Working and living in a recovery ministry community, you get opportunities to bring people to healing while bringing them to discipleship. But no matter what the problems are which bring them here, we are in the business of making disciples.
So what we do is missional in nature. it is, in fact our core purpose, the context is recovery, but the mission is making disciples. Which brings me to and interesting experience from last week.
One of the guys I was mentoring showed me a short paper on prayer he recieved from another mentor. He told me about it and made the comment "fluffy god-language."
This was a term I used when I began our time of mentoring. I told every one of them (who had a background in some kind of church) that I do not tolerate, nor accept "fluffy god-language" as any substitute for genuine spirituality. In fact, I told them, it is usually phony.
When this young man held this paper saying this, I thought he was using my words to condemn and dismiss it. I jumped on it right there, telling him that I meant his relationship with me and with others will not be manipulated with language made to make us appear "spiritual." But he said, "no, I need to clarify this with you."
he gave me the document, and I read it. It was about prayer...or character...or actions...It was difficult to tell. It was an exerpt of a well known, classical Christian writer. And it was total, incomprensible jargon.
This thing was so awash with "fluffy god-language" that my student could not understand it. I barely could myself. It was so full of religious jargon that it was very difficult to tell where his point was, or if he was even making one.
I finally brought it up on my notebook and began to edit the document into plain contemporary English. After rephrasing in every-day English, the message began to appear. After I re-worded it, hammered the outline into a usefull progression of ideas, and hacked off all of the useless, fluffy church-speak (about 30 percent). I had a tight useful teaching with something you can take and practice.
Context, Context, Context
Christianese is far less than useless when you are trying to communicate to not-yet-Christians. Even if they want to hear you, they can't. In this case I have three guys who recieved this document on prayer. None of them understood much of it. Only one was honest enough to speak up.
We spend so much time and money producing contemporary English translations of scripture for ourselves. Then we spew "christianese" at unreconciled people who desparately need to understand us. It's insane. We try to read the Bible in the clearest contemporary language, then spew religious gibberish to each other and outsiders.
Christianese, or "fluffy-god-language" is the product of an isolated church culture. It is a habit born out of a need to isolate from the world rather than engage it. Think of it as a kind of dialect...A form of "pidgin" so-to-speak. It's a way to identify ourselves as different from outsiders. It is also, in our church culture, a way of speaking which glosses over sin and makes us look more "holy" than we truly are.
This language cut my guys off from understanding some important things about prayer. In normal life, this language brands you as an untrustworthy "religious type." This language is not only useless, it is non-missional and destructive.
Over 20 years ago I gave up "church-speak" I stopped attracting church-people, and started communicating with people who needed reconciliation. The results have been amazing. Non-christians understand and respect me, and listen to what I have to say about Jesus. Church-people generally marganalize me as "carnal." It is wildly fulfilling to experience open communication with the not-yet-Christians, and highly amusing to see church people trip over plain speech.
All in all, it is far better for our mission to be heard. Making disciples is all about being heard and understood. Nothing, however acceptable it sounds, should ever be allowed to damage that.
Keywords: contextualization, fluffy god language, mission
