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In This Issue...
Articles
- A Theology of Humor by Cheryl Taylor
- Ministering With Humor by Stephanie Nance
- Christian Leaders Having Fun? by Pam Morton with Kathy Jingling
- The Health Benefits of Humor and Laughter by Dwenda Gjerdingen, MD, MS
Resources
Book Reviews
- Anatomy of an Illness by Norman Cousins
- The Purse-Driven Life by Anita Renfroe
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The Word — Too Good to Encode
By Rev. Juli Nelson
Juli serves as pastor of First Christian Church in Clever, Missouri. An ordained minister, Juli has served in a variety of ministry capacities including church organist, director of Christian education, adjunct instructor in music and biblical studies at Evangel University, and as a retreat speaker. Juli holds a bachelor's degree in music, a master of theological studies from the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary, and a master of divinity from Phillips Theological Seminary. She and her husband Nathan are the parents of two adult children.
Language may not be the operative word at all for communicating the good news of Jesus Christ in the 21st century. The word instead is relationship.
My husband grew up learning Morse code and spent hours happily tapping out messages to other "Morse coders" in far-flung parts of the world. Call it early texting. It was a language certain people understood and others did not. Those who understood, enjoyed each others' company and shared valuable information with each other; those who didn't know the code just heard tapping noises.
Leaders in the emergent church movement tell us that the Church has become absolutely incomprehensible (and of no interest) to many in our culture under the age of 40. It's not that people don't still have needs, present and eternal. It's that the language to communicate that has changed. Billy Graham has noted that if he were starting his ministry today, he would have to do something far different than the mass-rally-communicate-to-everyone-at-one time strategy that was effective when he employed it. In fact, if there's one central theme from the emergent church leaders, it's that language may not be the operative word at all for communicating the good news of Jesus Christ in the 21st century.
The word instead is relationship. And that is dependent not so much on language as on listening and time spent together. For a generation that has experienced a lot of broken relationships and decontextualized learning, words of good news often become credible only when they have skin on. For a culture whose primary exposure to Church in
recent years has been the Church Lady on Saturday Night Live and other satirical representations on TV and in movies, they have to see the gospel lived out.
They need to see what it looks like when Christians say God cares about human needs. They need to hear what it sounds like when a Christian couple have a disagreement. They need to know what it feels like when a Christian comes alongside someone as advocate in their quest for justice. They need to see and hear and taste and touch this gospel so they too can experience it as good news.
People have the best shot at doing that in the context of caring relationships. These take time, of course, and if there's one thing we're all short of, it's time. So it's easier to just toss words at a situation, or hope someone else will, or throw our hands up in despair and say that people are just so cynical or apathetic about spiritual things these days. But maybe it's just that the words have become so encoded that all they can hear are tapping sounds.
In 21st century North America, it may be time to return to the advice to St. Francis of Assisi — to preach the gospel every day and when necessary to use words. Or, in the advice of the biblical author James — let everyone be quick to listen and slow to speak (1:19). I don't think we have to throw out all words to communicate the good news of Jesus Christ. But we may have to choose them more wisely and make sure they're not so encoded as to be incomprehensible. If we "put the gospel on" every day in our actions and then remember to sit down and listen a while to others, we may find that the gospel still has power to turn the world upside down.
