A recent survey shocked researchers when it concluded that less than 10 per cent of church-goers want shorter sermons. 

According to The Christian Post, Grey Matter Research and Infinity Concepts released a new report last Friday titled The Congregational Scorecard: What Evangelicals Want in a Church.

What they found surprised the readers and researchers. According to the survey only seven per cent of Evangelical Protestants are looking for shorter sermons in church. 

"One of the more surprising findings was that so few Evangelicals want shorter sermons, since such a common and unfortunate stereotype is long-winded pastors,” Grey Matter Research President Ron Sellers says in an interview with CP.


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The survey included 1,000 Evangelical Protestants in the U.S. 

"Not only that, but we keep being informed that younger adults have short attention spans, and pastors really need to cut down their sermons to reach this population," says Sellers. "I expected to find a higher proportion of evangelicals (especially younger people) who wished for shorter sermons, like maybe 20 or 30 per cent."

Another interesting fact from those surveyed showed that 30 per cent of church goers want more in-depth teaching from their churches. The rest were simply happy with the current teaching.

"This demonstrates an opportunity for pastors to go deeper into the Word of God," says Mark Dreistadt, CEO of Infinity Concepts. "This is good news at a time in our culture when biblical literacy is so low — there appears to be a desire among Evangelicals to deepen their understanding of biblical truth."

Other questions asked of the participants were about their thoughts on their churches’ focus on evangelism, social issues, outreach, overall service length, congregation size, racial diversity, how often donations are requested and the number of women in leadership.

Just under 75 per cent on average said they were content with their churches stance on each question.

"So we want to encourage pastors and church leaders to learn from the data and increase their awareness of potential changes," says Dreistadt. "However, we also want to encourage them to always pursue the calling God has placed on their hearts for the congregation."