The Energizer Preacher: Florida pastor breaks world record for longest speech

Priests and deacons: try to break this record next Sunday and tell me what happens.

From The Christian Post: 

A Florida Pastor recently broke the Guinness world record for the Longest Speech Marathon by preaching a sermon that lasted 53 hours and 18 minutes from Friday to Sunday.

Zach Zehnder, the 31-year-old pastor of theCross Mount Dora in Florida set out to break the previous record of 48 hours and 31 minutes in an effort to raise money for a nonprofit that offers free alcohol and drug-addiction treatment services.

“The Idea was to break the Guinness world record for the longest speech ever and I’m a pastor obviously, and so I chose to speak on the Bible and kind of cover the entirety of the story from Genesis to Revelation,” said Zehnder to The Christian Post.

He combined around 45 sermons and preached them sequentially which allowed him to surpass the record. Zehnder prepared 50, but skipped a few in the middle.

“My goal of the whole sermon was to talk about God’s ridiculous commitment to his people, even though we give up on him that he never gave up on us and kind of trace that theme throughout,” he said. “I tried to keep that theme throughout the 50 sermons.”

In order to qualify to break the record, Zehnder had to preach to 10 people for the entire duration as well as 2 independent witnesses that could sign off on its legitimacy. The witnesses also monitored his break time among other rules. Other spectators rotated.

“The people moved in and out, but we had a lot of people that stayed 20 plus hours, even a handful probably up to a dozen people that were there just about the entire time with me,” continued Zehnder.

Continue.