Baptist Semantics: Words Worth Coining tagged: ,

Baptist Semantics: Words Worth Coining

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“I was saved this weekend.”
“Saved from what?”
“From death, you see…”
“What!! Did you have an accident?”
“No, I went to church, and….”
“You almost died in church?”
“No, no. I asked Jesus into my life.”
“You actually saw him?”

I think you get the picture. Before you think that conversation is ludicrous, let me add that it was almost verbatim of one I had right after I was saved in a Southern Baptist church in East Hartford, Connecticut over 30 years ago. I was excitedly telling that exact story to a friend. As I rattled on and on at the kitchen table, my friend’s roommate, Janie, overheard it and had no clue what I was talking about. Several weeks later Janie showed up at my house in the middle of a torrential rainstorm. To this day the only explanation for her arrival on my doorstep was an intervention from God.

Janie had never been to my house. She only knew I lived in the particular neighborhood near a little grocery. The person who directed her to my home was some man standing in the street clearing the drains of debris. When I opened the door she was dripping wet. Her shoes were waterlogged and she was shivering uncontrollably. She was crying and frightened and she wanted to know right then and there how she could be saved because she knew she was lost. The irony in this story is that I didn’t have one word of conversation with her during the time I related my conversion to my friend. But Janie related that the words that kept jumping out in her mind for weeks after I left my friend’s home, were “saved, lost, death and Jesus”. She was baptized soon after.

From that day on, I realized the power there was in one’s testimony–one’s words. And especially the name of Jesus.

I was conversing with someone the other day via email. As we shared various stories about our lives, she mentioned that her blog was being read by a family member who was lost. She said, “I don’t know what she gets from it. I talk Christianese so much.” I’m sure we’ve all been guilty of using so much churchese that we fail to communicate with people. I wonder, do our coined words and phrases effect the acceptability, the reception and interpretation of folks on the outside looking in? I’m thinking it is far more important how our words effect our brothers and sisters in Christ. God will interpret and give power to our words for the lost. That is not our responsibility–we are simply to be faithful to our testimony of Him; He’ll do the rest. I couldn’t have bungled a witness opportunity more than I did in the story above with Janie, but God took it and did something with it anyway.

Ever say something and been misunderstood? Ever have to explain yourself over and over again? And still no one gets it, or some don’t follow where you were leading with your topic? What words do we use that are foreign to people without Christ? What words do we use that fail to communicate our faith with others? More importantly, what attitudes and actions do we own that color our sentences no matter how perfectly or intelligently they are worded?

Lately in some Southern Baptist circles we have battled over the wording in everything from the Baptist Faith and Message to the meaning of the word “all”. It’s getting harder and harder to understand each other as each person adopts or assigns a personal meaning to words and terms of endearment.

Let’s take a few as examples. Grace. Salvation. Baptism. Sovereignty. Faith. Gifts. What do those mean to you?
I have been reading blogs for over a year now and still have not found a consensus on the meanings of these words. It even seems folks cannot agree on what the word “church” means. New words are “emerging” everyday. How is the world to understand us as we try to convey a message of hope and peace in the Gospel of Jesus Christ when we can’t convey it to one another without heated debate and misunderstandings?

One of the most intriguing posts I’ve read recently that focused on misunderstandings and origins of those misunderstandings is by one of my co-contributors, Bowden McElroy. If we could but take time to discern where a person is coming from as they communicate with us, we might feel less apt to react in a negative manner to their words.

We each assign different meanings to our words. With every piece of our own vocabulary comes a history of emotions, memories, circumstances and understandings of the words. We each have different levels of Christian maturity; and often what a more mature person recognizes as sin (from God’s perspective), a less than mature person will define in ways that satisfy their own aims or plans (from a fleshly perspective). This can even occur with pastors who seek to gain influence and build resumes to pursue higher status and greater recognition from man. It can happen when elders or deacons seek to manipulate and run a church in the way in which they think is best, disregarding the desires of the body or the mind of Christ. It can happen in families where one person is more selfish than another–when one focuses on every flaw another has and never looks in the mirror at their own.

Jesus says the world will know we are Christians by the love we show one another. He tells us we are to be the light in the world. We will attract others by our actions. We will pierce the darkness with hope. We will brighten the world with our tolerance, kindness and generosity. We will empower it with gentleness, self-control and peace. We will not do this by hiding our candles beneath the baskets within the walls of our buildings. No, we will do this by our everyday actions in everyday situations with everyday words.

Words. Definitions. Meanings. One word conjures up its own definition in our minds the moment we see it or hear it. Let me give you a few more to consider: service, worship, ministry, evangelism, witness, missions, fellowship.

What are the distinguishing characteristics of those words? In the next few posts I write, I will seek to explore some of these words and perhaps give clarity to one or two. Maybe as we dialog together we can settle on some words worth coining.

For today I’d like us to focus on the word ministry. We’ve had a few posts already here at sbcIMPACT that have focused on wonderful ministries within our sister churches. As a pastor’s wife, I’ve been involved in many different ministries throughout our service in four pastorates. In every church we ever served in, the folks had there own ideas of what a pastor and his wife were suppose to do in fulfilling their calling as ministers. So I’d love to know what you think of when you consider that word. But for the purpose of my point in this post, Hebrews 10:23-25 defines–in part–what I think ministry is.

“Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He Who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur each other on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another–all the more as you see the Day approaching.” [italics mine].

Four things jump out at me when I read the passage above:
~Let us hold.
~Let us consider.
~Let us not give up.
~Let us encourage.

When we hold steadfast–without wavering–to the faith our Lord Jesus Christ implanted in us, we will super-naturally consider how we can spur each other on toward love and good deeds. We will want to meet together, fellowship together, accept guidance from one another in order that we might be better able to serve one another and our Lord. We will long to be together as we are beaten down from the world and from life’s trials and tribulations. We will want to encourage others and be encouraged as we have been encouraged. We will not want to be separated or severed from the Body.

Saturday I went to deliver a large fruit tart to my friend whose son had just died in a car accident early Friday morning. When we arrived at her home, she wasn’t there; she and her husband were at the funeral home. But some friends from church were there. They were down on their knees scrubbing floors. They were scouring bathrooms and stripping beds. They were getting the home ready for out-of-town relatives who would arrive today. Each lady had plans for their own lives that day–but they had put their plans on hold. A crisis in the life of a brother and sister in Christ takes priority.

Death is an interruption that brooks no arguments. One must put an entire life on hold to answer the responsibilities of caring for a lost loved one’s final journey.

Has anyone ever died for whom you had to attend to all the details? From picking out the casket, deciding on a burial plot, choosing clothing to dress your lost loved one in, contacting relatives, arranging for accommodations, meeting with banks to get a loan to pay off the funeral, picking out flowers, greeting visitors who bring food and come to offer condolences, finding something appropriate to wear yourself?

It is monumental what a family in grief faces during the first days following a death. And it doesn’t stop after the funeral. It goes on and on, for weeks, months, years.

In the next few days, I know from experience, that hours will be filled with the agony of separation. Tears will be rivers without end. Minutes will be filled with the blessings of friends calling and ministering to the needs of a grieving family. There will be memories and regrets and guilt. There will be questions, denial, and anger. Death brings these things when it visits.

As I sat in the funeral home next to my sister-in-Christ, kneading her shoulders and holding her hand as she shared stories about her son, I remembered. I remembered my own son’s death. I remembered the turmoil, the emptiness. When my friend moaned in relief as I continued rubbing her back, she brought attention to an act I had not even been aware of myself. I remembered how bad I’d ached–the stress-filled muscles–unending knots which wrenched at every fiber of my being that Mother’s Day two years ago. I thought how simple this was to sit here and touch her…to stretch forth a hand in love. Such a small deed. I thought of hundreds of acts of kindness from my church family in the past few years and knew this is what ministry is all about.

It’s not so much the monumental organized efforts of dynamic planning. (Though there is much for which to be grateful in them). Ministry is servant-hood. It’s scrubbing floors and toilets. It’s sacrificing time. It’s embracing one’s own pain to comfort another’s. It’s spending all of what we’ve been given of the blessings in Christ to give glory and honor to the Most High God.

God has a purpose for things He allows. We do not always know what that purpose is, and often we don’t agree with His timing. But as we “hold unswervingly to the hope we profess” in Christ, He is faithful to His promises. As we consider how we may spur each other on toward love and good deeds, we find purpose in our trials, our heartaches and brokenness. As we continue “meeting together” we are given opportunities to encourage one another. We have every opportunity in the world to minister to others in our Lord’s name. In this we might all agree? selahV