“All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” (2 Timothy 3:16-17 NRSV)
From the beginning of the church, Christians have been “a people of the book.” In “Shaped by the Bible,” William H. Willimon labors to make the point that our congregations are formed by their confrontation with the Bible. He says Scripture forms us, reforms us, and challenges us, even as we hide from that Word, refuse to hear it, and avoid and evade the claims it makes upon us. And, indeed, he is right. It has been the testimony of the Bible as the living Word of God that has enabled a people who were no people to gather as God’s people around the Word and the sacraments, suggested by the Bible’s reports of God’s entrance into human affairs.
Show me a vital and healthy congregation, and I will point you to a people who take the Word of God seriously. A congregation that reads it, studies it, listens to God’s whispers and shouts in it will be a changed congregation.
-- Zan Holmes in “Encountering Jesus”
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