Today I was on the phone with 3 different technical support people to try to move our church website from one host to another. Everyone I talked to and everything I read said that this should be an incredibly easy process. About 3 hours, 4 I'm putting you on hold's, and 3 different technical support people later, the "Easy" process was complete. In the meantime, I got to feel like an idiot while these "supportive" people threw all this technology jargon at me that I couldn't decipher even with a minor in business computer information systems from my wonderful in state college.
The experience caused me to reflect on how we do things at church. While it might be perfectly standard to throw around terms like: IP address, DNS, A Record, MX Record, and CNAMES.
Those who are not in that field feel like another language is being spoken to them. The same can be said for people who did not grow up in church. Intelligence has nothing to do with not understanding specific jargon. I don't speak I. T. but I still am an intelligent person. A person without a church background may not know terms like: Redemption, justification, holy, 12 tribes of judah, messiah, blood of Jesus, grace, or sanctification
I can tell you that my reaction to speaking with the tech savvy support team was to get what I needed done and never talk to them again. I don't want to learn another language; I just want my computer to work!
People who don't have a church background can often feel the same way. We should not assume that people know all the church words. I have found that those who have grown up in church still do not have a full appreciation for the Bible terms that are casually tossed about.
Its been said if you can explain what your talking about to a child then you really understand it. If a child couldn't understand what in the world we are talking, singing or preaching about on Sunday's maybe its a sign that we haven't really dug deep enough to fully understand it ourselves.
Explaining the good news to people who are without it, in a way that they can comprehend, has nothing to do with watering down the good news and everything to do with lifting it up.
Let's try to be more supportive than the technical support I received on the phone this morning. Let's attempt to de Jargonize our Christianease so that someone with no church background can still receive and celebrate the good news.
In Jesus Name
Jarrett Jamieson
Monday, March 7, 2011
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