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soundbiteT. David Gordon on the vicious cycle of a soundbite culture that shapes bad preaching, which contributes to the growing superficiality in our churches:

We are swamped by the inconsequential, bombarded by images and sounds that rob us of the opportunity for reflection and contemplation that are necessary to reacquaint ourselves with what is significant: “According to a widely cited 1989 study by Kiku Adatto, the average weekday network news sound bite from a presidential candidate shrank from 42.3 seconds in 1968 to 9.8 seconds in 1988 (with only 1 percent of the bites lasting as long as 40 seconds that year). By 2000, the average was 7.8 seconds.”

What kinds of ministers does such a culture produce? Ministers who are not at home with what is significant; ministers whose short attention span is less than that of a four-year-old in the 1940s, who race around like the rest of us, constantly distracted by sounds and images of inconsequential trivialities, and out of touch with what is weighty. It is not surprising that their sermons, and the alleged worship that surrounds them, are often trifling, thoughtless, uninspiring, and mundane. It is not surprising that their sermons are mindlessly practical, in the “how-to” sense. It is also not surprising that their sermons tend to be moralistic, sentimentalistic, or slavishly drafted into the so-called culture wars. The great seriousness of the reality of being human, the dreadful seriousness of the coming judgment of God, the sheer insignificance of the present in light of eternity — realities that once were the subtext of virtually every sermon — have now disappeared, and have been replaced by one triviality after another.

Why Johnny Can’t Preach (P&R 2009), 58-59.

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