What Gomes identifies here is a deeper problem common in many of our churches where people are not exactly sure what is going on in a service. But worship is not a spectator sport. Yet, one of the most disturbing things for the church members is the number of tourists who fall asleep during the service - they do not stay awake because they do not understand what is going on in the worship service of praise to God for what God has done in Christ. They don't get it. And so we begin to yawn as we recite the Apostle's Creed .
Familiarity puts a church to sleep.
And traditionalism can do that, too. I'm not talking about tradition, but traditionalism. Sometimes the church puts itself to sleep out of sheer boredom. But there's something else that puts a church to sleep and that's lack of commitment. Not commitment to the church as an institution, but lack of commitment to Jesus Christ.