Watch Your Language! Part 1: Does Anyone “Out There” Know What We’re Talking About? (or, to borrow from the movie Rush Hour, Does anybody understand the words comin’ out of our mouths?)

“Lec” Benner, my childhood pastor and later the General Superintendent of his denomination, told the story of his visit to the West Indies island of Dominica where missionaries under his charge were serving.  When he spoke to the church in little seaside village of Layou, on the west side of the island, Rev. Benner decided to use the children’s story of “The Little Engine That Could” since it seemed to fit his message.  The story, of course, is about a little red train engine that huffed and puffed his way up the steep slope of a mountain, panting “I think I can, I think I can” over and over until he crested the top and began down the other side chanting “I knew I could, I knew I could.”

I never knew what his message was about, and apparently, as he later recounted the event, neither did anyone else.  After giving as much of a dramatic turn as he could to the story, he noticed a little boy seated on the floor down front, raising his hand.  “Mister, he asked, “what’s a train?”

I admired Lec for many reasons, but one of them was that he could laugh at himself and his mistakes.  That day, it had never even occurred to him that there were no trains on the island.  They all spoke English, so with the exception of some British influence in the vocabulary, people from the U.S. could communicate without much difficulty.  At least they thought they could!

Genuine communication requires someone to speak and someone else to understand.  Just as teaching does not take place unless someone has learned, so communication does not happen unless somebody understands.

I contend that in the Church there is often a major deficit in our communication skills.  We talk and assume someone understands.  The truth is that fewer and fewer people even in the Church understand the “words comin’ out of our mouths!”  And even fewer still outside the Church world have a clue what we are talking about.

We have become so accustomed to the words and expressions that are used with regularity and ease in the Church that we fail to realize that they may have lost their impact, even reduced to mere platitudes in some cases.  They may still give us a kind of warm sense of familiarity that we mistake for meaningfulness; but in the end careless use or misuse has robbed them of their benefit.

Truths that are meant to transform are being “lost in translation.”

So all together now – Watch Your Language!