Last year at Summit I heard Wade Hodges say something that has stuck with me. He said that we have too much feeding going on in our churches — and too much feeding with no exercise leads to Fat Christians.

I am starting my 13th year of preaching, and from my perspective he is absolutely right. Where I preach, we have a Sunday morning service that includes a sermon, Sunday morning Bible class, a Sunday evening service with another sermon, and a Wednesday evening Bible study. That’s a lot of information every week (if you attend all the services).

Now, that would be fine *if* you were also taking the opportunity to exercise your faith on a regular basis. But what I find is that not much of that is taking place. So what we have is a lot of folks filling up on information and getting fat (spiritually).

What if we dedicated just one of those service times to actually DOING something instead of just feeding? What if we actually took off the feedbag and got involved in our community? What if, instead of sitting through another class on the book of Acts, we actually went out and did some acts?

The problem is, this would be a radical departure from the way we currently “do church” — thus making a lot of folks uncomfortable (especially the ones who are big givers). And let’s face it, its a whole lot easier to sit back and eat than it is to get out and exercise.

Any ideas?

–