Church & Jargon: Is accessible language always the primary concern?

I've been thinking again about theology, church and jargon.  I noted a couple of weeks back that Addie Zierman listed five jargon phrases that might make sense if you spend all your time in church, but sound strange and even scary if you don't belong to that "club". Then Nadia Bolz-Weber picked up the conversation, giving her own humorous expose of how meaningless this can become if you string them all together in one sentence: "After my quiet time with the Lord, where I was bathing in prayer, God laid it on my heart to be a transformational leader by just loving up on my blog readers and offering them some ideas from my missional imagination."

I have two thoughts on jargon and church. One is that specialist language is inevitable, perhaps even essential. The other is that it is exclusive. These two are related, and neither of them is entirely a bad thing.

Every group, every club, every society, family, school, team, business, has its own jargon. Groups have their own sets of stories and history and in-jokes and running gags that are unique to them, as well as their own technical shorthand. This is how language works: we don't continue to use full length formal prose with people we know well and see often. We develop an adapted code. Any given person will speak variations on their own language depending on whether they are at work, at home, at church, or with friends. Church language varies locally - Westminster Abbey,  Greenbelt Festival, or Holy Trinity Brompton all speak variations on the same Church language, but they have significant differences in the way they accent it. And the language of a particular group is part of what makes it a group - it's part of the social glue, part of the sense of belonging that develops within the group. We should stop feeling bad about having Church language, and recognise that making language easily and plainly accessible to anyone at any time is likely to break down the linguistic aspect of belonging that is inherent to social cohesion. 

But it's precisely this that makes specialist language exclusive. Knowing the language of the group is a good feeling - it gives you a sense of belonging, as well as access to discussions of ideas or expertise. But for newcomers it takes a while to learn the language. If I am in a group of theologians or musicians, I know their language and can join in very swiftly, whereas if I found myself at a meeting of the Harley Davidson restoration club, or an American Football party, I would feel like an outsider because I wouldn't understand much of what they were talking about. But if they were friendly and welcoming people, and if I were inquisitive about Harley Davidsons or American Football, it wouldn't take long for me to learn their language, and feel part of the crowd as well as part of the discussion.

People sometimes worry about the exclusive aspect of Church language, and call instead for "plain language" - accessible language about religion that anyone can understand. And certainly meaningless or unnecessarily obscure jargon is always ripe for revisiting. But to iron out all the quirks and uniqueness of religious language, rather than making it accessible, actually flattens and reduces its meaning. To make the language of a group so plain as to mean anyone can understand it immediately reduces the social cohesion that language affords a group, thus making it a non-group - and this is not always a good thing.

The better question for Church, then, as for any group, is not whether it should have its own language. It should, it will, and that is OK. The better question is, are we looking for newcomers at all? And if we are, how do we make them welcome? Interpreting and explaining our language to newcomers is part of the welcome, and learning it is part of what will reinforce their sense of belonging as they learn it. Plain language is absolutely desirable in passport offices, on tax documents, at the doctor's surgery or Emergency Room - everyday places that you pass through and need information to be readily understandable at the most basic level. But you don't want to belong to the passport office, or come back next week. You want to pass through it as efficiently as possible.

Far from being a problem that we have our own language in church, then, it's important that we do. But we also need to recognise that language is part of the fabric of our group, and not treat it like a secret code or a badge of membership that is there to keep others out. Some religious language doesn't benefit from being put into everyday language, and it is not beyond the wits of the average person to learn what it means. But if they encounter a group of people that uses language like a suit of armour or a battleground, why would they want to?

If we want to welcome newcomers, then, we don't have to abandon our language, but we do need to pay attention to the newcomer, take the trouble to explain what we are about, and give them every opportunity to feel at home. Welcome is about drawing people in, not dumbing language down.