Matthew Starner

Changing the culture of Christians is difficult. they seem to get stuck in their ways and forget that the rest of the world has moved on.  It’s the reason that the King James version of the Bible is still popular with die-hards, even though no one uses words like “thou,” “hither” and “verily” anymore in everyday language.

At Journey, I have included in our communications style guide a list of words and phrases that we try very hard not to use.  For many of us, we grew up hearing the church referred to as the sanctuary, the teaching referred to as a sermon and those who were not members referred to as visitors. The problem is, a lot of times we end up alienating people because we use words that have radically different meanings or no meaning to those outside the church.

Here is my list and some of the rationale for the change. Anything I’m missing?

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Here is a list I’ve complied from a few different websites. I don’t necessarily think they all need to be on the list, but it’s a good starting point for a discussion amongst church leaders. What is important is that everyone is on the same page – if we’re not consistent, people get confused and they use whatever term they feel like. If we consistently use terminology across the board, our people will pick it up much faster and be more likely to use it too.

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