One of the questions that I want to know the answer to is how often they preach, and for how long. For example how long would Rob Bell put down for sermon prep? I wonder how long he spends making each of his videos?
4 hours for the others is also interesting. When I was on a placement I was told by the vicar that their training incumbent taught them to spend an hour of writing for every minute of the sermon - so an 8 minute sermon would take 8 hours. Somewhere on the web I found a vicar who blogged that he felt that he should spend at least one session, about 4 hours, on sermon prep. I don't preach every week - so my average would be lower still.
It also struck me that in a bigger church there would be more people to do the other things - so if there weren't other things that I had to do would I spend 22 hours writing a sermon? Well, perhaps it depends on what "writing" entails. Reading more widely, watching more films for illustrations, talking to people more about it - perhaps I would do these things, but then I do them now and don't call them sermon preparation!
Oh - and if the effective leaders are so good at making time how come they sleep 14 hours a week less?
