One of the things we had to consider back in the beginning of our church was how long should each service be? In my opinion a church service is like a skirt... you want it to be long enough to cover the subject but short enough to keep it interesting. So we came in at one hour. Although we have gone over the past couple of weeks by about 10 minutes. I think out website says our services "Usually last about an hour".
Other churches I know of have:
1 hour and 15 minutes
1 hour and 30 minutes
And others just end when they feel like it. My thought is we need to honor our guests time. That is who Church of the Suncoast is designed for, our guests. We who buy into this deal sacrifice some of our wants and desires for our guests. So I think a service needs to have a predicatable end zone of about 5 minutes.
Some people think an hour is too short but if you plan and work on your transitions an hour is a lot more than you think. It also forces me as a communicator to get to the point!
What do you think? How long is your service? Why? Leave a comment, would love to hear what you think.
4 comments:
Not sure if you're looking for comments from non church planters, but I appreciate the one hour limit. I'd really be turned off by normal services being 90 mins and I'd probably end up skipping services more times since 90 min services really turn into about 2.5 hours of a Sunday spent with church...30 mins before (getting the kids ready, etc), 90 mins during, 30 mins after (picking up the kid from children's ministry, visiting with other church folk, etc).
Don't get me wrong, church is important, but I really like the hour format.
That is why we try to keep it to an hour... could not have said it better man!
I also prefer the 1 hour service. Anything longer starts to test my attention span. I think give or take 5 min. is totally fine.
I agree most people will give you five minutes... but much more and they are looking for the doors :-)
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