No Bible? No God!

Please take seriously these words from David Wells' Above All Earthly Pow'rs about the Bible as it relates to a church's or pastor's ministry philosophy.

"...the Word of God, read or preached, has the power to enter the innermost crevices of a person's being, to shine light in unwanted places, to explode the myths and deceits by which fallen life sustains itself, and to bring that person face to face with the eternal God" (8).

You might be asking, 'What does this have to do with ministry philosophy?' He goes on:

"This Word of God is the means by which God accomplishes his saving work in his people, and this is a work that no evangelist and no preacher can do" (9).

You got it yet? No? He then takes this insight about ministry philosophy and uses it to explain the superficiality of Christianity in the West with these penetrating words:

"This is why the dearth of serious, sustained biblical preaching in the Church today is a serious matter. When the Church loses the Word of God it loses the very means by which God does his work. In its absence, therefore, a script is being written, however unwittingly, for the Church's undoing, not in one cataclysmic moment, but in a slow, inexorable slide made up of piece by tiny piece of daily dereliction" (9).