The church

needs to make a significant course correction or we will

drift into total irrelevancy. It involves getting the

Bible back into church.

In the old

days, only heathens showed up at church without a Bible.

In the old days, one of the last questions parents would

ask their children before leaving for church was,

"Have you got your Bible?" In the old days,

children's and youth groups were alive with Sword Drills.

The name "sword drill" came from Ephesians 6:19

as the Apostle Paul identified the "sword of the

Spirit as the Word of God." Young people competed

with each other, seeing who could find Scriptures first.

In the old

days, believers would hang onto their worn out Bibles as

long as they could, knowing they had precious notes and

personal cross-references penned in the margins and

special texts underlined. In the old days, memorizing

verses of Scripture was the rule of the day. They were

called "memory verses" and Sunday School

teachers expected their pupils to memorize.

Today,

church houses all across our land are full of believers

who can't quote John 3:16 much less share it meaningfully

with anyone. Today, the minister asks worshipers to turn

in their Bibles to such a book, chapter, and verse; the

folks sit motionless like bumps on a log.

Today,

young people act as if it's old fashioned to bring their

Bibles to church. Teachers ask, "Where's your

Bible?" The kids respond, "I forgot it."

Yea! What's more amazing is that we church leaders just

yawn when folks don't bring their Bibles. Maybe it

bolsters our ecclesiastical ego as if in the old, old

days when only the priest read from the Holy Book.

Today,

believers just don't know the Word of God. In many ways,

that's why there is hardly any difference between the

behavior of church members and non-church members. Church

expert George Barna documented that sad demographic. If

believers don't have the Word of God hidden in their

hearts, how will they know what's right and what's wrong.

The Psalmist said it: " O Lord, your Word have I

hidden in my heart in order that I may not sin against

you."

I asked

Chuck Smith, pastor of Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa,

California, why his church had grown to be of the largest

in America. He said, "Somewhere the Bible says that

God has magnified his word above his name. So we just

teach the Bible." Check it out in Psalm 138:2.

When the

great Frenchman Alexis Tocqueville visited America in the

last half of the 19th Century, he noted that our

greatness could be found in the local church houses. The

reason for that was that local church houses were houses

of The Good Book.

The only

way for America's greatness to return to vigor is to

return to an attention to the Bible. We can do it. Every

home has three or four Bibles. Let them collect

fingerprints rather than dust!

The Rev. Dr. John

Hatcher is pastor of River's Edge Community Church in

Fayetteville.

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