In Earl West’s book, The Search For the Ancient Order, he relates a conversation between ‘Raccoon’ John Smith, a pioneer Gospel preacher of the restoration period, and another preacher, William Vaughn. The conversation takes place after having heard Alexander Campbell speak on the allegory of Hagar and Sarah. “ ‘Is it not hard, brother Billy, to ride twenty miles, as I have done, just to hear a man preach thirty minutes?’ ‘ You are mistaken brother John; look at your watch. It has surely been longer than that.’ When Smith looked, he found Campbell had preached two hours and thirty minutes. Two hours were gone, and he knew not where.” (Vol. 1, pg. 247)
When I read this passage from brother West’s book, it struck me as something that would not take place today. I find it very interesting to see how the attention spans have shortened concerning Gospel preachers and the length of their sermons. I believe there are possibly two reasons for this. First, the religious world today, members of the church included, are not zealous today in their desire to hear the blessings of God’s word. We have reduced everything to sound bites, that must be delivered quickly so that we might get on with our lives. Our attention spans have been so reduced by television (or so the excuse goes) that we can’t sit through more than thirty minutes at a time, and that must be broken up by interesting commercials. Because of this, many preachers have reached a point that they believe they must insert interesting stories every five minutes in order to keep their audiences attention. In listening to one Gospel preacher during a Gospel meeting, I kept track of how many inspirational stories he told versus how much scripture he used. Unfortunately, he used many more stories than Scripture, and many are being encouraged in this. It is a sad state we have reached that we feel we must entertain more than we exhort, encourage, and rebuke. The amazing thing with this idea of the world today having a shorter attention span is that so many things in the world of entertainment last for hours. Many of today’s movies are clocking in at 2 1/2 to 3 hours. A football game or baseball game can go on for an entire afternoon. Theatrical presentations will generally last for 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Why can we devote so much time to these activities and give them our most rapt attention, but when it comes to God’s glorious word, we are doing good to devote 20 minutes, and that must be broken up with inspirational stories.
Another reason for this lack of attention is because of the preachers themselves. Preachers today, do not make the word of God as much a part of their life as these early preachers did. Also, perhaps we don’t preach with the same zeal and earnestness as the restoration preachers had. We do not appreciate what we have, because we did not have to work as hard or struggle with as much opposition as the Restoration evangelists did. I believe that if our preachers today would devote more of their time to studying God’s word and making it an important part of their lives and treat it as a lifestyle, not an occupation, then we would see a great improvement in our pulpits.
When we read in our Bibles (Neh. 8:1-9) of the Israelites listening to the word of God being read and explained to them from early morning until midday and being attentive to the reading, it should shame us that we cannot spend one or two hours listening to God’s word being read and explained in a wonderfully air conditioned building, with padded pews and completely protected from the environment around us. The Israelites were standing, outdoors, without modern conveniences, giving close attention to what was being read and explained. Let us give care that we are not judged by our desire to hear God’s word.
If you find that you do not enjoy listening to God’s word being delivered, look into your heart and see if the problem lies within you, if it does, then get your heart ready to hear and heed God’s word. If the problem lies with the preacher, then try to aid him in giving him encouragement both in his preaching and in his studying so that he might devote more of his life in making God’s word a force in his life. May we all look and see what needs to be in our lives, and make God’s word of prime importance.
Timothy R. Henderson