How to Speak Christianese

One of my biggest pet peeves in the church is “Christianese”, words and phrases we use in the church that are only used in the context of church and which no one outside of church can understand. Granted every religion, culture, and community will have its own vocabulary which will be foreign to outsiders. I whole heartedly embrace the language of the faith. The problem, however, in my experience is two-fold. First, most people inside the church really have no clue what they saying when they speak Christianese. Don’t believe? Ask a Christian friend what “trinity” or “atonement” mean and count how many times they say “uh”. Second, despite our ignorance of our own vocabulary we for some inexplicable reason expect those outside the church to understand what we are saying when we speak to them in Christianese about the gospel. We then get frustrated and look down on them because they have no idea what we are talking about.

Fortunately there is solution!

From the people at BADD it’s “How to speak Christianese”!

This video is a couple of years old, but hilarious nonetheless.