Are lives being changed in your congregation? Don't look for the Fruit of the Spirit manifested within a Church service; that's too easy. Look for this fruit among your people on the other six days of the week, at work, at school, in the community, in their homes, in their marriages. The Church - the Bride and Body of Christ - is a living organism, NOT an organization. Her life should beget abundant life. Those who know God are the Ark of the New Covenant, bringing the presence of God - Jesus Himself - with them everywhere they go all day long.

Where Jesus goes, things change. How's that coming along?

This living organism we call "The Church" is too often sound asleep. As my dear friend Ed says, how can we pray for revival when we've yet to be "vived"?

GAME PLAN

To those in positions of church leadership, forget it. You can't do it. It's not something anyone can "muster up" either. One either knows Jesus and lives according to His doctrine, living a life that manifests and bears the Fruit of the Spirit, bearing life after their own kind...or they don't. When statistics reveal that most ministers spend way too little time in weekly prayer and very few believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, when we place all the emphasis on church attendance and too little on discipleship, placing too much importance on the unscriptural clergy/laity distinction, what we're seeing now is simply the result of years of repeated mistakes.

It's time for a change. It's time to change our minds and embrace the fact that doing things in the prescribed way just isn't working.

If you'd like to examine your options, write. Let's discuss the matter. If you want something you've never had, it might be time to do that which you've NEVER considered doing.

We all know the definition of insanity; doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. What's happening in the Church in America today is absolutely insane.