At different times in my ministry I've had to work within the limitations other people set. For some years in Paisley in the 1980's I maintained a telephone ministry which had a 2 minute sermon, every day. Actually it was 1 minute 47 seconds of speaking time. That became a daily discipline, sitting at the phone with a script recording no more than 100 seconds of voice time. But many people phoned every day to hear some words that might encourage, comfort, re-energise, help them reconfigure their day, maybe even reflect on the life they want, the person they are. And did so listening to words about God's love in Jesus. Sometimes there was feedback, often not. But like the sower who went out to sow, each day 100 seconds of scattered hope-filled words.
For years now I've written in the Aberdeen Press and Journal, the item they still quaintly and defiantly called the Saturday Sermon, now recently just 'Sermon'. It started as 500 words, then 400 words, and now 275 words. Like some chocolate manufacturers who charge the same price but slowly, unannounced, reduce the weight and size of the product; and sometimes fill the pack with air to make it feel fuller than it is. It occurs to me that some sermons are also made to sound fuller than they are by the same subterfuge...
Combining these two, 100 seconds and 275 words I've decided till Pentecost to limit posts here to saying something in 100 words. It can be less but not more. This is an entirely arbitrary form of personal training in the necessary skill of multum in parvo. After all The Lord's Prayer is only 55 words in its Anglican form minus the doxology. It will mean that for a few weeks a 100 word post will have to be exactly one third the length of this one!
Comments