Learn the Language

If you plan on being a missionary, the need for learning a new language when you move to another country is pretty obvious. One can only gain minimum credibility by speaking to natives through an interpreter. Being able to communicate in the language of the people group one is trying to reach is an imperative.

Many missionaries will tell you that about all they accomplish during their first four years in a new country is learning the language. It is a worthy investment of time, however long it takes. I can’t imagine any reasonable person who would disagree with this. Nevertheless, this is apparently only applicable in ministry outside of the United States. I mean, how could there be a language barrier here in America? We all speak the same language, right?

Well, no. We don’t.

Every week in churches all over America, pastors and parishioners are practicing and expanding upon a dialect of English which is not spoken, heard, or understood by the majority of Americans. Some call it “Christianese.” Whatever we label it, it is unmistakably a “foreign” language to the rest of the culture.

The more isolated we (the Church) have become, the more idiomatic phrases and “secret handshakes” have become a part of the common conversation inside and outside the four walls of our churches. Inside jokes and exclusive language with an “us versus them” mentality pervade our speech. It’s as though insiders have the need to develop a code that isn’t breakable by outsiders.

This is just a small example, but we had an incident early on in our experience that was a reminder to us to be diligent in “watching our language.” One week, one of our leaders led a prayer. I think it was before an offering. But he ended the prayer with these words: “And everyone said…”

So, maybe two people said, “Amen.” I was horrified. That is so much an insider secret handshake. The next week we had a leadership meeting.

I used humor and approached the subject of the transgression lightly, so that he didn’t feel scolded. But the disturbing part about pointing it out in that meeting was that not one other person on our leadership team had thought about how “insider” that phrase was. They remembered him saying it, but at the time no one else thought anything of it. But the “outsiders” who were present that day had no idea what “everyone said.”

I have found that there are two things we “churchy” people need to do in order to recognize such insider language and eliminate it from our vocabularies. First, we need to remove ourselves from the source of insider speech. For example, I used to spend 7 days a week in the church. I didn’t have time to even meet an outsider, let alone establish a relationship with someone who didn’t already “know the code.” I will address this later.

Secondly, we need to immerse ourselves in the culture of those outside our circle. That I will address next.

The Plan

On Sunday, October 31, 2004, Pastor Phil gave us the whole day to make a presentation to the church at Carbondale. On Sunday morning, we announced my resignation and provided the people a dialogue about the next generation. Our primary text came from the Old Testament book of Judges. It is an accurate description of many who live in our city today. “After that whole generation had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the LORD nor what he had done for Israel.” (Judges 2:10) We talked about the need to reach to people in our church-rich city who would never walk into a building full of “Christians” any more than a robber would go strolling into a police station.
That night, we talked about how we might strategize to accomplish this task. At the time, I had formulated a few ideas. By that I mean, I had read some books. So I shared some fancy power point pictures and diagrams that I had probably copied from either Ed Stetzer, Ralph Moore, or Frost / Hirsh. And we told the people of Carbondale that in the coming days they would all be invited to go with us—anyone who felt so led.
By January of 2005, we had already begun to meet weekly with a launch team that had been assembled. We also held Q & A meetings at Carbondale every Sunday night in January one hour prior to the evening service for anyone who was curious about the new endeavor. Carbondale also sent us to a church planting “Boot Camp” that helped us to clarify our vision, our mission, and our strategies.
Now, if I had it to do all over again, we would have taken a lot more time to plan and to prepare before a launch date. But we didn’t know any better. So, on Sunday morning, February 6, at 10:00 am, we gathered for the first time in the Zarrow Regional Library meeting room right across the street from Carbondale. It was, all in all, rather inauspicious. I probably sucked. I often do. But we had a couple of things going for us.
First, we had already answered “yes” to the big question: “At the end of the day, did God call us to do this?” So, there was that. But second, out of the 40 or so people who had decided to come with us, there were more than a handful of us who were determined to figure this thing out.
So maybe that’s another thing we had going for us. We never claimed to know for sure what to do or how to do it. What we found out was that we had a group of people—some of them any way—who were willing to suspend expectations and to dive into this grand experiment together. What we had was an assortment of folks who would become a community which was willing to help us develop the culture, the values, and the praxis that would become Agora.

Who Will Go with Us?

In spite of our assurance that we had to do this, we still felt a lot of apprehension about how to proceed. We had read a couple of books on planting churches, but we had never done it before nor had we been a part of a plant. So, wouldn’t that be like reading a driver’s manual and then jumping right into a car and assuming that I can drive? I knew one thing: we would have to have help.
First of all, Pastor Phil had given us permission to present our vision to the entire church and to invite anyone who shared the vision to go with us. Not only was this a gracious gesture, it was nearly unheard of within the circles in which we ran. But before we were even ready for that we still had some work to do. We had to figure out what this new community would look like and why. We needed more training. And we needed some people we loved and trusted to help us dream and plan and to go with us to help.
It didn’t take us very long to deliberate as to whom we would ask to come alongside us. Two couples immediately came to mind, and once we had Pastor’s permission, we asked them to pray and to consider taking this leap with us.
I have to say that I don’t know what I would have done if either of them had said no. I was so convinced that they were the ones that I probably would have had to rethink the whole thing if either of them had said no. Thankfully, neither of them did.
David and Iva Gilliam had been friends of ours for more than a dozen years. We had been through a lot together and had served together in two different churches. David has a Christian Education degree as well as a Masters of Divinity diploma. Iva is an extremely talented musician and singer and one of the kindest, most capable people I know. Besides, we really love them. And you want to share this kind of experience with people you love and with which you like spending a lot of time.
Inexplicably, Dave and Iva said yes.
Now the Gilliams are pretty close to being our age. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just that we also felt that we needed a younger influence from the very beginning of this journey. If we were going to relate to the emerging generations we needed some of the indigenous on our team. So, the next couple we were compelled to invite was much younger.
Michael and Candace Marshall were leaders in the young adult department at Carbondale. I had gotten to know Mike in the ministerial training program that we had helped to start. Like the Gilliams, Mike and Candace had a definite call upon their lives and had demonstrated their abilities and their love for people. Now we were six.
Having these four people in the boat with us made the terror of it all minimally tolerable. Their yeses gave us impetus. But now we had to prepare to tell the church family about our plans, and see if anyone else would consider going with us.
O, wait! What was the plan?