Stop Speaking Churchanease

A friend of mine recently returned from a weekend of ministry training in which she was inspired, rejuvenated, and…left out. Although she had a great time for the most part, she also experienced a phenomenon that most of us experience when we first become involved. It’s the same feeling when we venture into a foreign country where we hear different languages we don’t understand. She felt like the ministry leaders and other peers kept speaking “church talk” or “churchanease” as I like to call it.

I suppose in a ministry training setting this sort of speech is appropriate. What concerns me, however, is that the hyper-involved, blog-reading Catholics sometimes take our “churchanease” into our daily lives. As a result, those who do not understand our faith or are at least curious are pushed away and feel excluded because they aren’t able to speak with the same terminology.

Churchanease doesn’t simply involve using those all important buzz words like “unpack,” “discern,” or “missional.” It’s more than that. It’s the mindset that we sometimes feel the need to speak like a “church person” to be one when instead we should be connecting with people. Isn’t being apart of the universal Church contingent upon our realization that the Church is diverse, multifaceted, and unique?

Please, don’t get me wrong. I am not asking you to dumb down your conversations with other ministers and peers for the sake of simplicity. My point is that we Catholics must make a concerted effort to be aware of the audience to which we minister. However, this effort is based upon the premise that we must first remember that every opportunity is an opportunity to minister. Is our speech, in moments of ministry, saying that we are attempting to relate and connect or exclude and prove our intellect?

Although it’s difficult to connect with every individual we meet, paying attention to how we interact with them can go a long way in building relationships. More importantly, relationship is the very foundation of our Faith and if we want people to fall in love with the Savior we know and the faith we trust, we have to speak the language they understand.

We have to be a missional people that discern how to appropriately unpack all our faith has to offer. See what I did there?