Describe your church.

If you had to describe your church to someone, what would you say? Would you try to use language they could understand? I think it’s important to use terms others use, or hear on a regular basis.

I ran across a church that had this description on their home page…

_____ is an urban, multi-generational, and multi-ethnic church striving to be an incarnational presence in a postmodern and post-church culture.

What? I’m a Christian leader and I don’t think I fully understand all that, come on DANG! If I was an unbeliever, new believer, or old believer with less than 2-PHD’s I wouldn’t know what kinda church this is.

I know this guy, it’s a good church…But don’t try to fit every “hot” term in your description. We confuse people enough with other things, let’s not start to splinter the church so much that no one can tell you are even a “real” church.

We can understand, operate, lead and live missionaly. We can teach and model a life that is incarnational or  we can and should be multi-ethnic in our church composition. But I think it’s better to use simple language, and simple illustrations to define our vision and goals.

Getting to fancy on the verbiage just brings confusion. So I would challenge you, when speaking about your church, to use simple language and terms. It brings more unity and understanding to those around you.

What say you?