Amount of time spent reading Scripture in a church service

I’ve been collecting data at our church in Muizenberg on the amount of time spent reading Scripture. The hope has been to better understand how comprehensible Scripture readings are as well as variables that affect comprehension such as version used, reading rate, reinforcement by overhead projection, and the listener following along in their own Bible.

Another aspect of this that is interesting is how much Bible reading is done by the average person every week. The most recent Barna report for the US shows relatively low rates of weekly Scripture reading. It’s possible that pastors and other church leaders assume that people read the Bible more often than they actually do. If so, then it might be good to adjust the amount of Scripture read and also the amount of references to Scripture that the speaker assumes will be understood by those listening.

Methodology

I’ve been using a pretty low-tech system. When the service officially starts, I take a picture of the person speaking. Each time there is an “official” Scripture reading, I film it, trying to capture the projection on the screen as well. Then at the end of the service I take a picture when the person up front dismisses everyone. (I’m using a camera that takes pictures and video) It’s not a perfect system but it does allow me to go back and see what was happening at any point in a Scripture reading. Ideally the entire service would be recorded. I might try to do that at least once.

Scripture is used extensively through the services, sometimes in a formal reading. Other times a pastor or speaker might simply reference a verse and then cite it in the middle of a longer speech.

To give you an idea of how this method plays out in real life, here’s an example from yesterday (5 September, 2011)

The service was one hour and twenty minutes long. During that time there were three Scripture readings:

1. A collection of verses about repentance (46 seconds)

2. Psalm 95 read congregationally (80 seconds)

3. Gospel reading from John 20 (96 seconds)

The second and third readings were from the NIV version and the overhead projection matched that although it didn’t always display what was being read in the third reading.

Because the reading was videoed I can check the audio against what is displayed on the screen and also calculate words per minute and errors.

Conclusions

In this 80-minute church service there were approximately 3.7 minutes of Scripture reading (4.6%). That’s an interesting number to consider. I’ve only recorded data for three services so far and the amount of Scripture has been relatively constant although the total length of the service has ranged from less than an hour to more than two hours.

I’m planning to add a component of interviews as well as asking congregates to read Scripture in order to determine their rate of reading and errors.

How much time in your church service is comprised of Scripture reading?