like a fire

It’s official. Christianity in America has gone beyond looking stupid. We are actually stupid. I’ll not beat around the bush with this one. I don’t know any other group as widespread that feels the need to impart meaning by making up words. My favorite - “missional”, though I don’t mind “shart” so much. I heard this word about a decade ago and thought, “What!?!? Is that a joke?” It is now probably in the top five hot words in churches across America. It is now in wikipedia and I would guess it will one day be in the slow to accept Webster dictionary

Are we no better than that? We can’t relate meaning in a better way than to make up words that imply meaning that has always been there?

Now, that is where I would say that we just look stupid. But here is where it goes over the top and actually becomes stupid. There is a certain church that is having a Children’s conference this week. Many people will attend and it is a given that people in children’s ministry lean towards the cutesy, touchy feely type of marketing. The name of the conference is Conspire. Not meaning what the word already means, mind you. No, this is a “play” on words combining two words “Connect” and “Inspire” to form a whole new word that already exists an has a meaning of it’s own. Hijacking a word for a conference? Hmm… It is so cute to do that!

So in an effort to lead the next generation, I have come up with a few words that I think might represent important concepts for the future of the church:

1. Paneral - the second meeting place of the church for small groups and staff meetings. Also a possible new STD.
2. Kingdomal - The next iteration of missional, since the definition of missional is relating to doing God’s mission.
3. Discipleshipal - taking to next phase in discipleship to invest the kingdom in people.
4. Cohortal - The way churches will grow in the future.
5. Housal church - Where George Barna writes most of his “statistical” (ahem) books.
6. Missionary - this combines two words that should never enjoyed any degress of separation, namely “Missional” and “Stationery” (forgive the spelling “ery”) Evangelism in the future will happen with the new cutesy stationery in the new Leopard Mail.

I got nothing else at the moment. Sorry.

Edit:

Institutional - Meaning we belief in “Instant” and “Satisfaction”.
Meta-narratival - Churches that focus only on the forest. Who needs trees, they just get in the way.
UGCal 2.0 - This is probably only for those who are uber geeks or bleeding edge people in the church, but when is the church going to catch the bandwagon of “User Generated Content”? Why does pastoral (haha) staff decide content for the rest of the church?