Learning the Language
I spent nearly 15 years working with a mission organization called Beyond Borders. We focused on education for folks living in Haiti. And whenever we had new staff join us, one of the major tasks facing them was to learn Kreyol, the language spoken by Haitians. They needed to learn the language, not just to live in Haiti, but also in order to accomplish the mission that God had given us there. And while we tried various methods to help our folks learn the language, we found that a process of immersion worked the best. That is, we would take the staff member out into a Haitian community and have them live with a host family who spoke only Kreyol. Once a week or so, the staff member would meet with somebody who spoke both Kreyol and English for something that more closely resembled a class. But, for as difficult as it proved to be, we found that the best way for staff to learn the language was to be in a situation in which they were forced to use it.
And we church folks need to learn a new language. For the traditional language that we speak in church is not a language that most people around us in our culture understand anymore. And we can not expect folks to learn our language. That would be like expecting Haitians to learn English so that they could hear what we would like them to hear. No, we need to learn the language of the people that we are trying to reach. And we church folks need to learn a new language--the language that makes sense to most people in our culture these days.
We've been experimenting with that new language in worship here at Silver Spring for months now. Just take a look at the order of worship some Sunday. You'll notice that we are using different names for different parts of the service. We are also experimenting with changing traditional language in some of the parts that are familiar to church people. I can tell you, very few folks outside the church understand what we mean when we ask God to "forgive our debts." Indeed, that's why, during Lent, I'm going to spend Sunday mornings talking about what the Lord's Prayer means. We love the traditional language, but do we really understand what we're praying about when we pray it? And there are other parts of the service that are really hard to understand, probably even for church folks. I mean, just what do we mean when we sing with such emphasis, "world without end"? And just what is this "Holy Ghost"?
But our biggest experiments have come with the music that we use on Sunday mornings. Indeed, in one recent study, church music was divided into three main types: the great classic hymns written before 1870, the old gospel hymns written from then until 1935, and three generations of contemporary praise songs. And the study showed that churches with non-declining attendance sing various types of music with all including contemporary praise songs. They have learned to speak a new musical languages, in other words.
Of course, some of our language experiments have gone OK, even great, while others have not. We are still learning this new language so we're bound to make mistakes. And we're bound to get frustrated, even bewildered at times, feeling like we'll never really learn. But that's no reason to stop our lessons. We need to keep immersing ourselves in the new language, not just so we can live in this culture, but so that we can be a part of the mission God has for us in this time and in this place.
