It is a sound as familiar in British churches as organ music or an echoing cough from the back row.

But the familiar ritual of congregations raising a faint titter as the vicar attempts another toe-curling joke or rambling anecdote could become a thing of the past if the findings of new research are taken to heart by clerics.

According to new research, churchgoers would far rather clergy stick to serious topics and leave the jokes to the comedians.

A survey of Christians found that they ranked weighty explanations of the Bible as 27 times as important in a sermon as humour and “practical application”, 42 times more highly than personal anecdote.

The findings come from research commission by the Christian resources Exhibition, a trade fair for all things clerical taking place at the ExCel centre in London next week. For the first time, organisers are running a “sermon of the year competition”.

A poll of almost 1,400 regular churchgoers commissioned for the event found a perhaps surprising appetite for longer sermons, with less than one per cent favouring a talk of under five minutes but 36 per cent favouring a monologue of between 20 and 30 minutes.

When asked to choose the most important element in a sermon from a list of choices, 44.3 per cent favoured “Biblical exposition” and only 1.6 per cent opted for a “sense of humour”.