Bibles Removed From NC Baptist Church

Did you hear about the day the Bibles were removed from a small, NC Baptist church? It’s a story I hope to always remember. The event didn’t make the news headlines, but it happened on a chilly, Sunday morning in February 2015.

After a warm welcome, a praise band began to play music. Parents ushered little ones to their seats. In the middle of the morning hustle, most of the people had not noticed the Bibles were missing.

However, a few in the congregation did notice and grew concerned. One of the deacons, with his head shaking and his shoulders shrugging, discreetly whispered the discovery to the pastor sitting on the front pew. The pastor quietly nodded to the deacon as the praise band continued their music.

When the music ended, the pastor returned to the pulpit and announced for the children to come forward for the children’s message.

The pastor was my husband. The church was my place of worship.

The day the Bibles disappeared was my day to teach the children.

A Bible Lesson

I motioned for everyone to look at a board mounted on the wall behind the choir. Posted there were the numbers stating: how many people attended Sunday School, the amount of offerings collected, and the number of Bibles the people brought to the church that morning.

We noticed the number of Bibles didn’t match the number of people in attendance. It was significantly lower.

Then, I asked the children if they could pretend they were on a treasure hunt and go find black Bibles in the sanctuary. I told them we were looking for a certain kind of treasure. Holding up one of the black Bibles that we always had stocked in the pews, I told them that was the only kind of Bible they could bring back.

They eagerly agreed, especially the older ones, because they remembered seeing those Bibles in the pews every Sunday. And off they went.

However, one frustrated four-year-old girl persistently piped between the pews, “Whoever took the Bibles needs to put them back!”

After searching in all the pews, no Bibles were found.

What If We Didn’t Have Bibles?

After the children gathered back around, the preacher’s wife (me) had some explaining to do about why she had removed the Bibles!

We talked about what we would do if we didn’t have Bibles.

How much of God’s Word have we hidden in our hearts and memorized?

What if all of the Bibles in the churches, in our homes, and even those Bible apps on our electronic devices suddenly disappeared?

Cinching the Bible Belt

The statistics I shared in a previous post, Remembering Today’s Persecuted Christians, rattled me.

Most of my friends have multiple Bibles in their homes. But I wonder if we’re cinching America’s Bible belt to accommodate a reduced size?

Are we taking our Bibles, our places of worship, and for that matter, our freedom of publicly speaking the truth of the gospel, for granted?

It’s something to ponder and pray about.

Would You Miss Your Bible?

At the end of the children’s message, I promised the children I would place all of the Bibles back in the pews before leaving the church.

I thought about enlisting their help to return the Bibles to the pews before my husband delivered the morning message. But I sensed I should wait. Perhaps God wanted to speak to all of His children that day.

During the service, the stark open spaces between the hymnals stirred an uneasy feeling inside of me.

Thankfully, I still held firmly to my own Bible.

If everyone had been asked to place their personal Bibles in a box before the service began, I wonder how we would have felt.

How would you feel if the Bibles in your church and those in your home were unexpectedly taken?

Would they be missed?