Short Sermons, Less Songs, and Other COVID Realities Explained

It’s really hard to predict how things will change in our worship services when COVID is “over,” but I can make a few predictions right now: sermons will get longer, we’ll sing more songs, and we’ll keep working to increase our effectiveness online.

We’ve received several requests on our Comm Cards to do more singing in worship. The primary answer for limiting songs is to limit the chances of virus transmission.

One of our college freshman gave me “a hard time” for the shortness of my sermon on Sunday. (I thought I also heard the sounds of hell freezing over at that moment.)

It was just some good natured ribbing from someone I’ve ribbed dozens of times throughout his life.

His sister said he’s complaining because it didn’t give him enough time to take a nap. Again, just some good natured ribbing since we all know that no one has ever fallen asleep while I’m preaching.

I explained that shorter services and sermons has to do with limiting the chances of virus transmission.

Another factor in my shorter sermon is that when I wrote that sermon, we were planning on launching a third Sunday morning service on that weekend, necessitating services not exceed 45 minutes. The surge in COVID cases, the concern about the overflow situation in hospitals, and people preparing to be with family over the holidays seem to have made a third service unnecessary for now.

But there’s another important reason for less singing and shorter sermons: most of our congregation is participating from home and long services and sermons don’t translate well to online ministry.

The sheer number worshipers online is also why I always include a portion of my sermon on video. It’s better for most people worshiping online because it’s more immediate and feels more personal.

I wish we had the bandwidth to do in-person, life streaming and on-demand of the whole service, and a version of our @Home services (like the ones we did during lockdown). I think the @Home services were better calibrated for an online experience. But we don’t have that bandwidth without dropping other things that we feel are too important to drop.

All that said, there are several innovations under COVID that I look forward to keep developing.

I was in tears at the 9am service when one of our students led Prayers of the People this weekend (and did such a great job to boot). I love how we’ve included more people in our services with the use of video.

So, you can be sure a lot of what you and I value about the way things were will return in the future, but we’ll also be bringing several innovations with us as well.

Photo by David Švihovec on Unsplash.