Are we saying what we think we are saying?

I was recently confronted with the challenge of communications, and both incidents involved my youngest son Andrew.

The first incident occurred on the golf course. I took him golfing for the first time last month. Being his first time, success was not the goal, fun was. He hacked his way down the fairways, trying to get comfortable swinging a club. Midway through the round he was getting confident, and decided he wanted to hit the ball as far as daddy. As any golfer knows, when you try to hit the ball far, you tend to "pull off the ball", oftentimes missing it completely, which he was. My appropriate encouragement to him was, "Andrew, keep you head down." Imagine my surprise when his next swing was attempted with his head 15" from the ball. He took me literally! "I kept my head down dad, but that was really hard!"

The next incident happened yesterday, as I was playing badminton with my kids on vacation. Andrew and I were teamed up against Alex and Anna, his older siblings. At a particularly tense moment in the match, I hollered the encouragement to him, "Alright Andrew, let go get em!" He proceeded to charge under the net and whack his brother with his racket! Again, in the mind of a 4 year old that was probably the correct response. (That and he loves any chance to hit anyone with anything. He is four, remember!)

I made the mistake in both occasions of assuming my audience would understand my cliched instructions. He responded based on his experience in a way he thought would honor my request.

After both incidents, I was challenged to rethink how I approach planning worship services on Sunday. Oftentimes we use "insider talk", words like "sanctification, justification, atonement" and phrases, "saved by grace through faith", "Christ's blood covers our sin". The list is endless. While these words communicate strongly to those of us striving to understand their meaning, to an audience with no understanding or background, these words can be quite confusing, without proper explanation.

We are building a new building with the anticipation that many people with limited or no church background will join us at our invitation. It is a challenge to me to make sure the experience they find won't be cluttered with confusing "insider talk", but will provide opportunities for people to experience the Love of God that is waiting to transform their lives.