Capture attention by adding sermon features

In an upcoming book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, writer Michael Carr suggests the Internet is shrinking our attention spans. It’s not a new argument. And it’s not universally agreed upon either. But even President Obama recently got into the debate saying information can become a distraction because of our fascination with “iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations.”

But regardless of why, most people would agree that attention spans are shrinking. That means the people you and I preach to each week are less likely to sit and focus as long as congregations could a generation ago. We can complain about it and we can let it frustrate us. But we can’t change it.

Yet, that doesn’t mean we have to preach shorter and shorter sermons. That sounds counterintuitive, right? Shorter attention spans should mean shorter sermons. But for years I’ve been preaching an average of 45 minutes per sermon. I’d preach longer if it wouldn’t cause parking chaos at Saddleback!

That’s why I use what I call sermon features, which are special segments you add into your sermon to capture the attention of your listeners. I’ve found you can hold people’s attention much longer when you interweave a variety of features into your sermon.

Here are a few of the sermon features we often use at Saddleback...

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