The CBC Pulpit Audit — 130 Sermons. 116 Hours. Every Word Counted.

§1 How Long Are These Sermons?

Calibrated at 140.2 wpm against two known runtimes. The 45-minute mark is our benchmark for when a sermon starts to feel uncomfortably long.

Average

53.4 min

8.4 min past the benchmark

Over 45 min

99%

129 of 130

Over 50 min

85%

111 of 130

Overtime in 3 Yrs

18.5 hrs

cumulative past 45 min

30–45 min

0.8%

45–50 min

11.5%

50–55 min

50.0%

55–60 min

35.4%

60+ min

2.3%

These sermons are long, and they're consistently long. Half of them land between 50 and 55 minutes — there's almost no variation. The congregation doesn't occasionally get a 35-minute breather or a tight 40-minute teaching. Virtually every Sunday is a 50+ minute commitment in the pew before the closing prayer.

§2 Topical Drift — How Far Does He Wander?

Before we measure drift numerically, the transcripts reveal it verbally. Pastor Harrell has a signature phrase that functions as an involuntary tangent signal — a verbal tic that tells you he's about to leave the text:

"By the way" — The Tangent Tell

"By the way"

506×

3.9 per sermon

"I might add"

239×

1.8 per sermon

"In other words"

572×

4.4 per sermon

"Bear in mind"

173×

1.3 per sermon

"By the way" appears 506 times across 130 sermons — nearly 4 times per sermon. It's the rhetorical equivalent of a turn signal before an exit ramp. When you hear "by the way," the sermon is leaving the stated Bible passage and heading somewhere else — usually politics, culture, or a personal opinion. Combined with "I might add" (239×) — another parenthetical interjection that signals unplanned content — the preacher flags his own tangents roughly 6 times per sermon.

The "in other words" count (572×, 4.4 per sermon) reveals a different pattern: constant restatement. He says the point, then re-says it. This is likely a significant contributor to the long runtimes — if every major point gets restated once, you've effectively doubled the sermon's word count for the same content.

The Drift Score

For each sermon we measured on-text markers (references to the stated scripture, "verse," "this passage," "in context") against off-text markers (political terms, cultural commentary phrases). The ratio gives a "drift score" — higher = more off-topic.

Avg. Drift

20.2%

of on/off markers are off-text

Highly Focused (0–10%)

19% of sermons

High Drift (30%+)

20% of sermons

More Off Than On (50%+)

Charlie Kirk, Israel Prophecy 1

Drift Distribution

0–10% (highly focused)

19%

10–20%

38%

20–30%

23%

30–50%

18%

50%+ (more off than on)

Only 19% of sermons are what you'd call tightly focused on the stated text. The majority — 57% — have between 10–30% drift. And a full 20% have 30%+ drift, meaning for every two sentences about the Bible passage, at least one sentence is about politics, culture, or current events. When the stated text is Zechariah 5 ("The Flying Scroll"), the congregation doesn't just hear about ancient visions of judgment — they hear about the Trump Administration, the Democratic party, and transgender ideology woven into the exposition.

§3 Where Does the Time Go?

Biblical Exposition

52%

~572 min

Theological Teaching

12.7%

~139 min

Rant / Denunciation

12.5%

~138 min

Political / Cultural

10.4%

~115 min

Application

9.2%

~101 min

Personal Stories

3.1%

~35 min

The 23% Problem

Rant + Political = ~253 minutes across 3 years — more than theology teaching, more than application, more than personal illustration. On an average Sunday, roughly 12 minutes are denunciation or political commentary. For every 1 minute of application, 2.5 minutes about what's wrong with the world.

This is the shape of the sermon experience. Roughly half is genuine Bible teaching. About a quarter is doctrine and life application. And the remaining quarter? It's the culture war. On a typical Sunday, the congregation spends more time hearing about Democrats and LGBTQ issues than hearing about how to pray, parent, serve, or share the gospel. The practical "so what do I do with this?" portion of the sermon is the smallest category after personal stories.

§4 The Theology — What's Being Taught?

Eschatology / Prophecy

23.9%

~342 min

Christian Life

22.5%

~323 min

God's Attributes

18.2%

~260 min

Salvation

10.9%

~156 min

Sin & Evil

9.4%

~134 min

Christology

9.3%

~134 min

Five Solas

3.2%

~46 min

TULIP

2.6%

~37 min

God's Attributes — What They Hear About God

Grace

~95 min

6.6%

Sovereignty

~61 min

4.3%

Holiness

~33 min

2.3%

Wrath / Judgment

~32 min

2.2%

Faithfulness

~25 min

1.8%

Love of God

~6 min

0.4%

6 Minutes on the Love of God in 3 Years

"Love of God," "God's love," "agape," "steadfast love" — ~6 minutes total. Sovereignty is referenced 10× more. Wrath references outpace love 5 to 1. The portrait of God that emerges from 130 sermons is predominantly sovereign, wrathful, and holy — but rarely tender, rarely loving, rarely compassionate.

What does a congregation internalize about God after 3 years of this preaching? They know He's sovereign. They know He's angry at wickedness. They know He's holy. But the God described in 1 John 4:8 — "God is love" — that God barely appears. The ratio matters: a child who hears "I'm disappointed in you" 10 times for every "I love you" develops a particular understanding of their parent. The same dynamic applies to how a congregation understands the character of God.

§5 Grace vs. Wrath

Grace-Family

1,283

40.8%

Wrath-Family

1,865

59.2%

Ratio: 1 Grace to 1.5 Wrath

In the most extreme case, one sermon contains 1 grace term and 50 wrath terms. The overall corpus skews toward condemnation at nearly 60% of all grace-or-wrath language.

Reformed theology holds that grace is the distinguishing feature of God's redemptive work — that God saves sinners who deserve wrath. The emphasis should logically lean heavily toward the wonder of grace despite deserved wrath. Instead, the emphasis here is inverted: more airtime goes to what's deserved than to what's given. The congregation hears 50% more often about the disease than the cure.

§6 They Said Reformed. We Counted.

Calvary Bible Church positions itself in the Reformed tradition. How much distinctively Reformed theology actually reaches the pews?

The Five Solas — 46 minutes in 3 years

Sola Fide

228

~20 min

Soli Deo Gloria

211

~18 min

Sola Gratia

~5 min

Sola Scriptura

~3 min

Solus Christus

~2 min

Sola Scriptura: 3 Minutes in 3 Years

The foundational Reformation principle — Scripture Alone as the final authority — receives roughly 3 minutes of explicit attention across 6,947 minutes of preaching. "Sola Scriptura," "Scripture Alone," "sufficiency of Scripture" — 32 total hits. Meanwhile, "Trump" alone appears 82 times. The doctrine that defines Protestant identity is barely whispered from this pulpit.

TULIP — 37 minutes in 3 years

Unconditional Election

208

~18 min

Total Depravity

140

~12 min

Perseverance of Saints

~6 min

Irresistible Grace

~0.5 min

Limited Atonement

The Sola Fide Contradiction

Here's the deepest tension in the data. Sola Fide — justification by faith alone — is the most-cited Reformed distinctive (~20 min). It means a person's right standing before God depends entirely on faith in Christ, not on works, behavior, or moral performance. And yet the largest non-expository content category is political and cultural denunciation (~253 min combined) — sermons saturated with demands about how people should vote, what ideologies to reject, which cultural positions are acceptable. The implicit message is: your faith is validated by your political alignment. That's not Sola Fide. That's faith plus culture-war orthodoxy. The 228 mentions of "faith alone" are functionally undermined by 1,338 instances of political/cultural gatekeeping.

The Solas as a whole are barely present. All five Solas combined account for 46 minutes — 0.7% of total preaching time. All five TULIP points together account for 37 minutes. Total distinctively Reformed content: ~83 minutes across 130 sermons. That's 1.2% of all pulpit time. The congregation hears more about the Democratic party (~40 mentions) than about Sola Scriptura (~32 mentions). They hear more about "transgender" issues (65 mentions) than about "faith alone" concepts (228 mentions, but spread across 130 sermons as only ~1.8 per sermon). If your theology is Reformed, the pulpit should be where that theology is taught. Instead, it's where the culture war is fought.

§7 The Political Pulpit

Zero-Political Sermons

out of 130

Avg Hits / Sermon

12.1

0 to 67 range

Naming Trump

24% of all sermons

Expository w/ >3 Pol Hits

38% of verse-by-verse

Most Frequent Political Terms

"media"

260

"political"

117

"government"

"Trump"

"woke"

"LGBTQ"

"transgender"

"liberal"

"homosexual"

"Democrat"

"Trump" (82) outnumbers "love of God" (72). "Woke" (80) outnumbers "justification" (125) on a per-sermon basis. "LGBTQ" (66) and "transgender" (65) together outpace "sanctification" (117). The vocabulary of American partisan politics has become as native to this pulpit as the vocabulary of systematic theology. And unlike the political terms — which appear in nearly every sermon — Reformed theological terms appear sporadically and sparsely.

§8 Quarterly Trends

Is it getting worse? Getting better? Holding steady? Here's what the data shows quarter by quarter:

Quarter	Sermons	Avg Min	Avg Pol Hits	Avg Rant	Avg Drift %	Solas (total)	Avg Grace	Avg Wrath
2023 Q1	4	53.6	8.8	6.0	19.6	23	10.5	7.8
2023 Q2	12	52.8	11.5	4.9	22.5	45	12.7	11.8
2023 Q3	12	52.9	7.1	3.5	15.4	42	10.2	9.2
2023 Q4	10	52.2	10.1	5.4	27.3	21	5.9	13.5
2024 Q1	12	51.4	9.4	10.5	25.5	43	5.3	13.9
2024 Q2	11	52.3	7.4	8.2	16.6	13	3.9	17.0
2024 Q3	10	51.0	5.9	5.8	16.7	16	8.6	10.1
2024 Q4	10	54.7	7.2	5.3	22.5	34	11.1	10.9
2025 Q1	10	54.8	9.4	8.6	22.9	35	11.2	24.9
2025 Q2	11	55.1	6.1	4.3	15.3	46	11.0	9.5
2025 Q3	9	55.8	9.9	10.0	23.0	17	13.2	14.9
2025 Q4	10	54.1	7.9	4.2	17.8	35	10.5	7.0
2026 Q1	9	55.0	7.0	2.3	17.6	37	11.6	4.2

The political content is structural, not event-driven. There's no dramatic spike during election seasons. Every quarter has 6–12 average political hits per sermon. The most telling column is Solas: total Reformed distinctive references fluctuate wildly from a low of 13 (Q2 2024 — deep in the Mark passion narrative) to a high of 46 (Q2 2025). Even at the peak, that's fewer than 5 Sola references per sermon across all five doctrines combined.

Two patterns stand out. First, sermons are getting slightly longer — the average crept from 52 min in 2023 to 55 min in 2025–26. Second, wrath language spiked dramatically in Q1 2025 (the Zechariah judgment chapters plus the LA Fires sermon), hitting 24.9 average wrath terms per sermon — triple the recent Q1 2026 rate of 4.2. The Luke series that began in late 2025 appears to have moderated the tone considerably.

The Solas never sustain. A good quarter for Reformed teaching is immediately followed by a quarter where it nearly vanishes. There's no systematic catechesis — no "this quarter we'll really dig into justification." It's incidental, appearing when the text happens to touch on it, then disappearing for months.

§9 Patterns Worth Noting

Israel > Jesus

Israel in prophecy (~125 min) nearly equals all Christology (~134 min). The congregation hears about Israel's future restoration almost as much as the deity, humanity, death, and resurrection of Christ combined.

Evangelism: Nearly Absent

Great Commission, missions, gospel witness = ~7 minutes in 3 years (0.5%). A church that preaches the Great Commission should probably mention the Great Commission.

Trump > Love of God

"Trump" (82 mentions) outpaces "Love of God" / "God's love" / "agape" / "steadfast love" (72 mentions). A sitting or former president appears in the sermon vocabulary more often than the foundational attribute of God.

The Sola Fide Paradox

The most-cited Reformation doctrine says righteousness comes through faith alone — not works, not political alignment, not cultural orthodoxy. Yet the sermons spend 30× more time on political/cultural denunciation than on explaining what "faith alone" means. The implicit catechism is: you are saved by faith, but your faith is proven by your politics. That's a works-based test wearing a Sola Fide label.

§10 Methodology

Data: 130 transcripts via Supadata YouTube API. All non-Harrell sermons excluded. March 2023 – March 2026.

Timing: Calibrated at 140.2 wpm from two known runtimes.

Drift Score: Ratio of off-text markers (political terms, "our culture," "in America") to on-text markers (scripture book name, "verse," "this passage," "in context") per sermon.

Classification: Keyword-frequency across 6 content categories and 50+ theological subcategories. Each hit ≈ 12 words of context. Frequency-based proxy, not semantic AI.

Limitations: "Election" in "unconditional election" scores for both theology and politics. "Media" may be non-political. "Grace" in "grace period" scores as theological. Across 973,898 words, patterns are directionally robust but individual numbers are estimates, not precise measurements.

Inspired by: SolaScriptura-ish.com — "They said Scripture Alone. We counted."