So that translates into preaching. The shorter the sermon you're going to bring — and I bring 30 minute sermons — the shorter the sermon, the better prepared you've got to be. In today's world with everybody seeking instant gratification, everything's instant, everything — you've got to be able to say it quickly, say it well, prick their minds, drive them to further research and tell them where to get it, simply. Really, the preachers of the next generation have got to be smarter than the preachers of our generation. They've got to say it better, quicker, with greater support. People no longer can say as we once did, 'this is the way it is.' Because they want to know why is that the way it is. You've got to build that in and then give them the resources to get the rest. Kids are wide open today but you can't fool them as once churches could.
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Preaching: As you look back over your ministry . . .
Falwell: I have been preaching 50 years; I'm in my 47th year at Thomas Road Baptist Church.
Preaching: Are there some things that you wish you would have known 40 or 50 years ago that you have learned since then about preaching?
Falwell: The answer is always yes to that. I was listening to Dr. Billy Graham the other day and a Youth for Christ sermon that he brought back in the 40's and rapid fire, I had to listen real attentively to hear what he was saying. And that was back when there was Billy Sunday, before he had broken chairs over the pulpit. They didn't have good sound systems. The preacher who really was considered a great preacher back in the 40's and 50's was a guy that could speak 180 words a minute without breathing and then swallow the mike and do it again.
In the early days coming out of Bible college it was very easy to preach 45 minute to an hour sermon and sort of get off down rabbit trails and then come back and so forth and literally lose and bore your audience and get by with it. You learn bad habits and so I would have liked to have known 50 years ago what I know now. I think that with everything we are doing it would be 10 times better. But I was not allowed that privilege. We have to live it out and learn it.
Preaching: If you could offer a word of counsel to other pastors, what would it be?
Falwell: I think that the average American evangelical church is spending too little time teaching and preaching the Bible to its people. There are 168 hours in a week. The average evangelical church has its average member less than an hour. And then all the voices of the culture are crying out the other 167 hours. Instead of revving up to meet the challenge, churches are canceling Sunday night, Wednesday night, and doing far too few in-depth study programs with their people.
Once a month we do an all day Saturday Bible study special event. For example this year, early this year we brought Tim LaHaye, our own Ed Hindson, Gary Frazier who works with Tim. Brought them in for a 9:00 am to 3:00-pm, 6 hour series on prophecy. Then they stayed on to Sunday and did three hours in the morning and two at night. We had eleven hours of teaching and the same 4,000 people in overflow sat through the whole eleven hours and took notes and were tested on them. A month later we brought in Ken Ham, from Answers in Genesis, and did exactly the same thing in two days — people standing around the walls and teaching them. And then we do one on the doctrines of the Bible. We see to it that through our Sunday school and church that our teachers and especially our new converts get to these. So that in one year at Thomas Road — besides Sunday morning, Sunday night and Wednesday night — we have what we call the Equipping Institute with 24 different classes. Everybody is in a different class learning different things, men and women. In one year you've been through the average Bible College.
The result is that our young people, our young couples, our older Christians can take a Bible quiz any time you want to give them one and pretty well do as well as the preachers. And the rush of the day is not a problem. People are hungry for it. It's just that the preachers are not willing to work that hard. They have to be there. They can't just have these things and go off somewhere flitting around. They have to be there moderating, adding to it, handling the transitions, and providing the shepherd care to make sure it all happens right. But the end result is that you build a church.
These felt-needs churches, seeker-sensitive — I'm not trying to be critical, but I meet a lot of those people that don't have the foggiest idea about Bible doctrine. That's why they are blown around by every wind of doctrine. They are entertained by skits that make some reference to the Bible. Great crowds come but their lives are not radically changed. And they are not tied into the Bible. If we have to be forever worried about offending people because of the Bible we're missing something.
My experience is people want to know the Bible, and the more you demand the more you get. So to me teaching and preaching is the bottom line. Everything else supports that. Teaching and preaching is the bottom line and if they don't have that in their heads then it won't be in their heart.