ABSTRACT
The Christian church has always declared that the Word of God is present in its preaching, meeting and confronting men and women in ordinary life. A sermon ought to be judged on its faithfulness to the Bible. But the varied and contradictory understandings of the nature of the Bible make such a criterion almost useless. In the last decade, preaching increasingly has been viewed as an event of human communication, subject to the same influences in any human communication event. The church has declared that in its preaching, the Word of God is present, meeting and confronting men and women in ordinary life. There was the strong suggestion that the more biblical quotes and overt biblical references present, the more the sermon was judged to be the Word of God. The results of the second project, congruent with those of the first, revealed the tendency on the part of laity to identify the Word of God with the Bible.
