Words that have lost their meaning…

We are alive at an interesting time. Words no longer retain their original meaning (whatever that was) and in fact have deconstructed to the point where persons have chosen up sides to be for or against people who identify with these words in some way. Here is my short list, maybe you can add to it:

Gen-X ministry

Postmodern ministry

Emerging Church

Emergent

Evangelical

Evangelism

Fundamental

Heretic

Biblical

Non-Biblical

Inclusive

Non-inclusive

Here is a short list of words that will lose their meaning once we have finally decided what they mean:

Missional

Transformational

Incarnational

How can one know when a word is losing its meaning? What are the signs?

1. When people lose their funding because they are proponents of ________________ ministry. (you fill in the blank)

2. When multiple writers, proponents, and others start saying, I am not ______________.

3. When people say: ___________________ doesn’t work.

4. When people who have been using the term, writing books about the term, making their living talking about the term, begin to say it is time to stop using the term.

5. When prominent bloggers do an online poll with a few more than 100 participants and declare that the result indicates we should “dump” the term. 🙂

Here’s what I say….let’s just use my all purpose word: Hoodabada… When you want to talk about a rising cohort of generational leadership, just say the “Hoodabada Leaders.” We can rename websites and organizations: “Hoodabada Village” sounds good, don’t you think? We can write books about the “Hoodabada Church.” I think I am onto something here. What say you?