‘Open your Bibles with me, please’ is so often the opening line used by a preacher as he leads the congregation into his sermon material. He knows that the engagement of his hearers will be enhanced if they can glance down and follow his exposition, his reasoning, his application, his pleading.
During a sermon, faithful preachers will draw from Scriptural passages and cross-reference others to support their exposition. Effectively, the minister is asking the congregation to ‘check him out’. He wants them to know that in his preaching it is the Word of God that he is drawing from and the Holy Spirit he is relying on. He wants to point them to the truth in the Bible which is physically in front of them.
But what actually is in the hands of the average 21st century church hearer? So often in our congregations it is no longer a physical book that is in our hands. Or even if it is, it may well be a copy of Scripture that does not actually belong to the reader (i.e. a pew Bible). The response to the call to open our Bibles now often involves opening an app on a phone or tablet. Is this a good thing? Is this simply a product of our time – an inevitable development of the digital age in which we live?
