By REV. DR. JOHN HATCHER
Religion Columnist

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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