The content problem: too long and not nearly long enough (and a guide to find a fix)
The primary content/experience churches offer comes in the form of a 45-70 minute worship service. It’s got a little singing, a little praying, a smattering of awkward silence, and a sizable helping of lecture. Churches all over the world judge their effectiveness, in part, by how many people they can get to come once a week and sit through that 45-70 minute piece of content. And, for most congregations, there are far fewer people sitting through that content today than there were ten years ago. That kind of trend in the business world is a clear message from customers: we don’t like the content you are creating.
Church content is WAY too long
Look at the most popular content delivery platforms and you’ll find a clear trend: short. Like, really short. I mean under five minutes short. People in the modern world prefer to consume content that is far shorter than what we expect people to sit through at church. They want a TikTok video, an Instagram story or a Reel. And people who have learned how to deliver compelling content at those lengths are finding audiences in the millions sometimes reaching BILLIONS of views.
Meanwhile, back at church, leaders are frustrated when congregants reach for their phones in the middle of a hymn or sermon. And, when churches decide to release digital content that people can consume in between worship services, the most common choice is a sermon podcast. Some fraction of the people who come on Sunday morning end up listening to the podcast along with the Pastor’s mom and a couple members from the pastor’s previous church. The content doesn’t take off, doesn’t find its own audience because, in part, it’s too long.
Church content is not long enough
Except that most churches don’t create content that is long enough. At the same time TikTok is dominating the world allowing people to consume fifty pieces of content during the time of your average church service, Netflix changed everything by releasing entire series at the same time fueling a new binge trend. Many people will refuse to watch shows that are released one episode a week until an entire season is over because they want to watch all twenty hours in a single weekend.
Again, the worship service falls short. Not only does the one-hour timeframe not allow for bingeing, it is also not bingeworthy. The content is built to try and maintain attention for a single 40-70 minute segment rather than keeping people engaged for two or twenty hours. There is a real need for long, thoughtful content that leads people though books, ancient meditation practices, etc. But the church can’t see beyond trying their best to keep people from diving into their phones before the end of the sermon.
This is a fixable problem
Churches spend an inordinate amount of money, time, and people resources on creating a piece of content that doesn’t match the content preferences of the modern world. Insead of designing for an outdated format, maybe it’s time to flip the priority. Most churches would die in a couple of weeks if they went cold turkey and stopped doing worship, but there could be a middle ground. Here are some questions to get you started:
How could we change our music offerings to be interesting to people who don’t attend church?
How could we record our Sunday music pieces in such a way that people who don’t know the people in the video or the song itself would want to watch it?
Could our pastor write a ten hour long sermon that is delivered in 20 parts and then becomes a single course/season of podcast episodes that work together?
Could our pastor write a sermon with intentional 2-minute chunks that could be pulled out and made into short content that is interesting/provocative?
Could we spend the majority of our energy pre-taping even more compelling content that is repurposed on Sunday morning for Worship?
