A newly-refurbished church near where I live has just had new signage done, in an effort to engage and draw in passers-by. They’ve got so much about it right: the colours aren’t too garish, the type is clear; they’ve even managed to avoid the use of Comic Sans. The only real problem is the wording of the sign itself, which loudly proclaims the church’s apparent mission statement. The slightly archaic church name is followed by six excruciatingly out-of-touch words which are presumably designed to entice and enthral, but actually do anything but: ‘reaching the unreached of our community’.
I can imagine that in the church planning meeting that decided this wording, the sign sounded like a great idea. Among a group of church folk, entirely literate in the strangeness of Christian jargon, this was a fine description of what the congregation aims to do. The only problem is that when you view it from outside the church bubble, you realise that you are one of these ‘unreached’, which is not only a weird word but also makes you sound like a child in need. If you’re ‘unreached’, you probably don’t particularly like the idea of being ‘reached’, and certainly not by the sorts of people who announce that intention on a town-centre sign.
It’s fun to laugh at the weirdness of the Christian language register, at least among ourselves. The problem comes when the worst examples of Christianese slip out into externally-facing use. Weird jargon can actually harm our mission to – yes, reach – people who are uninitiated to church, because it makes us seem out-of-touch, insular, and yes, quite odd. So here are a few examples of the sorts of words and phrases that we can sometimes unintentionally allow to escape the context of the great private joke that is Christian jargon… and some possible alternatives that might be more appropriate.
Read more on The Christian Times
