Like an NFL Training Camp, church should be hands-on training — not passive lecture. Through rigorous involvement and interaction, church should train believers in the spiritual skills and attitudes necessary to make a powerful, victorious, and godly impact in the daily game of life.

Perhaps a church meeting should be like dodge ball — our role is to move our will, our desires, our comfort, our control, our intellect, our traditions, our fears, our passivity, our agenda, and our programs out of the Holy Spirit’s way — and let Him do whatever He wants to on Sunday morning!

What would happen if church was an obedience lab (like a high school science lab) rather than a lecture series?  What if on Sunday mornings the congregation quietly listened for the voice of God to speak to them and then they obeyed, and they shared or did whatever God told them to?

It’s very difficult and frightening to hear God and do what He tells us to do, when we are in the everyday-world that is hostile to God. So perhaps we should let people practice hearing God and doing what He says, when they are in the Sunday morning church environment, which is supposedly much friendlier to obeying God than the world is.

Church could give people a few moments to listen to God, and then ask them to say and/or do whatever God told them to say or do. Once people learn to do this in church, they would develop the confidence to do it in the world. And we would see the book of Acts come alive in our daily lives.  Charles H. Mason, founder of the Church of God in Christ put it this way:  “We have fellowship with Jesus and in the Spirit of Jesus Christ, we contend (train) for the faith.”  Paul of Tarsus said:  “Train yourself for godliness.”

This is not a theory.  It happens every Sunday morning at The Salvation Army Berry Street in Nashville, 225 Berry St., 37207 at 10:45 a.m.  Come and see for yourself  as ordinary people show and tell what God has done, as prompted by the Holy Spirit.