Here's a list of Christian cliches that I compiled at my old blog. Don't get all twisted up; this is all firmly tongue-in-cheek. Oh, and please feel free to
add your own in the comments section. I'm sure I'm missing some doozies. Also, I seem to have been in a particularly snarky mood when putting all this to paper (and by paper, I mean the ugliest blog template anyone has ever had...it was a big brown mess). Anyway, that really comes through in this piece, which I now present with very little editorial comment:
An Annotated Guide to Christian Buzzwords
Authentic
- Yeah, let's all be really intentional about being "authentic." We can
probably synthetically produce authentic authenticity. (Cf. "relevant"
and "engaging culture.")
Best Life Now - This idea has
nothing to do with the Christian life between the first and second comings of Christ, unless you consider
being lied about, mocked, persecuted, and facing "all kinds of trials"
as your idea of "the good life."
Christ-follower -
I've mostly noticed this listed as people's "religion" on social
networking sites. I guess there's not really anything wrong with this
term per se (apart from its grammatical awkwardness), but whenever we
start using a new word/term in place of an already established word, I
have to ask:
why? What's wrong with
Christian? It's what
the "Christ-followers" were first called in Antioch and we've been
called Christians ever since. So is "Christ-follower" supposed to be a
translation (rather than transliteration) of Χριστιανός? That's
over-reaching. I suspect that the real motivation is to set oneself over
and against the masses of people who wear the name "Christian," to be
part of an elite group of people that take this Jesus stuff much more
seriously than those "Christians." And to that I say:
yikes.
Comfort Zone -
This was probably a good term when it was the new buzzword, but it's
definitely run its course. Not to mention that it's misused more often
than not these days. Sure, Jesus called us to a life of making disciples
and being disciples, which often involves being uncomfortable, but that
doesn't mean that we're all called to do everything that makes us
squirm. If you're scared to death of speaking before a group, that
doesn't mean God is calling you to "get out of your comfort zone" and
preach on a Sunday morning. Quite the opposite.
Community -
This falls under the category of "regular words that were re-cast as
buzzwords and now make me want to throw up." I think I'll just leave it
at that.
Conversation - Ditto. This is not a
particularly biblical word. It only occurs twice in the ESV, once in the
Old Testament and once in the New. The NT reference is to the two
disciples on their way to Emmaus, talking about how Jesus has died and
how they had hoped he would be the one to redeem Israel. Then Jesus came
alongside them and did the craziest thing. He didn't say, "Well, just
keep being authentic and asking questions." No, he stepped into their
"conversation" and provided
answers from Scripture. Starting at
Genesis, he walked them through the whole Old Testament, explaining how
it was all about HIM. Why is it that the new "conversation buzzword" is
used to move us in the opposite direction?
Creating a Space (or
"Creating a Sacred Space") - Borrowed capital from New Age. I say they
can keep it. Our desire to turn spiritual practices into disciplines and
rituals by which we enter God's presence is unhelpful at best and
blasphemous at worst. And really, only God can actually
create space. Besides, the "space" doesn't matter when we approach God (John 4:23, Heb 4:15-16).
Decision for Christ
- The Holy Grail of Finneyism and a perfect example of exalting the
byproduct. My "decision for Christ" can only take place as a result of
Christ
choosing me (John 15:16). Shouldn't we be making a much bigger deal of the latter?
Do Church -
It's almost like we choose these buzzwords based on maximum grammatical
awkwardness. The meaning of this one is kind of elusive. It either
means, "Let's commence diaconal ministries" or "Let's make everything
really exciting and hip" (cf. "relevant" below). Either way, "do church"
is a case of "verbing" (which is, itself, a case of "verbing,"
ironically)--taking a noun, "church," and making it into an action. But
here's the thing: when the New Testament refers to the church, it's
using a word that
started out as a verb (ek-kaleo, "to call
out.") I don't want to make too much of this, since the noun form
(ἐκκλησία) had long meant "assembly" when Jesus' earthly ministry began.
But either way, when we "verb" the word "church," the action/focus
should be on
assembling (something we do) or
being called out (something that happens
to us)...yet that's almost never what people mean by "do church."
Do Life Together - This may be the most awkward phrase ever. And for what?
There's already a verb form of the word "life."
When you want to know where someone resides, do you ask, "So where do
you do life?" No, you say, "Where do you
live?" But we don't want to say
that people in the church "live together." (Never mind that the New
Testament church pretty much
did live together--Acts 2:43-47). If
we're not going to follow in their footsteps, let's just drop the
pretense. Or else, to be consistent, next time your vehicle is in the
shop and you need a ride, ask your co-worker if you can "do car together" tomorrow.
Engaging Culture
- If you want to be worldly, just say it. If you really want to be like
Paul on Mars Hill, then don't sit there and say, "How can we engage
culture?" You've just pretty much guaranteed that you won't. (Cf.
"authentic" and "relevant"). [NOTE: five years after originally writing this, I'm not sure what my beef was with "engaging culture." I think I had just seen several people use it as an excuse to partake in some worldly "fun." I'm less bothered by this phrase at present.]
Faith Journey - Ugh.
Felt Needs - 1. a lack of Flannelgraph supplies. 2. a buzz-word often used to take the focus off the cross and put it on the market. I dealt with this one in my
sermon on the Gospel Driven Church.
You may want to check that out. Suffice it to say, Jesus never worried
about people's felt needs because fallen humans purposefully create
false "felt needs" to distract us from our true need (see Romans 1).
Every time someone came to Jesus with a
felt need, he re-directed
them to what they really needed. If they weren't willing to make the
shift, he sent them packing (e.g. rich young ruler, woman at the well,
the masses seeking bread, James and John, etc.).
Incarnational
- As in "incarnational ministry" or "incarnational living." No one
quite knows what this means, but it generally seems to mean playing down the
actual Incarnation for my own improvised version.
Invite Jesus into your Heart - Much more manageable than dying to self and being resurrected with Christ. Comes from our old buddy
Finney's influence.
For some reason, we don't think children will understand the concepts
of repentance, faith, and atonement, so we hit them with an abstract,
poorly constructed metaphor that is found nowhere in Scripture instead.
Good call.
It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship - My boy Ted Kluck had this to say in my [not so]
recent interview with him:
"[That buzz phrase] is bogus. It is about
religion. When Paul was confronted with the altar to the unknown God,
he didn’t respond with: “Hey, mystery, that’s great! You have an unknown
God…I have an unknown God…let’s do life together and be authentic in
our uncertainty.” He preached. He implored Timothy to preach, and to
guard the good deposit. I love relationships as much as the next guy,
but I also love the gospel and think that if it was important enough for
Paul to endure beatings and imprisonment for, it’s something I can and
should take a stand on myself. In that same Acts passage, Paul ended
with (v. 31) “For he has set a day when he will judge the world with
justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all
men by raising him from the dead."
Missional - In his book
Don't Stop Believing,
Michael Wittmer writes:
"It
doesn’t help when postmodern innovators punt many of the important
questions into the inscrutable realm of mystery. Earlier this year I
attended a conference on the missional church. When asked for a
definition of the term missional, a leader of the conference
mysteriously proclaimed that the concept was too lofty for him to
explain. Then he asked us to accept his inability to define it as proof
that he understood it, implying that anyone who could put words to it
would prove that they did not get it. So if we think we know, we don’t;
and if we don’t know, we do. At this point I realized that I had just
lost two days of my life to a cause that even the leaders knew little
about!" (p. 135)
Red Letter Christians
- A self-designation that means I take the words and ethic of Jesus
more seriously than confessional or doctrinal Christians. It also
indicates a complete misunderstanding of inspiration, as the "red
letters" are no more authoritative and no more the Word of God than the
black letters. Again, Jesus himself said that the whole of Scripture is
about Him.
Relevant - 1. A cool magazine and
now-defunct publisher. 2. A once-helpful buzzword. When Christianity had
cornered the market on irrelevance (e.g. Stryper, Lord's Gym T-shirts,
and Jesus dog tags), this term came in as a helpful litmus test.
Unfortunately, it's been over-used until all meaning has been sucked out
of it. Let it die. If we all stop saying it now, then the magazine
won't have to change its name.
Seeker-sensitive
- What Jesus was trying to be when he told the crowds they had to eat
His flesh and drink His blood. Then, when many people walked away, he
turned to his disciples and said, "You gonna leave too?" SEN-SI-TIVE!
Soul Tsunami -
A term coined before we all equated tsunamis with thousands and
thousands of people tragically killed. The idea behind it is that we
shouldn't ask God to bless the work we do for the Kingdom, but rather
should find where God is already blessing and glom on to it. My first
reaction to this is, doesn't
somebody have to first start doing
the work for the initial blessing to happen? More importantly, though,
what if Moses, Gideon, Deborah, Esther, Nehemiah, Ezekiel, John the
Baptist, the Virgin Mary, St. Paul, etc. had decided not to obey and
begin the work, but rather to find where God was already blessing
someone else to lead Israel out of bondage, defeat the heathen, rescue
the Jews, build the wall, bear the Messiah into the world, or prepare
the way for him...?
Visioning - Another verbed
noun. The standard proof-text for treating the Body of Christ like just
another restaurant chain is Proverbs 29:18
a, "Where there is no
vision, the people perish:" (KJV) Yeah, Solomon must have meant "vision
statement" type of vision. Remember, it's really important to mine 500 different translations for every occurrence of words like
"purpose," "vision," "mission," etc. The translators of the NIV, though,
understood that the Hebrew
chazon means a vision in the sense of
"revelation" (or, as the ESV translates it, "Prophetic vision"). But
even the rest of the verse in the KJV should clue us in: "Where there is
no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is
he." The kind of "vision" that keeps people from perishing isn't dreamed up by a superstar pastor our brainstormed by a task force; it's found in the pages of Scripture.
What Would Jesus Do? - Nothing wrong with this question. Just remember, that it's LAW, not GOSPEL. Jesus came primarily to
do something, not show us what he
would do.
