Part of the problem with church people is church lingo. Church speak I believe should be banned. The amount of archaic words that drift through the halls of churches on any given Sunday would confuse even the most astute ears. Brother this, sister that, beloved, etc… I am sick of it! It is not understandable to many and definitely not understandable by any un-churched individuals. Since when were we too big for our britches to just be called by our first name. Of course growing up in a pastor’s home I thought my dad’s first name was pastor. Pastor’s should be respected but you don’t need to call them brother.
Teachers that use archaic words easily lose their audience. One of the teachers that is a big mentor to me is very good at teaching like he is conversing one-on-one with you. It is just his regular voice using regular words and people get him. They understand because he speaks plainly.
There are of course some very archaic words in most any version of the Bible you choose to pick up. Honestly one-hundred years ago there were still remnants of those words floating around in everyday conversation. We can really weird people out if we are not careful. Of course with the advent of text messaging and email our vocabularies and spelling seem to matter less and less. I am waiting for them to come out with the “Text Message Bible”. They say it will be a really good read. But I digress – the reality is folks that we are living in a post modern age where the peculiarity of believers should be their life of faith and peace not the archaic lingo they use.
They should know us by our love not the “Old-Fashioned” things that slip out.
here. here.
because a very stimulating article by tim keller about speaking in the postmodern culture’s language (rather than churchspeka), i was thinking about how to explain redemption in terms of the culture.
how does one explain what Yeshua (i like the hebraic version of Jesus’ name because the name Jesus doesnt mean anything, or rather everything, in our culture) did without using church-speak?
the best word i could come up with was transformation. ie changing us into a new creation/born again/redeemed/saved/etc. but all those words are meaningless. i dont know if transformation would mean anything either, but it was the best i could think of. what do you think?
peter