachers must make accommodations. Those who refuse to do so might claim some sort of moral high ground, but that real estate, like it or not, is contracting.

The larger argument for me as an Episcopal priest is theological. I regard the sermon as a way station on the way to the main event, the Eucharist, where parishioners meet the real presence of Jesus in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. I keep my sermons short because the sermon should in no way overshadow the Eucharist.

It’s different, I acknowledge, for Baptists and other evangelicals. There, the climax of the service (“liturgy” is too fancy a word) is the sermon, sometimes called a message. 

For students learning about religion, I sometimes invite them to visit a church and notice the first thing they see. If the pulpit is front and center, the cornerstone of worship is the sermon.

If, on the other hand, the altar is central, the climax of worship is Holy Communion, where we find sustenance in the body and blood of Christ. Everything in the liturgy reaches a crescendo in the Eucharist.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a well-crafted sermon and a skilled preacher. The late Frederick Buechner was masterful, as was the late Calvin Butts of Abyssinian Baptist Church. Say what you will about Jimmy Swaggart— and there’s plenty to say— but he was a superb preacher.

My sermon last Sunday, riffing on Jesus’ words in the Gospel of Mark, was called “Grandma’s Garden,” a reflection on the sowing and nurturing of seeds and how we might nurture our faith. The sermon lasted about eight minutes, ten tops.

No one fell asleep and no one complained.