There’s another epidemic raging through our fair land. In addition to COVID-19 and variants there is a highly infectious strain of alternative communication making deep inroads into our Christian subculture.
Here are just a couple of examples:
Some ministry leaders don’t just resign but
“step into a substantial season of reordering.”
Indeed, marching into a summer, winter, spring, fall, presumably a globally climate change enhanced “substantial” season, not just a normal season. I recall (from reading, not from personal experience) the year without a summer, 1816. Now that was a substantial season. People resigning from ministry is a normal routine.
And, when explaining the substantial season of reordering into which they are stepping, the reason being given is,
“in order to embrace the time and space needed to allow ourselves to be deeply formed by all that we have been humbled by and wrecked over”
You bet. Einstein, get that iPhone 12 Pro and phone ecclesiastical HQ. Some clarification may be needed on your space time continuum. Only churchy and gummit types will be so bold! as to embrace space. Could an SBC PhD type write a dissertation on how one embraces space and time. Group non-hug at this point in space time.
It was sufficient for Jeremiah to declare the Word of the Almighty, that He merely “formed” us in the womb. Now, we must be not only “formed” and “transformed” but “deeply formed.”
Following the pattern, “I got saved!” morphs into “I got me a season of deep, substantial, transformative humble-wrecking encountering.”
Some grammar school-marmish type please comment on “wrecked over.”
I guess that important people need to sound important, to convey adverbial elan, to confuse and flummox sentence diagrammers. Is it more spiritual if you dress it up and put clown makeup on it? Not to me.
I have resigned from three churches. I said, “I am resigning.”
I have erred more than once in ministry and have said, “I was wrong. I apologize.”
I have gained valuable experience and have declared, “I learned something through this.”
But I’m not having any of this “season” stuff or the “embrace” thing.
Just speak plainly…but it’s OK to toss in a six-syllable word for your two-syllable church…if they know you love them.
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Get vaccinated against this so that people will understand you or at least wear a mask so no one will understand you.
