My mom was recently diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes, and in her education about the disease has learned that 6 smaller meals throughout the day are better than 3 bigger meals, because the blood-sugar levels are maintained at a more even level that way rather than the big roller-coaster effect of having alternating periods of famine and fasting.
As I was reading Neil R. Lightfoot's book "Everyone's Guide to Hebrews", a passage sent me on a mental tangent, and I realized that perhaps this form of diet, applied to God's word, would be better for our spiritual bodies also.
Instead of going to church three times a week and hearing a 20-30 minute sermon, how about going to church fifteen times a week and hearing a 5-minute sermonette?
Note that I'm not saying this is practical; some of us live across town from church. But look at the idea.
Many twenty-minute sermons are composed of five minutes' worth of good stuff, and fifteen minutes' worth of filler, which seem designed more to put the listeners to sleep or to daydreaming than to exhorting, encouraging, or teaching them.
Also, let me make clear, sometimes the material needs twenty minutes, two hours, or two weeks.
But the general church sermon has been standardized to be twenty to thirty minutes long, and the average preacher tends to focus on filling up that time-slot rather than tailoring the time-slot to the material.
Perhaps it's time to re-think the sermon; rather than having three big sermons per week, punctuated by long periods of fasting from God's word, maybe we should look for ways to ingest smaller doses of God's word more regularly. I don't know how the mechanics of that might be worked out; it's just a brainstorm.
What are your ideas? Do you know how to work out the mechanics of such a plan?
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