A disaster. It had to be. Right? Tennessee church planter Blake Pierce admits he was a little nervous after a guest speaker preached an hour-long message to the congregation that was used to about 15–20 minutes shorter.
It was the longest sermon his church, which consists mostly of young families, college students and a sprinkling of older adults, had sat through to that point, he noted.
See related story: Study: Pastors are preaching longer — and churchgoers don’t seem to mind?
The next day Pierce, pastor of Christ Fellowship Murfreesboro, casually asked some members for feedback on the message and it being 56 minutes. The response, to his surprise, “Oh, was it?”
He shared with The Baptist Paper, “What we’ve found is if it is engaging … and they are learning and kind of sense the depth of it, they are very willing to sit and continue listening,” he said. “They want that depth … (and) they’re willing to chew a little more to get to it.”
A study from Lifeway Research seems to back up this assessment. According to the 2025 survey, more pastors are leaning toward longer sermons — and their congregations don’t seem to mind.
Specifically, within the past decade, the percentage of preachers who top an hour behind the pulpit has tripled (2% in 2019, compared to 6% in 2025).
Delivering the goods
Lewis McMullen, who makes a living coaching young church planters like Pierce for the Tennessee Baptist Mission Board, said younger generations are more hungry for theological depth — and pastors better be ready to deliver.
“People are more engaged now,” he added, noting that churches don’t offer the same amount of theological training they may have decades ago. “A lot of people are wanting the longer message (partly because) you’re unpacking some things in the Scripture that maybe they had not heard before.”
Pastor Jarman Leatherwood, also president of the Alabama Baptist State Convention, said this hunger for the Word of God appears to be spreading among young students at youth events.
“Those kids could listen … an hour,” said Leatherwood, pastor of House of Hope and Restoration Church in Huntsville, who typically preaches 30–40 minutes, but often goes longer when he speaks at a summer camp. “As long as they are learning, they can take what they’re learning and apply to their life. Sometimes when I get done they say, ‘I could have listened to you a little while longer. You cut me short.’”
Really this shouldn’t be a surprise, he added.
“People will stand in long lines for a television, long lines to get an iPad. … They will camp out at night, sleep outside the store, get up that morning if they want it — if they feel like it’s something valuable to them.”
David Roach, pastor of Shiloh Baptist Church in Saraland, Alabama, said he typically sticks to around 35 minutes. Personally, he said, he feels like listening to a message less than 30 minutes often leaves him wanting more.
“On the other hand,” he added, “I have preached longer sermons in the past, and that feels too long in retrospect. If I am appropriately concise, I feel like I can cover the Bible passage adequately in approximately half an hour.”
Roach wonders if podcasts might be fueling the desire to listen to longer messages. Sometimes church members send him “extremely long videos or podcasts” and ask him to share his thoughts on them. He suggested “the age of 30-minute TV programs” may have given way to the popularity of podcasts and streaming services that aren’t limited to designated time slots like programming from TV networks.
More to offer
“If churchgoers are listening to social media commentators talk for more than an hour,” Roach said, “perhaps that contributes to openness to longer sermons.”
Another one of McMullen’s Tennessee church planters, Trent Roseman, believes even the short 10-second videos he often flips through on his Instagram and TikTok apps might also be contributing to a desire for more depth and theologically meatier content.
Roseman, a church planter with Redeemer City Church in Knoxville, said he typically preaches 34–42 minutes, but he doesn’t shy away from going longer if he sees his congregation leaning in. He added he also has picked up the pace if he sees people fading.
He said some pastors probably shouldn’t preach more than 25 minutes, and some can easily preach as long as an hour. Ultimately, he’s learned that “not everyone should preach the same amount of time.”
“I think (people are) hungry for something that is not cheap, quick truth. … (They) are hungry for something that’s transcendent, that knows no bounds of time … rather than just [being] trendy — I think the church provides that.”
Pastor Pierce summed it up with a lesson he learned early on in seminary, “Stand up, speak up and shut up.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Shawn Hendricks, director of content for TAB Media Group.
