It’s sad that in most churches spontaneous sleeping is permitted, but spontaneous testifying about the living Jesus isn’t. Perhaps we’ve cultivated the wrong kind of spontaneity. How many nodding heads does it take before we realize that church is putting people to sleep?

People today are looking for
Heart-felt authenticity,
Not for religious passivity.

Church needs to go from glory to glory, not from sermon to sermon. Let’s take off our dark Son-glasses so we can see Jesus clearly

A church where the same person speaks each week while everybody else is kept quiet is like a house with only one electrical outlet. (Now that’s shocking!) God uses church the way it is but that doesn’t mean He doesn’t want it to be much more effective at spreading His power and presence.

It’s time to demonstrate
The reality of Jesus
Not to elaborate
About Him.

Church attendance isn’t the cure for Lone Ranger Christians. Many church attendees refuse to connect heart-to-heart with others. Their Lone Ranger mask tells everyone around them to leave them alone.

On Sunday morning churches count their sheep and then quite often make them sleepy. People joke about people sleeping in church. That’s double boredom–being so bored that you need to be entertained by people who are asleep.

We need congregations
Full of activated believers,
Not weighed down
With passive receivers.

When Christians gather to all obey the Spirit’s inner promptings, everybody present can see Jesus working thru various people. We had a guest once who flattened and blocked all but one of the water outlets on our shower head leaving us with a single trickle. That’s how I feel in church. Make church ekklesia again!

Faith’s not a cool long-distance relationship with a formalized Jesus. It’s a passionate relationship with the here-and-now Jesus.

When church tells folks
To listen and not
Make a peep
They put the sheep
To sleep.

When people directly encounter the risen Jesus, their body language doesn’t give the sound of silent boredom. They are roused! If a wake-up call is comfortable, you’ll sleep right thru it. For church to become a wake-up call it must become uncomfortable!

Church needs to cultivate
Direct encounter with Jesus
Not just try to motivate
People to be religious.

When church is a spiritual mattress Christians snooze. What’s your spiritual “Sleep Number”?

It takes more than sermons to rouse a deaf church. Ears that won’t spiritually hear need to see Christ demonstrated in actions. Jesus said to hear what the Spirit says to the body of Christ. Unless we hear God’s Spirit, the words of a preacher are powerless.

By being passive
In their church seat
Christians too often sit
And accept defeat.

Church should be a gathering where people open up and support each other, not a place where they’re silenced by religious tradition. Revival happens when Christians awaken to the glory of God. Hearing sermons isn’t the hope of glory; “Christ in you,” is! If sermon-hearing brought revival, churches would thrive in the thrill of God’s glory every Sunday. Do they?

Christians need to gather
To help each other
Experience God’s spiritual fire
Not to be made comfortable
With our own desire.

Shepherds cultivate an environment where sheep can grow strong and healthy. They don’t lecture them. (Pastors should be shepherds.) One moment of experiencing the glory of God will teach a Christ-follower more than years of sermon-hearing. Instead of tickling our ears, church should thrill our heart with the presence, splendor, and majesty of the risen Jesus.

Church too often
Pampers people’s passivity
Instead of stirring up
Their spiritual intensity.

Communion is heart-to-heart interaction with the living Jesus. It’s so much more than a tiny bit of bread and wine (or juice). Eucharist (the ceremony of “the Lord’s Supper”) without encountering the glory of God becomes a mere religious exercise.

Religious hearts
Unkindled by
The presence
Of Christ,
Cold and even frozen,
Are they really
The chosen?

Sleeping Christians living in a dying culture put their trust in politics more than in the risen Jesus. It’s not enough to get out the vote. We need to get out of our comfort zone to read and obey what God wrote!