Preface Christianese Avoidance – Communicating the Gospel in the right cultural context:

I want to express a heartfelt thank you to all those who have been reading the blog, “Life Lessons from Revelation.” (See www.andy-levine.blogspot.com for 64 lessons on this topic). I started writing on that theme in Oct. of 2011 and since then it has been read around the world with just shy of 5,500 page views in many nations. Praise God. At this point, I’ve enter a new season with a new burden. The purpose of this new series of blog posts is to equip the Body of Christ to communicate basic truths of what Christians believe without speaking in “Christianese.” I’ve seen how turned off non-believers can get to the language that is typically heard in churches. Let’s get in the habit of speaking in the language and culture of your hearers, minus any profanity of course. I make no attempt to create another Biblical translation or paraphrase, we already have an abundance in English.

Any discussion, presentation or whatever you want to call a Christian witness, must be done in such a way that it is understood by the people being addressed. This involves cultural sensitivity as much as linguistics. I live in the south eastern US, an area known as the Bible Belt. There is a tremendous Christian influence in the culture. Most people from this part of the world have some understanding of the Gospel, a great many attend church and grew up going Sunday School. They have a basic understanding of Biblical principles whether they live it or not. Unfortunately, many use the excuse of other people’s hypocrisy as their excuse to leave those roots. Now there are many moving to the south for work and/or the lower cost of living from other cultural environments, from Mexico and many other nations. In a very real sense, the foreign mission field has come to us.

In the following weeks I will be sharing about the Parables, putting those stories in my own words in such a way as to stimulate your thinking. Ask yourself how you might tell that story in so that the people you are talking, or writing, to will really get the message. Jesus did this so effectively and I am sure He will lead you to do likewise. What awesome results can we expect when we do what Jesus did? Let’s put His stories in our culture, in our time, framed for our audience. Be careful to never stray so far from the Word that you misconstrue God’s message, we are not writing a new “translation” or even a paraphrase for publication, just sharing the Gospel in our own words. The stories about the people in the Bible really lend themselves to this approach, as do the Parables where I will be starting.