Vocabulary

This has been YouthWorks training week so I have been really busy over the last few weeks. Everything we have been working towards is now beginning. Phew...now I get to focus on some summer projects.

But something has been swimming in my head concerning vocabulary. We are constantly limiting and expanding our vocabulary and ideas. Let's look at a few examples. If you are someone who loves music, your expressions and teachers are typically musicians. Musicians are 20-35 year olds who are just getting starting in life. They are typically either singing about something ridiculous, some struggles they are going through, something they love or hate, or about their bling and some girls on the dance floor. This can quickly shape someone's reality and thus their vocabulary. On the other hand, listening to no music whatsoever can limit someone's vocabulary. It may not allow someone to understand people's plights or share in their joys with them (as well as not envy their bling).

I was reflecting on Christian music. If you listen to popular Christian music it typically does not do a good enough job of helping you relate to the biblical imagery it sings about. Someone's God-experience is now very popular and Christian's try and imagine themselves singing that experience instead of evaluating their own. I do not know an answer for this. I know a lot of us love, and miss, great worship times and events with other believers. But it is very difficult nowadays to make worship songs guide others toward God if the vocabulary isn't the same used by that believer. If the vocabulary is from 2,000 years ago it is very difficult to make it relevant and draw a connection. Christians have to do a much better job with our songs if we are going to market it and say "here is Christianity." Six possible modern metaphors for the kingdom of God by Brian McLaren which can expand our vocabulary are: the dance of God, the revolution of God, the mission of God, the party of God, the network of God and the dance of God. I am still searching for a web site who lists them clearly...

If all that you read are self help books, then you miss out on the vocabulary of the unknown, of that which is greater than you. If all that you read are novels, then you miss out on some great history and understanding of the world. Not understanding history truly limits vocabulary. If you do not seek to understand genetics as a Christian and what that debate means to the Church today then we do not understand the vocabulary of the upcoming generations. If we make them try to understand ours without a need to understand why, we will fail over and over.

Please, please, read, view, listen to or experience something different. A person is what they are and what they are not. You are what you allow yourself to be and what you limit. Remember, no one can take away your freedom. You are made in the image of an almighty Creator, completely free and bound to be like no man. Stop making God in your image and allow God's people to be made in God's image. (I don't know where that came from but I'm going to leave it) Let's begin to shape our vocabulary in a handy way that can give some good light to those who need it.