Speaking only from my experience, the answer is that, yes, the church absolutely abuses the Word...and that the entire Western world, at least, suffers for it.
I will add that, in my opinion, the abuse is unintentional and well-meaning.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 is powerful:
"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work." (NIV)
My experience in the organized and institutionalized Western church in the late twentieth and early twenty first centuries is that, while the Word is clear about what it is useful for, in practice, the church abuses the Word by ignoring it's full purpose, even, perhaps, frowning when disciples embrace the full usefulness of the Word.
Scripture is "useful" for:
A. Teaching.
B. Rebuking.
C. Correcting.
D. Training in righteousness.
Thinking of the sermons I've heard over my many years, and of the sermons I preached when I still believed in the preaching of sermons, it seems obvious to me that the church abuses the Word by failing to use it for all of the purposes for which it is designed.
This abuse of the Word provides a perfect explanation of the inability of the church to reach the Western world.
The Word, according to this brief passage, has those four uses. But, it has one purpose:
That the servant [literally man, or person] of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
This "every good work" drum is beat over and over again in the New Testament.
After Ephesians 2:8 & 9 make it clear that it is by grace you have been saved through faith, verse 10 explains that we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works.
Hebrews 10 declares that the end result of the gathering of disciples is for Jesus followers to provoke each other to "love and good works."
Today's church doesn't produce saints, disciples, followers of Jesus who live as salt and light in the world and, as Jesus said, in the so-called Sermon on the Mount, let their light so shine that people may see their good works and glorify their father in heaven.
Why is Christianity today so bland, so limp, so lifeless?
Why are churchgoers so dim, so lightless? Why do people who come in contact with church people not glorify the church's Father in heaven?!
Certainly, the church's Lord has not lost His power, or love, or grace or mercy.
A prime reason for the numerical decline and spiritual decay of the church is today's church's abuse of the Word which is, truly, living and active...a two-edged sword. (Hebrews 4:12)
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If you are a parish priest/preacher, honestly ask yourself, based on the sermons you deliver, what percentages of your sermon time fits the following uses of the Word:
A. Teaching,
B. Rebuking,
C. Correcting,
D. Training in righteousness, or,
E. Other.
If you're laity, a consumer of sermons, ask yourself what you are listening to, compared to the four ways the Word is to be used.
To be honest, back in the days when I believed in sermons, I'd guess my output was:
A. 40%
B. 0
C. 10%
D. 40%
E. 10%
...and, all that while, I was gifted to be a prophet...struggling with seeing life with a prophet's passions. (I can recall fighting with myself to do more rebuking and correcting, but I'd been convinced that somehow such preaching was unseemly unless unusual circumstances existed.)
I'm convinced that, across the American church today, among the tens of thousands of sermons that will be delivered on this Sunday, the usefulness of the Word will be abused profoundly and pathetically by the lack of the use of the Word for two of its basic and foundational purposes, i.e., to rebuke and to correct and that, again, the parish priests of the organized and institutionalized church will fail to prepare God's people for every good work.
I believe that the misnamed "worship service" is, most often, at worst a time in which consumers of religious products and services are entertained and that it is, at best, a time in which the laity consumes nurturing and/or encouraging products and services.
Today's church doesn't provoke. There's little to no rebuking or correcting.
For too many parish priests and the members of their laity, attending the worship service is itself an act of righteousness, not a time to be provoked to acts of righteousness.
That is the case because today's church abuses the Word.
Striking a chord that I often play, my knowledge of times of revival shows me that the people of the Kingdom were blessed and empowered by the Spirit when the Word was used for all that it is designed to accomplish: for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.
We must stop abusing the Word.
We must, very seriously, repent.
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