We want to be part of a church that exists for those who don’t go to church. That means lots of sacrifice and great learning along the way. One of the most obvious we determined early on was our language. We desperately want to use language effectively to connect with those outside the church

We had to learn new language to speak about our faith and what we were doing to our culture. Our language makes things inaccessible because people don’t understand what we were talking about. An obvious example of this is when we talk about our service.

Here’s the point… Are we talking about serving the community or meeting together on a Sunday? That was the dilemma we uncovered. So below is our ever-morphing use of language, which we changed and now use. We want to help people who have no previous construct of Christianity to understand and enter in.

Church Service is now Gathering.

In fact we never have a church service, but we gather to be the community God has called us to be and the world needs.

Membership is now Team

Church membership seems to be a thing of the past. Every organisation seems to have membership and some have great perks. Others just have exhaustive email outs you end up unsubscribing from. So joining our team is becoming a member and there are many cool things you get when you’re on team.

Go on mission is now you are missionaries

We don’t want our people to have a particular time and place allocated in their lives to be missional. We want them to understand themselves as missionaries. If you are a disciple, you’re a missionary, all the time.

Next Steps

We always ask people what is their next step of faith, next step of engagement; next step of challenge God is calling them to. We’re big on helping people take just one more step of faith.

Attending is now Participating

We don’t want anyone to ever attend anything we do. We want every person to bring who they and participate to enrich everyone else’s experience. We are working hard not to become a spectator sport, but a sport where everyone gets to play.

Evangelism is now Sharing Your Story

We don’t want anyone to be evangelised in the 21st Century cultural essence of the term. We want to reclaim the Gospel idea of sharing the good news to people we love, of what Jesus has done in our lives. So we encourage the sharing of stories. We are and will more so equip our people in how to share their story.

Blessing

We struggled long and hard with this one. Is it too religious? Do people understand it? Is it acceptable cultural language? We want to encourage its use because it conveys a sense of God’s activity in an act. It is more than only helping, serving or supporting. It can be all of these and more. the phrase we’re teaching our people to use to connect an act of kindness they do with their faith, is when asked Why? They say “I’m a Christian and I wanted to show you the love God has for you.”

Make a decision for Christ is now learning to trust Jesus

A person can make a decision for Christ and then walk out the door and straight away make a decision against Christ. Encountering Jesus is all about trust. We want to encourage people to journey with God to the point of wanting to trust him with the whole of their lives.

Non-Christian is now People Yet To Believe In Jesus

We’ve always disliked the term non-Christian. It seems to devalue a person based on their chosen belief system. What we want to call people is people, and then we apply a God time frame to distinguish where they are at. I’ll frequently say to those people when speaking to them ‘if you’re yet to trust Jesus’ and never ‘if you’re a non-Christian’.

The Bible is now the Bible, but with Explanation

When we speak about the Bible we always unpack it assuming there is someone in the room who is completely unfamiliar with it. We explain in a sentence or two, what the Bible is, where the passage is we’re reading from and how to locate it. The Bible is a tricky book to navigate through if you’re unfamiliar with it.

Worship is now Singing Songs

Unless of course we’re actually talking about worship with the whole of our lives, then we use the word worship.

Connecting the Gospel to real people’s situations

When we talk to those in the community about Jesus we’re aiming to use language that connects with their experiences. We teach our people to talk about God relieving guilt, giving purpose, providing peace, being with the lonely, etc. We start with the common human condition and allow Jesus to speak into it.

Encountering Jesus

We want to celebrate and look for the ways Jesus can be encountered wherever we are. If a person encounters Jesus, we have the faith that Jesus will make the most of that encounter. We also know that most of the encounters people will have with Jesus will be outside of the church walls. The difficultly is that most people don’t recognise these encounters. Part of what we do is help people see that Jesus is constantly encountering them and what they now can do to respond.

Think Jesus

This is our war cry, our mantra, our subheading, and our vision. If we can cause everyone to think Jesus then it creates space for him or her to encounter Jesus. This is a very different experience for a person who has been following Jesus his or her whole lives to someone who is agnostic. If we can provoke people to Think Jesus then they are another step along the discipleship pathway.

This list grows and changes nearly every week, as we discover more effective ways to speak about church, faith and following Jesus. What language do you use that might help people communicate more clearly?