Maybe its all a matter of language.

So I've just spent a day with some church leaders - all engaging with the topic of leadership. Good fun and good conversation. But its got me thinking, or rethinking - again. My friend Tim Brown from Clovis was speaking about the transition in his own thinking driven by both the reality of what he was hearing from people in his church and the new thoughts Simple Church @ Thom Rainer was stirring in him. A new way of looking at spiritual formation and ensuring that we guide people from searching for faith, to finding faith to being formed in their faith. Its a topic close to my heart and to our church. But here's my concern. I admire the thinking behind Simple Church. In fact I admire much of the thinking of many of the 'bright lights' of the modern church - the Andy Stanley's, the Rick Warren's, the Bill Hybel's the Ed Young's. Names that anyone passionate about lost people and the church being centrally missional will know and will listen to - wisely. But as I listen I feel a tension. I hear their thoughts/ strategies for both growth and discipleship but it sounds (may I say it) - formulaic. Their strategies are based around propositional solutions. Their pathways still sniff of linear western thinking. And it makes me question it. Because, at the same time as listening to these leaders I listen in to other guys that I equally respect - Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Mark Driscoll and their pathways seem so different - at least how they talk about them seems different. Their wording is more dynamic, more organic. Its morphing, its movement, its rhythm. One leaves me cold, one leaves me invigorated. This leaves me puzzled. Which one do I choose, which do I give greater attention to. And that gets me thinking even more. One sounds Western, the other sounds more Eastern. One sounds static the other sounds dynamic. One sounds linear the other sounds holistic. They sound different .....but this is what I'm wondering - they sound different but maybe their not. Maybe its all a matter of language. Maybe their same exactly the same, but differently.

As Tim and I talked maybe what the church has to do is pay more attention to our language than we do. Maybe at the start of the 21st century we have to pay closer attention to our wording.

Sometimes people think I'm heretical. At first listen sometimes they wonder ..... "where does this guy stand on this or that?" ... and they email me or rush to set up an appointment to make sure I'm "sound". But, when they dig deeper, listen closer, they see that I'm completely Orthodox - all I'm doing is choosing my words carefully to cause you to hear the same old truth in a new way. If I can make you hear it differently it becomes fresh, dynamic, alive....and maybe then you'll re-think it to then re-live it. So many people know it linearly - but they don't know it dynamically.
Maybe leadership at this juncture where cultures, generations even philosophies are birthing while some are dying - maybe leadership needs to pay closer attention to the choice of language.

I guess beyond strategies and vision and organizing and planning - a huge part of what leaders do and how we do it is speaking words - and what I'm suggesting is that maybe today our words have to change. I grew up in a generation that talked about having a 'new song' and a new movement of worship was being birthed. Today we need 'new words'.

I'm urging leaders to not only have a strong ecclesiology, a strong missiology, a strong theology ...but at this time and place we need to have a strong "wordology" - words shape, words form, words guide, words birth. Maybe today we need new words for people to hear it.
Friends - choose your words carefully.