Bible-Believing Churches?

I'm sadly convinced that most evangelical churches today are Bible-believing in theory but not in practice and this can be observed by the use (or lack of use) of the Bible in the worship services, and even in the sermons.

Here are some interesting exercises:

- Start paying attention to how much or how little Scripture is read publicly at a church or at your church. Is there a special time set aside for reading Scripture? If so, how much Scripture is read?

- How often does the worship pastor/music director/song leader (whatever your church calls him/her) tie the song to the Bible in his comments?

- Start noticing how often people are actually looking down at their Bibles to see the text. A faithful expositor of God's Word keeps pointing his hearers to the text.

- Take a watch or stopwatch to church with you and see how long the pastor takes at the start of his message before he reads from the Bible or quotes the Bible. If you are willing to put forth the effort, record how long he spends between each reading or quoting of a Bible text. Do this also with radio preachers by looking at the clock on your dashboard.

- Is the overall message/tone/feel of the service to bring you to Christ through his Word or something else?

Can you think of some other ways to diagnose how well a church is at keeping the Word front and center?