Shorter Attention Spans, or Competing Appetites
Recently on Pastors.com, Rick Warren offered a strategy for keeping congregations involved in a sermon when they display increasingly shorter attention spans. His advice is practical and probably would work in most churches. Therein lies the problem. He writes: "In an upcoming book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains ,writer Michael Carr suggests the Internet is shrinking our attention spans. It’s not a new argument. And it’s not universally agreed upon either. But even President Obama recently got into the debate saying information can become a distraction because of our fascination with “iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations.” But regardless of why , most people would agree that attention spans are shrinking. That means the people you and I preach to each week are less likely to sit and focus as long as congregations could a generation ago. We can complain about it and we can let it frustrate us. But we can’t change it. Yet, that does...