Observations on preaching to an empty room
While many pastors are becoming adept at preaching to an empty church auditorium during this COVID-19 pandemic, I had my first experience recently. Let me share a few observations that may encourage you. (Or maybe YOU will want to encourage me!)
Are you relying on an audience?
On Saturday and then again Sunday morning, I found myself more anxious about how it would go. I realized that I really relied on the congregational response to measure how I was connecting through the message. Was I not aware of how much my experience in preaching was being influenced even shaped by the congregation’s response? Hmm.
Shorter is better is now a guiding principle.
Through the years of preaching I have found that sermon length has changed dramatically. In my early years as a church planter and pastor, twenty minutes was the norm for any sermon. You would hear people say: “If you need more than twenty minutes to cover your message, you have too much content,” or “Nothing important takes more than twenty minutes to say!” Then there was a shift where churches wanted more content, more of a teaching approach. Imagine my shock in interviewing with a church to serve as Transitional Pastor when they named that one of their expectations was sermons that were at least 45 minutes long, and they wanted to know in advance what the text would be so they could study their commentaries at home and come with notebooks at the ready!
With worship and Bible studies now limited to online presentation, another shift has come in sermon length — 20 minutes max! When viewing the service at home in the comfort of your favorite couch or recliner, our attention span is much shorter, and many viewers drop out if the message is more than 20 minutes. Before anyone gets defensive about my last statement, remember that while context does not change the content of the message, it does influence its shape and form. It was on Mars Hill that Paul spoke of the “Unknown God” and in Jerusalem that he connected the coming of Jesus with OT prophecy.
Eye contact is important.
Limiting our reliance on a sermon manuscript so that we can keep more consistent eye contact is even more important when you are live-streaming than when you are preaching in person. Our empathy, passion, conviction and intensity are certainly conveyed through our voices but our facial expressions – and especially our eyes – are keys to communicating effectively online and keeping connection with the viewers.
Limit extensive body language.
My normal style of preaching includes walking around and using lots of hand gestures. Staying on camera limits how much you can walk around, and the waving of hands is distracting. Preaching becomes more like having a warm and relational conversation with friends in their living room or kitchen. I found that mindset helped me tremendously not only to be more comfortable in preaching to an empty room, but also in connecting with those who were viewing.
Be sure to share the Gospel and give people an opportunity to respond.
If your tradition has been to give an altar call at the end of the message, you may be tempted to “skip” that part of the message. I learned in watching several of our BCNE pastors that you can still have a meaningful approach to calling for commitment when preaching in an empty auditorium. Chris Goeppner in a recent BCNE Webinar modeled how to share the Gospel at the end of a message in less than three minutes, and Chris along with Gary Moritz at City United Church have shared how they invite people to respond immediately through chat, text or email. So, I tried that approach.
The church was limited in its tech abilities, so I just verbally shared my email address and encouraged people to share with me what God was leading them to do as a result of the message. When I returned home and checked my email, two people had responded! One message was deeply touching as they had felt led to reach out to another person to share and did it immediately after the message! I was reminded that though our world may feel disrupted, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and His call to people to follow Him has not been disrupted.
Technology messes up sometimes.
I learned after the service that we had major glitches with sound and video. Even though everything had been checked out many times in advance and trials runs had come back perfect, everything went haywire on Sunday morning. My lip movement was out of sync with the sound; the pace of my voice sped up and slowed down at random times; and camera angle did not mirror the stage but flipped it! As pastors we can let those things steal our joy, cause anger and frustration to well up and even cause us to speak unkindly to those around us, as if the problems are their fault! Yet at the end of the day, God was worshiped, the Gospel was shared, people were encouraged and challenged, and commitments to Christ were made!
Could God use this “disruption” to help us transition into more effective ways of communicating the Gospel?
If it were up to me, I would not stop providing online access to worship and Bible Study. In fact, even though we can use our buildings again, I would work to improve and expand the church’s digital presence. Many churches have reported that the number of viewers on Sunday is significantly larger than the normal attendance in the church building. It seems that soon we will be able to reopen our church buildings and have the joy of seeing our congregation gathered for worship.
How will your ministry of preaching look different than it did before the pandemic?
How will your congregation’s expectations be changed by their experience of several months of joining in worship remotely?
What have you learned from preaching to an empty room that might be helpful when preaching to a full room?
Have you considered that perhaps amid this pandemic God is giving us an opportunity to align for the future He has already prepared for us and our churches?
Stanley Smith serves as the interim church growth team leader for the Baptist Convention of New England.