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.
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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.
Good news is no news
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.
The gospel, which we are told we could simply translate as “good news” doesn’t sound all that good at all. Even the phrase “good news” is so freighted with our Christian accent I suggest it too is unhelpful.
When Jesus came on the scene and announced the gospel, he was announcing a news flash, a positive headline, an exciting CNN news bulletin. That is what “gospel” means. A 9 B.C. inscription from Priene heralding Caesar’s birth announcement is called “gospel.” In its simplest non-Christianese rendering, the gospel is good news, a news flash, a heralded headline.
The list could go on and on. The point is language should clarify communication, not impede it.
New tribes missiology
What does this mean practically when it comes to communicating with the congregation? Quite simply we do a constant translation job. We do this all the time when we go into a foreign country. I have been in 17 countries doing pastoral training, and in every one of them we have had to ask, “How do we translate these concepts, ideas, idioms or metaphors so they get it?”
When a Wycliffe translator discovers through field work that the seat of this particular tribe’s life and emotions is considered their palm, they allow that understanding to guide their lexical choices when they come to passages where Paul might generally use the word “heart.” To love God with all our heart might be better communicated in that culture to love God with all our “palm.”
This is true missiology, true translational work. This re-lexiconing project is to review how our Christianese may or may not be communicating. If we are willing to translate so native tribes can understand, why are we reluctant to do good missiology here so we can really take the message to the streets?
No sacred words
At Westwinds, when it comes to talking about the gospel, we simply define our terms over and over: “Today as we talk about the gospel, I want to remind you what that word means. We tend to freight with all sorts of extras, but in today’s language it would mean positive headlines or breaking news flash.”
The results of this sort of re-lexiconing project have numerous payoffs. People get educated to the meaning of the words, stripped of the Christian accretion that so often alters the way the word feels. Biblical passages suddenly read quite differently. For those outside the family, we remove some of the obstacles as they hear words that in the past turned off their ability to listen.
The fact that we have “said it this way for decades” is probably longhand for obsolescence. Decades of subtle definitional shifts make this project one deserving rigorous attention.
We need to remember that words are not sacred. I seem to continually bump up against well meaning Christians who forget words like gospel, evangelism, kingdom, and discipleship are in fact English words translating another language.
We need to listen carefully to the street, understand the metaphors, language, and freight behind the words being used. We then need to do the hard biblical homework that will enable us a lexical range of options for translational purposes.
In this way we aren’t only biblical exegetes, we are cultural exegetes, too. Then and only then faithful and ready to be translators of the message into the language of the street.
Ron Martoia is founder and lead pastor of Westwinds Community Church in Jackson, Michigan. www.westwinds.org
Lingua Frankly
Terms we’ve replaced in our “Weekend Talks”church membership = partnership “Membership” usually assumes privileges. That idea is extra-biblical. That’s why we blew up “membership” a few years ago. Now we have partnership. When partnering with a local church you don’t gain rights, you lose them; all servants do. Rights to your time, money, effort, and best creative juices are now in God’s employ.
conversion = allegiance to God’s kingdom How does “kingdom” get redefined when we realize that Jesus announced the arrival of the kingdom of God against the backdrop of the kingdom of Caesar? The Roman ruler was called “lord” and “savior,” and as king expected full allegiance. That background helps us clarify what Jesus meant. When we strip the phrases of their varnish and lacquer, we find them so much easier to understand.
—RM
Online Poll on Speaking Christianese
Many words, such as “salvation” and “evangelist,” have unique usages within the church. How should Christians use these words with non-Christians?
- Use the words, but give definitions and examples: 55%
- Avoid churchy language; use more common words: 41%
- Use the words; they’ll figure it out eventually: 1%
- I’m not sure: 1%
—from LeadershipJournal.net (February 2004)
Copyright © 2004 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information onLeadership Journal.
