the website of kaleb heitzman.

Perhaps the single most failure of the Christian faith is to try and reach out to the unchurched world with church language. This is like an english speaker using english to communicate to a spanish speaker who does not understand english. You can see where this would obviously fail.

The church has used words like sanctification, salvation and sinner to communicate what unchurched people would understand as set apart, rescued and incomplete. This barrier has caused a wall that needs torn down if we as Christians are truly passionate about people.

Martoia explains this barrier as radio static. Have you ever been driving down the road when annoying static starts coming in? The farther you drive away the louder the static becomes. Eventually the static overpowers the music to the point that you cannot understand it anymore.

This is the problem that Static: Tune out the “Christian noise” and experience the real message of Jesus addresses. Christian noise — Christian Static (our church language) — has become so loud that it overpowers the music — the message. Our own church language is static to those who have been trying to listen. Our static is drowning out our message for those outside the church. They do not understand us anymore and it is not their fault, it’s ours.

From a leaders perspective, communication is everything. There is verbal and non-verbal communication. We must ask ourselves if what we communicate verbally and non-verbally is being heard or if it is just static. This requires discipline and a knowledge of the culture around you. People say let the Bible stand for itself and use its own language — I agree. However, just so you know, Jesus did use fishing and farming language when He was talking to fishermen and farmers. He has set the example for overcoming this static.