The Shrinking Attention Span...and Why it Matters

By Mike Glenn

The other day, as I was scrolling through YouTube, I noticed a pastor's podcast talking about how Charles Spurgeon, great British pastor, managed his time.  In his short life, Spurgeon died when he was 57, he accomplished a great deal. He authored books, wrote sermons, started a school and grew a mega church. He did this, of course, long before the invention of the computer and the internet. Spurgeon never had to deal with email or social media. He also never had to deal with a congregation whose attention spans had atrophied because of Tik-Tok, Facebook, and all the rest. I'm sure, given Spurgeon's genius, he would have mastered these platforms as well. We mere mortals, on the other hand, are having a more difficult time. 

Photo by Nubelson Fernandes on Unsplash

Let's talk about how things have changed since Spurgeon's time and ours. Recently, college professors have been saying their students can no longer read long texts. Books of several hundred pages that used to be the standard assignments for semester courses are now being exchanged for 2-3 page summaries. One English professor complained his students couldn't stay engaged with a fourteen-line sonnet! Our world now lives by texts and short videos.  The surrounding world has noticed and adjusted. Novels are shorter. Movies are shorter. News programs and weather reports are edited to be consumed on an elevator riding a few floors up. 

And whether we like it or not, these changes in the way our society communicates changes the way we preach. Let me be more specific -- the changes in the way our society communicates changes the way our congregations listen and hear our sermons -- or if they hear them at all.  For instance, Spurgeon routinely preached for about 45 minutes. Now, a lot of Spurgeon's contemporary disciples insist on preaching for forty-five minutes. Giving the changes in our culture's attention span, there is serious debate on whether or not our congregations can listen to a forty-five-minute sermon. 

Let me put it this way. To preach a forty-five-minute sermon, a preacher has to be extraordinarily good. Most of us are average. And for that matter, it doesn't matter how long we preach. What matters is how long our people can listen. How long can they listen? Not long. 

Google tells us people will decide in 8 seconds if they'll swipe off a web page. In other words, if there isn't something interesting to me, I'll close the page ...in 8 seconds! Other studies have revealed that, when we're speaking or preaching, we have about 90 seconds to communicate a point of concern or people will stop listening. That means, if we as preachers haven't established a reason for our congregations to listen to the sermon within the first 90 seconds of our starting to talk, our congregations will find something else to think about.

We can preach for as long as we want. Our congregations won't be listening. Don't believe me? Think about the last time you sat down to watch something or listen to a speaker. You sit down and wait for things to get going. You pull out your phone to check your messages or maybe scroll through the news. The event starts and you put your phone up. The speaker begins by welcoming some special guests and sharing some inside jokes with the guests. This takes a few minutes, but it gives us long enough to do two things: first, decide that the current conversation has nothing to do with us and two, it gives us time to pull out our phones. 

And we never hear the sermon. Sure, you'll pick up key phrases...maybe. You may even listen to a few illustrations, but what we want to do is fully engage on the journey of the sermon. 

Our congregations do the same thing. If the sermon doesn't address a topic of interest to them, they'll disengage. They may not get out their phones, but they'll move on just the same. This isn't something to argue about. It's the reality of our culture. Every business, politician and social influencer is grabbing for a piece of our congregation's attention. We have to know this about our culture and adapt our methods accordingly. Notice I said we adapt the "method."  The "message" stays the same. Methods are always being updated and changed. 

Knowing this, how do we deal with it? As preachers, we have to understand the attention fatigue our congregations are dealing with. Every day, they are bombarded by thousands of ads and messages. The gospel is just one more thing clamoring for their attention. When people do give us their attention, we cannot waste this moment.  We have to keep our sermons to about 20-25 minutes. Why? Because this all our people can absorb at one sitting. Studies have shown that after 18-20 minutes, people stop taking in new information and begin to think about what they've heard. They're not listening to the sermon past this point. They're thinking about what the preacher said in the first 20 minutes. (Ever wonder why TED Talks are 18 minutes long?)

If preachers have more stuff they really want to get out, they should use social media to reinforce and enhance their sermons during the following week. This way, the sermon will still be 45 minutes long, but it'll be served up in bite size pieces. The week would look something like this: Sunday, the sermon would be preached (I would suggest having a manuscript and/or YouTube content available for every sermon). Then, Monday through Thursday, produce podcasts, blogs, and other social media events that take the sermon further and deeper. This would maximize the impact of our sermon work in a way more of our people could hear it and digest it. It's the same as some diet principles -- a lot of smaller meals rather than one large one. Some of our congregations would be better nourished this way. 

I'm not arguing about the perfect length of the sermon. I'm talking about how our congregations pay attention to everything in their lives. We don't have to like it, but we do have to acknowledge it. People have shorter attention spans. Everyone else in the world is adapting to this new reality.  Preachers should as well.