Well here I am, back to blogging for the first time in almost 4 months. These past few months have been dominated by working on finishing my two degrees, applying to pharmacy residency programs and preparing for my pharmacy licensure exams so I’ve had no time to study for blog writing. However, I have also used this hiatus as a time of reflection and observation, and I’ve been able to brainstorm some topics for upcoming posts. I’ve also learned that some of the inspiration for good messages can come from unexpected places.
Just last week, we received an odd phone call at our house. I was staying with my parents for a few weeks while I completed a rotation at a pharmacy near my hometown. I was not working on this day and neither was my mother. She answered the phone so I could only hear her responses to the person on the other line. After having her fill me in on the whole conversation later, I was able to understand why this person called. Essentially, it was a family friend who was pondering Christianity and had started to go to church again for the first time since they were a child. They had a hefty load of questions, and to be frank, many of them were extremely misguided. This person was trying to use their theological exposure from childhood to reconcile their knowledge of Christianity while using things they had heard from various people over the years to fill in the gaps. Here were a few of their questions:
“If I want to become a Christian, how do I get washed in the blood? Is that just baptism?”
“How long after becoming a Christian do you get saved?”
“Am I already a Christian since I’m going back to church?”
Christianity shouldn’t be hard to understand. Someone shouldn’t need to memorize a list of definitions to understand the process they need to go through to become a Christian. Jesus said as much when he said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven (Matt 19:14 ESV).” Many interpret this verse to mean that our hearts should be innocent like a child. However, it could also be interpreted to mean that our understanding of God should be such that a child would be able to understand it. Like children, we already have a childlike curiosity of the divine. The church has written eons worth of literature surrounding every verse in the Bible. However, we have become so obsessed with trying to demystify God, that we have neglected make it easier to understand for those unfamiliar with our faith. To outsiders (and even to the disciples that walked with Jesus), the Gospel is so good that it is unbelievable. Thus, we must be able to understand and explain how it is possible in the simplest terms so we can persuade all who are seeking an answer to the mystery of salvation through Christ.
Imagine that you are genuinely curious in the science of stars and you are talking to an astrophysicist that is a renowned expert on the subject. How would you react if he starts talking like he is defending his thesis to earn his PhD and his speech is laced with words you didn’t even know existed? You would probably learn nothing and leave the room knowing less than you did when you entered. This can happen with those entertaining the idea of giving their heart to Jesus. They know that they want to and they are willing to learn more but they have very limited knowledge of the technicalities and semantics we use within Christian circles. If you hit them with every term that appears in your church’s by-laws and constitution, they will probably be further from accepting Jesus than before they asked.
This matter gets even more complicated when we consider every denomination has it’s own lexicon. If someone grew up Anglican and I ask them “Ain’t you been saved and washed by the blood?” like a Free Will Baptist at a mid-July tent revival, they will probably wonder if you’re a Christian or a cult member. Likewise, if I try to discuss the Lutheran concepts of unconditional election and total depravity with someone from the Church of God, they might think I’m the one speaking in tongues. This is why I think it’s time we start reconsidering our approach to spreading the Gospel.
What Can We Do?
I think the best way to solving any problem is asking ourselves questions first. Why do we use so much jargon? Can we spread the Gospel without using denomination-specific terms? First, we need to understand why we use so much jargon. Within Christian circles, we use jargon because it makes communication easier. These made-up terms can pack a lot of meaning behind them. For example, many charismatic Protestant denominations (i.e. Pentecostals and Baptists) use “saved” as a term to encapsulate someone who had confessed their sins, accepted Jesus, and in some churches, become a member of the congregation and been baptized. Conversely, some may use these terms to sound knowledgeable and impressive to others.
As for the denominational terms, Christians often use them as a way to establish groups and cliques. A 2020 psychological study by Shulman, Dixon and Bullock found that humans use jargon as a way to socially identify with certain groups. In other words, we use these denominational terms to convince ourselves we are Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist or whatever we want to be. Those researchers also found that it increases our perception of our own ability to understand information. Put another way, it makes us more confident in our abilities than we probably should be. Just because we use jargon, doesn’t mean we actually understand what we are talking about. Saying you are “saved by the blood” doesn’t mean anything unless you understand why Jesus had to die to reconcile mankind with God.
So how should we talk to people when we evangelize? Well as you could probably guess, we should first seek to avoid using these catch-all terms that you hear in church all the time. You should also avoid whipping out whatever big words you saw in that new John Piper book you’ve been reading for the past month. Try to explain the process of becoming a Christian like you’re teaching a Sunday School class and this is every kid’s first day. Jesus did implore us to be like children when learning the Gospel anyways. We should assume the other person knows nothing because odds are, they likely don’t or are so led astray by misconceptions that they need to be re-educated. This approach can (and probably should) be used when talking to other Christians as well to ensure that we’re all on the same page.
If you think I’m blowing nothing but hot air, I’ve used this approach for years and had a lot of enriching conversations I may not have had otherwise. I originally heard these methods from an apologetics seminar on a retreat and have used them countless times in evangelistic encounters with people who grew up in non-Christian environments. However, I’ve recently started using simpler, more direct language in my conversations with Christians and I’ve found that everyone leaves with more understanding of the subjects discussed once the conversation ends.
To end this discussion, I’ll tell another story. Last year, I had a long time friend ask me questions concerning Christianity. He was highly educated, but he didn’t want to research further because every resource he used and person he talked to used nothing but denominational-specific words and phrases. He didn’t want to delve any further into Christianity because he didn’t want to learn this lexicon the Church has created while trying to build a career and finish graduate school classes. I agreed to answer his questions and decided to answer them like I was talking to someone who had never even heard the name Jesus before. Despite being highly educated, I was talking to him in the simplest terms I could. Through this use of plain language, I was able to give him a novel understanding of the Gospel that he didn’t have before. He couldn’t use any of our fancy pious terms, but he got the big ideas. Since then, he’s turned from skeptical to curious, attending church occasionally and asking me questions as they come up. While he’s not a Christian now, he is a lot closer than he was because now he knows the truth in a way that was essentially roadblocked from him before.
Going forward, we need to be conscious of the language we use in evangelism. Sometimes, we can be the barrier to someone’s understanding of the Gospel and not even know it. More importantly, we need look introspectively and ask why we are making it so complex. Instead we should be like Jesus said and be more like children so we can hope to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven while also leading other there.
Faith, Food and Pharmacy 