Tuesday, November 07, 2006

My Christian Phrase Hate List

Here are some of the words and phrases that Christians , church leaders and myself use, that really get under my skin.

I used one in my last post.

These words and phrases annoy the pants off of me. It’s mainly ghetto language that has flaky, religious, stereotypical usage and narrow restrictive definitions.

1. Formula
2. Evangelistic tool
3. Model
4. Scripture
5. The word
6. “I felt in my Spirit”
7. “God has told me”
8. “I was woken in the night”
9. Non-Christian
10. Missionary
11. Pastor
12. Intercessors
13. Prophetic team
14. Worship Leader
15. “and now the stewards will serve you communion”
16. “I didn’t get much out of the worship”
17. “we need more of the word”
18. soaking
19. Rapture
20. Networking

8 comments:

dave wiggins said...

i like models, they're mostly pretty and nice to look at. some of those phrases annoy me too but pastor? missionary? the word? what's that about. i suppose in the context you were thinking about? ... FORMULA would also be top of my list e=mc2, now that's a formula

lisa said...

byron was moaning about the phrase "market place" yesterday. people go to their work place or their business or their company, organization or even corporation. they are in the corportae world or the industry or whatever. but only christians say "market place."

Anonymous said...

Brian,
I would say it goes to the heart. What is your heart when you use these words. I think what upsets us about religious catch phrases are that we are seeing the heart behind the phrase. I know that if Billy Graham told me that "he felt in his spirit when he was woken in the night that we should have the missionary gather the Prophetic Worship team to help the Stewards serve the communion" I would say yes sir. I would not necessarily say that that formula is the only model we could use, but if it does not go against scripture ,then I think it would be fine. After all we need more of the word. I guess what I am saying is that if more Non-Christians were soaking in the Word instead of going into the market place and networking, then they probably would not mis the rapture. I think we need more intercessors. If so then maybe we would all get more out of the worship. Thats just what God told me or was it my pastor. It's all good.

J-Mac said...

Top of my list would be 'God has told me...' or 'God is saying...'. I've no doubt that God speaks but I think most of the time it should be replaced with 'Here's what I think...'

Anonymous said...

Why not be a bit kinder to yourself and your Christian family?

Anonymous said...

ha! so true! people use these terms to justify all sorts of nonsense.

roast honey said...

I always found words like salvation, grace, mercy, born again confusing.I dislike them because they are easily associated with religion (another word i hate) and they close out ordinary people because so many people portray what they really are badly. I hate the word 'Backslider.' How judgemental-it just grates on me. I could just about hack lukewarm.

Anonymous said...

One thing that I do find really interesting, if not slightly disturbing, is how so many people get excited by sermons that just link together all these Christian buzz words and phrases. I was at a Church a few weeks ago and the guy that was preaching just rattled out a load of classic lines and almost comedy catchphrases, for example "He that is in my is lesser than he that is in the world, oh no, it's he that is in me is GREATER". To which the congregation chant a thunderous Amen.

Several people after the service where talking about what a great talk it was, so I asked them what it was he actually said. Apart from quote a couple of phrases, they couldn't come up with anything solid at all that he said. Now, I'm obviously not debating the truth of the statement, but I do find it alarming when people just string a load together but don't actually have any real content. Everyone goes away feeling nice and hyped up, but who actually learnt anything.