Todd Rhoades wonders how we settled on 30-40 minutes as the typical length of a sermon. He asks, “Why do you speak the length you speak? Is it because it takes you that long to say what you need to say, or because you have that much time to fill?” The amount of valuable content, not the size of the time slot, should determine how long the sermon lasts.

Rhoades notes that we’ve changed so many things about church services–songs, order, attire, tone, etc. But we’ve kept the sermon length the same.

He mentions being involved with two online conferences where speakers were limited to 6 minutes–and they all came through. So, could a six-minute sermon work?

I’m reminded of a freelance magazine article I wrote 30 years ago about an experience helping a woman and her mentally-challenged son during the Blizzard of ’78, when we were stranded together in Denver. It started at 2700 words, but I couldn’t find any takers. So I cut it to 2400 words and sent it out again. Then 2000 words. Still couldn’t sell it.

I cut it to 1800 words, then 1500, then 1200, sending it out anew with each edition This stretched over a period of probably 5 years. I just wouldn’t give up on the story.

Finally, I sent a 1000-word version (about one-third of the original size) to a Mennonite publisher. The editor wrote back, “We like your article and would like to use it…if you can cut it to 800 words.”

So I did. They bought it and published it at that length. And it was the best version of the article. No fluff, no padding. Just the essential story, with a punch you couldn’t avoid.

So could a 30-minute sermon be packed into a 10-minute slot, or a six-minute slot? A six-minute sermon might actually take more preparation than a 30-minute sermon. I know it could be done, and it could be really effective that way. But, as Todd Rhoades says, it’ll never happen. We’re tied to the 30-40 minute sermon paradigm, and nobody’s gonna change that.

Pastor Tim preached about Charlton Heston Moses and the Exodus today. As he talked about the final plague, the death of the firstborn sons, I began wondering:

How exactly did God define “firstborn son”? Was there an age cut-off?

There were plenty of fathers and grandfathers who were firstborn sons. Pharoah himself may  have been a firstborn son. Did the Angel of Death kill firstborn sons regardless of age, or did he concern himself only with dependent children?

What if a man had fooled around, and secretly had a son by another woman before having a son by his wife. Would that other boy have died, while the boy he was raising was spared (since he was not truly his firstborn son)? And did that make his wife suspicious?

Was it only a man’s firstborn son that died, or the woman’s firstborn son? In the latter case, one man could have lost multiple sons.

What did the Angel do when he came across a home with a hermaphrodite
child? Such children, bearing both male and female sexual
characteristics, occur 1-3 out of every 100,000 people, so there would
have been some such Egyptian children. I’m just wondering.

These are the questions which keep me awake at night.

This is hysterical–a Youtube video about an automated Catholic confessional. I couldn’t stop laughing. It was shot in Spanish, but there are English subtitles.

If you’re reading this on Facebook, you’ll need to click on the “View Original Post” link to see it. That’ll take you to my blog.

Do we Christians cry “Miracle!” too much? David Mills, an atheist, thinks so.

When a doctor gives someone 6 months to live, and he ends up making it 8 months, or a year–is that necessarily a miracle? Or could it be that predicting when a person will die is not an exact science? Or that doctors habitually underplay things, not wanting to say you have a year to live, and then you die in six months? Or could it be that it was the skill of doctors that extended the person’s life?

When a tornado rips through a town and kills a dozen people, you’ll hear survivors say things like, “God miraculously spared me.” Is that an accurate statement? Was it God that killed those 12 people? If so, why did he kill them but spare others? Did he send the tornado, or did it merely result from well-known weather conditions? Was God really directing the tornado’s path?

In “Atheist Universe,” Mills points out that we rig the system, so that we can claim divine intervention no matter how something turns out. If we pray for someone to get well, and they do–it’s a miracle. If they don’t get well, we accept it as “God’s will” or say, “It was simply his time to go.” We never say, “God ignored my prayers.” In fact, we often say that when God doesn’t answer our prayers, that that was his answer.

How does that look to nonChristians?

I occasionally look at the website ExChristian.net, where people who have forsaken Christianity tell their stories. I’ve read a couple posts where atheists told of coincidences happening to their advantage, or people getting well when they weren’t expected to. They say, “If I were still a Christian, I’d say it was a miracle. But since I don’t believe in God, I recognize it for what it was: that’s just the way things worked out.”

I’ve seen people claim divine intervention for some of the silliest little things, like leading a person to the fastest line at the bank because God knew he was in a hurry. People love assembling a string of coincidences into a miracle. I’ve done it. A person sings a nice solo in church, and then says, “I couldn’t have done that without God’s help.” Even though she’s been singing solos for years.

Consider how this looks to nonChristians.

Now, I totally believe in God’s sovereignty, and I believe he’s active in human affairs. I believe he answers prayers and that he brings healing. I believe that he engineers coincidences to make good things happen for us. I believe that, just because our statements may sometimes sound trite, that doesn’t make them inaccurate. And yet–do we overdo it?

Mills writes, “We reserve our use of the term ‘miracle’ to describe only those events that we personally consider positive.” So if you survive a car crash but another passenger is seriously injured, you’re more likely to claim divine intervention than the other person. “If we like the outcome, it’s much easier to see the event as a miracle….We are therefore highly biased in favor of seeing miracles.”

He’s got a point.

On any day of the week, there will be many people who would normally be at the Empire State Building, but who won’t be. Maybe they had a doctor’s appointment, or got sick, or decided to take an impromptu vacation day, or had a late breakfast meeting somewhere. So if a meteor obliterates the building tomorrow, all of those people could claim that God intervened to spare them. But the week before, a similar number of people had doctor’s appointments, got sick, and took vacation days, but since no meteor hit, nobody talks about divine intervention. 

We American Christians, in our obsession with health, constantly claim miracles happened regarding whatever our health problem is, no matter how big or small it is. Sometimes, should the credit just go to skilled doctors? What about people who die of these same ailments in Third World countries, where they don’t have access to medical care? Does God prefer to do miracles in hospitals?

Mills writes, “Witnessing ‘miracles’ does not evoke belief in God. Rather, belief in God evokes the witnessing of ‘miracles.'” I think this is true when we are quick to see miracles in the truly trivial, banal things of life. 

It sounds like I’m raising questions about my faith. I’m not. I’m really not. I’m just trying to understand how skeptics, looking at us from the outside, view us. And I’m trying to understand what is and isn’t true about the God I serve. Because that’s what it’s all about–knowing God, even if it goes against what our Christian culture teaches us. It’s quite possible that many times, God is saying, “Hey, don’t give me credit for that. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Or, maybe I should leave theological questions like this to the professionals.

I ventured back into running tonite. Did a mile at the Y. In July, I had worked myself up to four miles, but the stubborn stress fracture above my right ankle reminded me that it had not yet gone away, despite periods of respite from pain. So, I gave up my new-found interest in running, determining not to run until the beginning of November. At the least. Longer, if I still felt a hint of anything lingering.

So I did just a mile tonite, and I’m pooped out. But I’m sure I can work back up to a few miles fairly quickly. Hopefully I won’t wake up in the morning with pain in my ankle and the realization I should have abstained longer.

While stretching, doing crunches, running, then lifting some weights, I listened to a sermon by Francis Chan. I love listening to his messages. Chan speaks with humor, authenticity, and insights I’ve not heard before. And “Living Courageously” was the best I’ve heard so far.

Chan told about the 23 Korean church workers kidnapped by the Taliban several years ago. Two of them were executed before the group was released. Chan was able to spend a couple hours with one of those Koreans. The man told how the Taliban took everything they had with them…except for one Bible, which one of the men carried in his back pocket. That Christian man tore the Bible into 23 pieces and distributed a piece to each Korean, so that everyone had part of God’s Word. The Taliban then divided the Koreans into groups of three and took them to different locations, where they remained until their eventual release.

The man told Chan what had happened since the group’s return to Seoul. He said occasionally, a member of that group would come up to him and say, “Don’t you wish we were back in Afghanistan?” Why? Because never before, and never since, had they felt so close to God. In that desperate situation, they were sharing in the sufferings of Jesus, and doing exactly what the Lord required of them.

As I chugged along the track, I had goosebumps.