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When you hear the phrase "old barn," a variety of images may come to mind depending on your experience. The image may be from your childhood when you and a friend explored an abandoned farm. Maybe you have no first-hand knowledge of an old barn, but your recent reading in Architectural Digest on what they are doing with old barns was fascinating. The image may come from TV or the recent movie Cold Mountain. But most people have some reference point for the phrase "old barn."

What is true of "old barn" is true of the language we use in Christianity. Words carry all sorts of definitional freight, and we can't assume our words conjure up the same images in everyone's minds.

Most people know what a barn is, but what about "gospel," "conversion," "church membership," or the myriad other words unique to the church? What are we hoping they think when we say these words in a weekend talk for instance? (Notice I didn't say "sermon.")

We need some dialogue on the Christian lexicon. Many of the words we use are words our people inside the church have only vague understandings of, and worse yet, those outside the church have little, if any, accurate reference point. Their minds will fill the gaps with explanations from People magazine or a rerun of Friends.

For example, at Westwinds we have opted to strike from our vocabulary two of the most foundational words for any church interested in the Great Commission, "evangelism" and "discipleship," because people have such different understandings of them.

For the Baptist migrating into Westwinds, "evangelism" conjures images of altar calls and ushered trips to the counseling room to seal the deal they just made. For the unchurched person, "evangelism" conjures images of mounds of hair and shouting televangelists.

We have replaced the term evangelism with the much more organic "spiritual conversations." Real evangelism is not programmatic, but relational and conversational. When we talk about engaging in spiritual conversations, people almost instantly get it. In our culture people are already conversing about spiritual things—some things Christian, but most things not. We have great opportunity to engage people where they are.

"Spiritual conversation" comes with fewer preconceived definitions and can be shaped for our usage. The same is true for "replication," our replacement for "discipleship."

When the average Christ-follower hears "discipleship," what comes to mind? In most cases the first thought is "program." The second is fill-in-the-blanks booklets and memory verse recitation.

We are trying to replicate or reproduce the way Jesus would live his life in our bodies, not put people through a program.

For us "replication" is about finding someone a couple steps further along and teaming them up with someone who is relatively new in their learning curve with Jesus. That seems to communicate far more to people than asking, "Do you want to be discipled?" So many words like this need our attention.

Some words should be replaced for use in the church—evangelism and discipleship, for example. But other words should be "re-lexiconed" for people who aren't yet followers of Christ.

The summary word for the message of salvation is most often the word "gospel," but what does the average outsider to the church hear when the word gospel is said?

For some it is hearing about their need to "respond to the gospel." Usually the message they hear is, "apart from Jesus they will suffer an eternity in hell," complete with images of something like a steel smelting furnace stoked hot by a horned and pitch-forked creature. Caricature? Hardly.

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