“You can only find your passion by looking inside yourself and that’s hard work.” It’s the message of our society — follow your heart.

However, when I honestly look inside myself I see what the Bible calls a heart that is “desperately wicked.” When I sincerely look inside myself, I see a rebel driven by personal desire and pleasure, who given harmful life-shaping circumstances could do anything wrongful that any other human being has done; who will self-destruct and/or hurt others if not restrained by law, threat of punishment, conscience, fear of negative consequences, respect for others, and self-discipline; but most of all by intimate surrender of my will to our Creator.

Fact is, our passions and desires can be (and often are) morally wrong. Perhaps we would be better off looking to God and His Word and obeying Him rather than our own desires.

So, how wicked is the human heart? ABC News reported tonight that Americans steal $50,000,000,000.00 worth of office supplies from their employers every year.

Intel, also, uses the slogan “Look inside.”  So, what do you see when you honestly look inside your own heart?

Sit-back-and-listen-church makes people passive.  Open line, talk church makes people powerful in God as they show and tell what God has done on an open mike!

Talk church isn’t new. Here’s a quotation where John Miley described talk church in 1854 (as he wrote about Methodist class meetings):

“Should there not be regularly appointed times when those that fear God may meet together and speak to one another? Times when all may participate in the (church) meeting? The habit of speaking on the subject of religion, of giving expression to religious feelings and purposes, will increase people’s confidence in the cause of Christ. To speak of our faith is to secure its increase. To declare our decision for Christ and His cause is more fully to determine and settle that decision. To give expression to our love to God is to kindle its fires anew and to cause it to grow with fervor.

Open Line Talk Church — Sundays @ 10:45 am., 225 Berry St., Nashville, 37207 @ The Salvation Army Berry Street.

Where there is no threat of punishment, there is no justice.

Where there is no sorrow, there is no repentance.

Where there has been no bondage, there is no being set free.

Where there has been no sin, there is no salvation from sin.

God is not a thought in a human mind.
He is an actual, living Being;
Present and active,
Yet frequently overlooked,
In human consciousness.
“Be still and know that I am God.”

On Pentecost Sunday (May 19) the church in the Western world celebrates the beginning of sermon-free church. The events are recorded in Acts, chapter 2 in the New Testament.

About 120 of the first Christ-followers were gathered together in an upper room in Jerusalem to seek God and to wait for the Holy Spirit. Suddenly the Spirit came and they “all” began to speak praises to God. They were “all” filled with such passion, excitement, emotion, and enthusiasm, that they left the building and hit the streets “all” speaking about God.

Their commotion drew thousands of people. Then one of the on-fire Christ followers began to explain to the gathered crowd of curious, confused, and/or hostile unbelievers, what was going on.

This first exhibition of sermon-free church was so powerful that 3,000 unbelievers became Christ-followers that day. It helped establish the pattern of open-sharing, Spirit-led church meetings that is described in the New Testament in 1 Corinthians 14:26 and helped spread radical obedience to the living, resurrected Christ around the word, eventually even changing the Roman Empire.

Most Christians have been taught that Peter preached a sermon on Pentecost.  However, I don’t see what he did that day as a sermon because:  1) It was spontaneous, not prepared. 2) It was shared to explain the demonstration of the Holy Spirit that was happening at the moment. 3) It was short. 4) It said “This is that,” not “This was that.” 4) It didn’t put everybody into the role of being passive listeners. 5) It was Spirit-prompted. 6) It was not a scheduled talk by the same person each week. 6) It didn’t take the place of the gathered believers having the freedom to share, testify, and minister to one one another.  He preached (shared) the Gospel but not in a formal sermon.

So, what replaces the sermon (a talk about theology given by the same person week after week) in sermon-free church?

Answer: Various people, as prompted by the Spirit, share: testimonies, Scriptures, personal concerns and/or needs, words of encouragement, songs, gifts of the Spirit, teachings, prayers, etc.

Sermon-free church works great in small meetings, however, it also works very well in larger meetings with an open mike. However, this type of meeting is not leaderless. 1) The Holy Spirit is actually present and directing the meeting as He prompts people to share. 2) Human leadership is also involved as people the New Testament calls “overseers” (unfortunately often translated as “bishops”) operate like “officials” in basketball, American football, or soccer. Their job is to keep watch on the meeting and reinstate the Spirit’s leadership if someone says or does something out of line or inappropriate.

Sermon-Free church broke out across American in the late 1850s.

The Quakers practiced sermon-free church.

A prayer for sermon-free church from the late 1800s is being answered in Nashville.

Here are two quotes from John Wesley (founder of Methodism) describing the class meeting:

“We will meet together once a week to confess our faults one to another, and pray one for another, that we may be healed.’ . . . So that everyone, in order speak as freely, plainly, and concisely as he can, the real state of his heart, with his several temptations and deliverances, since the last time of meeting.’

“What advantages have been reaped from this.  Many happily experienced that Christian fellowship of which they had not so much as an idea before.  They began to ‘bear one another’s burdens,’ and naturally to ‘care for each other.’”

John Bate wrote in 1866:  “We go to class meeting to edify one another in thee relation of christian experience.  We go to sit before the Lord in the presence of each other, and wait on Him in holy meditation, prayer, and faith.  We go to receive from Him . . . It is in the nature of the class meeting to fan the flame of religion in the soul; to invigorate and enliven the spirit, in a word, to nourish the entire Christian life.”

Frederick William Briggs wrote in the 1860s:  “The essential principle of class meeting is the use of personal experience as stated by each member, for the purpose of their common spiritual improvement . . . God’s chosen instrument of spiritual teaching is not any abstract form of truth, but truth in the form of living experience which is the essential principle of the class meeting . . . The spiritual life requires for its sustenance, invigoration, and right training, the influence of example and experience and it is in this that the class meeting has its root.  The class meeting is simply an arrangement for placing the plants of Divine planting in conditions most favorable to their healthy growth.”

Kevin Watson recently wrote:  “I believe that the Holy Spirit wants to use this form of communal Christian formation once again to help people have an active faith in Christ, not merely a passive intellectual faith.  And I believe that if this practice were to be reclaimed, wit would be used by the Spirit to bring renewal.”

Class-meeting-style sermon-free church is being reclaimed in Nashville, Tennessee in answer to a prayer prayed in the late 1800s by a Nashville resident, John Berry McFerrin.  Come and experience it for yourself at The Salvation Army Berry Street, 225 Berry St., Nashville, 37207 on Sundays at 10:45 am.

We have to compete with the gang of 4 — complacency, mediocrity, passivity, and apathy.    These 4 want us to give up before we even get started on our way to completion.

We have to compete with our genes.  We all come programmed with a rebellious, self-seeking, destructive, desire-drive nature that strives to keep us off the track of completion and caught up with living a life of depletion and deletion.

We have to compete with the constraints of conformity and group think.  Culture is not very kind to those who seek to find a way from crushing confusion to creative completion.

We have to compete with the many discouraging and defeating obstacles that get in our way, both in our circumstances and in our attitude.

We have to compete with and wrestle with many evil spiritual forces that seek to hold us in spiritual darkness under their control and obeying their whims.

To be effective in this great lifetime competition we need an advocate, a trainer, a coach.  Without one, it’s too easy to quit.

Our Advocate calls out through heart innernet connection, ready to download all that we need to successfully compete.  However, we humans tend to think that we are okay without the Advocate, so we stumble around, disguising and denying our failures,  pretending that we are competitive in life, when we don’t have a prayer.

Straight is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life and few find it — few compete to be elite spiritual athletes.   That’s sad.  Unfathomable transformational opportunities are ignored as we drift in silent despair (or dandy denial) down decades-long ruts of the same ole same ole.

If a person does whatever she/he wants to do and/or feels like doing, without moral restraint, she/he will make a mighty mess of her/his life.  So how do you get moral restraint?  So much in our society wants to grab our attention and focus us on unrestrained pleasure-seeking, when we desperately need a focus on godly self-restraint.

Movies and TV shows grab and hold Americans’ attention . . .
Church does not.
Sports captures the passion and enthusiasm of Americans . . .
Church does not.
Music takes hold of Americans’ hearts and won’t let go . . .
Church does not.
It’s time for the American church to break out of cultural irrelevance
And to bring the thrilling presence, power, and love
Of the living God to the hearts and minds of Americans!
There is a new attention grabbing form of church
In Nashville (the city, not the TV show) at:
225 Berry St., 37207 on Sunday mornings at 10:45.
Let God grab you . . .
Come visit The Salvation Army Berry Street.