Roughly 30% of Evangelical Protestants want more in depth teaching and less than 10% want shorter sermons, according to a survey released.

Grey Matter Research and Infinity Concepts released a report last Friday titled “The Congregational Scorecard: What Evangelicals Want in a Church.”

Grey Matter Research President Ron Sellers said: “One of the more surprising findings was that so few Evangelicals want shorter sermons, since such a common and unfortunate stereotype is long-winded pastors.”

“Not only that, but we keep being informed that younger adults have short attention spans, and pastors really need to cut down their sermons to reach this population.

“I expected to find a higher proportion of evangelicals (especially younger people) who wished for shorter sermons, like maybe 20% or 30%. Instead, it is just 7%.”

The researchers surveyed 1,000 American Evangelical Protestants, asking for their views on 14 different elements about the churches they attend for worship.

Evangelical respondents between the ages of 40 and 54 were the least likely to want shorter sermons, with 3% agreeing with this idea.

Respondents between the ages of 55 and 69 were the most likely (88%) to believe sermon lengths were fine as they are.

Mark Dreistadt, CEO of Infinity Concepts, said: “The most surprising insight was that 30% of evangelicals want more in-depth teaching than their church is currently providing.” 

“This demonstrates an opportunity for pastors to go deeper into the Word of God. This is good news at a time in our culture when biblical literacy is so low — there appears to be a desire among Evangelicals to deepen their understanding of biblical truth.”