I Hear a Word Buzzing

I don’t like buzz words and phrases. This is so because they are almost always imprecise. They are designed to be two things; ambiguous and undoubtedly, unquestionably true. Say one, and folks around you will nod their heads in approval but won’t be able to explain what it is you mean to say. Phrases like “thinking outside of the box” means “unconventional.” It can be innovative (another buzz word) or “wacko” (yet another buzz word.) Terms like “organic growth” mean nothing. The word “organic” means unaided or without design or intent. It’s natural, “It just happens.”

If you want to impress your hearers and give your point some weight then link it to the “next generation.” This is a term that replaced the “youth of America;” the old buzz word with the same force, used a few generations back, was “modern.” If you say “this will appeal to the next generation” they “this” must unquestionably be of higher quality or greater faithfulness.

One of the more interesting buzz word I heard actually has some merit. It comes from the study of management. It is the word "adaptive." This is a style of leadership and a kind of change that is open to improved ways of accomplishing worthy goals. With it was used the notions of "tactical" and "strategic" plans. I was taught that tactics serve strategies. Strategies accomplish objectives for the core purpose of an organization. A presbytery within a presbytery is, for example, an adaptive change because it allows the new presbytery the freedom to carry out an innovative and more faithful mission while avoiding all the ramifications of leaving the denomination. 

Such buzz words lay at the heart of the speeches I heard while at the conference in Minneapolis. The two most often used negative buzz words were “traditional” and “denominational.” Everyone hearing these terms immediately understood that if we are to “think outside the box” we must step away from such things. Even “church” was passé and replaced with “fellowship.” It is said that a fellowship is “more fluid” than a church. If you have any idea what “fluid” means in this usage please let me know.

The most often used buzz word; the one that I swear was accompanied by the sounds of heavenly harps was “missional.” I’ve heard a half dozen talks and read four books on this subject and I still don’t understand how it is being used. It seems to point to nothing new. The Church is about mission like fire is about heat. I said that, Emil Brunner said it better, “The church exists by mission, just as fire exists by burning.” He said this in 1931. You would think the “next generation” discovered something new because they “repackaged it” (buzz) using a newly coined term for it.

Just because they are trite in their language and bit arrogant, it doesn’t make them wrong. I am pleased and encouraged that the “next generation” Christians are inspired by missions. The emphasis on missions corrects a deadly pattern present in most congregations. I heard Howard Hendricks saying in 1973, “we have turned the Great Commission on its head, instead of “go into the world” we say “come to my church.”

When we say “come to my church” we say, “on my terms, singing my style of music, hearing my preferred subjects in sermons.” When we go to where the lost are, when we love them as Jesus did, we become as St. Paul was, “all things to all people, that all means, some might be saved.” Read the preaching of Jesus, his message was stated in the terms his most immediate audience could understand. Maybe that is being “missional