Reclaiming the Words of Faith

How are you all doing?  Have we all emerged from our holiday-induced food comas and piles of wrapping paper?  Good!  Because I want to talk to you all about our next sermon series: Reclaiming the Words of Faith.
 
When it comes to language, there are typically two camps of people: 1) those who rely on the dictionary definitions to define words and 2) the people who rely on common usage to define words.  A hilarious example of this is the word "nonplussed".  The word originates some time in the 16th century and originally meant something close to "perplexed".  However, it went out of usage for a while and when people picked up the word again in the early 20th century, people used it to mean unruffled or unconcerned (source).  Hilariously, if a person is nonplussed today, they might either be very confused or completely unbothered because the technical and the cultural understanding of the word are opposites.
 
While the change in the meaning of "nonplussed" was largely accidental, there are times when groups of people make a consciences effort to change the meaning of a word.  This has happened many times with words that originated as slurs against a marginalized group that the marginalized group then takes and wears as a badge of pride.  While there are often still cultural rules as to who can use these terms and when they are acceptable to use, it shows the power we have to name and define our world.
 
It is in the spirit of reclaiming and redefining language that I put our next series together.  In order for us - as a congregation - to continue doing the work we need to do in order to build back our strength and vitality, we need to be able to talk about certain topics that make many people squeamish and uncomfortable.  We need to be able to talk about what it means to share the Gospel, evangelize, make disciples, and be a missional church.  Were you uncomfortable reading that?  Because I was uncomfortable writing that.
 
Unfortunately, these words have been defined over the years by a culture that was more interested in their idea of whether or not people were going to heaven and hell than whether or not those people were already existing in a living hell.  Evangelism has been shaped by people going door to door with Bibles in hand rather than building relationships that give hope.  Making disciples has been more about adding members to the church rolls than about helping people handle difficult questions about life.
 
So, we are going to take the time from now until Lent to talk about these controversial words and what more faithful interpretation of them would be; because, by removing them from our lexicon, we let other people continue to define them poorly and we ignore some key parts of our faith.
 
So, join me as we get uncomfortable talking about words we don’t like and their importance to us today.

Blessings,
Pastor Chris