We are regularly told that contemporary listeners have drastically diminished concentration spans due to the changes in contemporary culture (sound bite journalism, bite-size online reading habits, commercial break saturated television, etc.)  What these “concentration span experts” fail to mention is that movies seem to be getting longer, not shorter (whatever happened to the good old 87 minute tales of the 1980’s?)  They don’t recognize that people engrossed in a good book will still read for uninterrupted hours on end.  They omit to note that a good conversation still eats up many telephone minutes.

Undoubtedly our culture has shifted on numerous levels.  Perhaps people are less willing to tolerate boredom.  But concentration spans are not the issue.  A good movie, a good book, a good conversation all hold attention as they always did.  The issue is whether or not people are interested in what is before them.  With interest people will watch a movie without flinching, focus for hours on a football game (whichever football you think I mean by that!), with interest they will surf the web losing track of time, read a book for hours on end, converse without looking at their watch.  With interest people will even listen to a sermon.

So should we indiscriminately shrink every sermon?  No.  But we should be interesting.  We should craft messages that not only pique imagination, but create a thirst for God’s Word relevantly preached.  We should endeavor to improve every aspect of delivery so that we don’t get in the way of effective communication.  The CSEs (concentration span experts) point to the listeners and claim they can’t take preaching anymore.  I point the finger at us and say let’s prove the CSEs wrong!