Our sermon consumers are used to VCRs and Super Nintendo Ÿ strong visual images Ÿ they watch and then rewind. For our preaching, that certainly means it is a different generation of people out there listening. It has definite implications for what we say and how we say it.11

-- Jerry L. Schmalenberger

I talk with many laypeople about sermons, and the comment I hear most often is: "Sermons are bo-o-o-oring!" This comment is of course not new in church history. Perhaps Eutychus thought the same thing about Paul's sermon, before he dozed off and fell out of the window. (Acts 20) Sermons in colonial America which droned on for two to three hours must have caused plenty of people to yawn and wonder when they could go home.

Today, however, television has lowered our boredom threshold way down…