The Word and The Word

I had an experience this morning that started me thinking about how we as People of God sometimes, and unthinkingly perhaps, take shortcuts with terms that have a specific meaning to us.
The one term in question, or is it two, is “the word”. We use it to speak of Jesus, following on from the Gospel of John. We also use it to speak of the Bible or God’s Word and then shorten it to The Word. Usually we can determine the intended usage from the context, but that is because we know the shortcuts.
The thing is and I guess it may be my thing, that others outside the Community of Faith do not know the shortcuts. The consequence is that our laziness, or lack of clear thinking, we may create an impediment to someone who sees our shortcuts and gets confused.
Word is just one of the myriad of words that roughly equate to technical terms in any industry. You need to study to understand many terms within that place because they are specific shortcuts to make the workplace more efficient and sometimes safe. This is fine in an industry context; it is not so fine when we are primarily involved in communicating Good News.
We, as Jesus’ followers have been commissioned by our master to “go and make disciples (followers) and teach them to follow He whom we follow”. We need to rethink some terms that we commonly use such as reconciliation, atonement and words like that to bring significance to those around us that we live the Gospel (Good news of God) to, and this may be a long term endeavour.
Another article I read this morning was From a Mission about the dynamic of mission activity. The first part speaks to the preparation for a specific mission activity.
“ * a long-term perspective and commitment
* a year of solid language study, and even then the missionary felt he only had the basics
* sitting with the people, observing and learning; noting how they made decisions, told their stories, resolved conflict, chose leaders, celebrated significant occasions, mentored the young, treated older people, interpreted dreams, understood time, related to the ancestors, buried their dead, feared the gods of the forest, understood the origin of life
* getting beyond the superficial to the heart issues, the deeply held values in the culture.”
The second part relates to actually doing the job of evangelism. It is not so different to living in our jungle.
“We as missionaries do not want to be presenting a foreign Jesus. Rather, we aim to communicate and avoid miscommunication about Jesus. The people group needs to understand that Jesus is relevant and essential for them. The good news is only good if it touches and transforms the deepest beliefs, values and feelings in any given culture.
So what brought this local man from an unreached people group to the point where he decided that he and his family would follow the Jesus way? He heard the God story, of how Jesus honoured his ancestors, this Jesus who is higher than all the gods of the forest, the only one who can destroy fear.” Source WEC Australia
This is a process, first we must get into a position in which we are able to be heard. This may not happen in a congregational context. We need to learn to understand the language of those we are trying to minister to, including the nuances of it. Then we need to be able to tell the story of the Gospel in the worldview of our listeners, listeners not hearers: there is a difference if we want to be a good communicator.