Parlez Vous Christian?

“Eh up me duck, that cob looks peng!”
Even though I only moved to Nottingham from two hours up the motorway, I still had trouble at first working out what on earth people were saying sometimes. But that’s how language works isn’t it? Every town, every generation, every culture have their own words and phrases.

I love it that Nottingham has it’s own identity and part of that identity is it’s language (although I still reckon it’s weird to call someone ‘duck’…). The young people have their own dialect too which I’m starting to pick up and occasionally I’m even deemed cool enough to use it. But whether we use the ‘latest’ words or not, the fact remains that young people are speaking a different language, so what does that mean for sharing the gospel with them?

Youth for Christ’s mission statement is ‘taking the good news relevantly to every young person’ so to be relevant, we need to talk the same language. And we do, but it’s more than just replacing ‘not’ with ‘ain’t’ and taggingin ‘init’ on the end of everything we say. You can’t say to a young person “If you confess your sins to God, you’ll be saved by grace through the sacrifice of his son Jesus Christ”. They don’t get it – even Shakespeare makes more sense to them. So ditch the jargon and speak the gospel in English. Simply yes?

I’d say nothing ever is. Eugene H. Peterson, author of The Message says, “The original books of the Bible were not written in formal language” and so “every generation needs to keep the language of the gospel message current, fresh, and understandable—the way it was for its very first readers”. And I agree entirely. But even in The Message ‘grace’, ‘salvation’ and ‘sacrifice’ are regular guests, so are we right to omit them entirely from our conversation or talks?

What happens when young people start reading the Bible and come across all our Christian jargon? I fear the Bible will feel irrelevant and the gospel message they thought they’d understood once again becomes a stranger. So, as the James wisely advises us, we need to watch our words!

Becci Raine