UnChurched

There is a buzzword that has been buzzing about the church planting world for quite some time. It is the recently and uniquely coined term... "Unchurched." Well, it's not that unique. I recall a 7UP commercial touting the lemony-lime elixir as the UnCola. Then there was the Toni Braxton hit song titled "Un-break My Heart."

In fact, slapping "Un" in front of a word has been around a while.

The suffix un- can mean either a reversal of action, like unpack, or the lack of some quality, like unknown. A prime example of this is with unlearn, which means to reverse learning, and unlearned, which means the lack of learning. Sometimes in a sentence the meaning of un-made words is unclear and unsettling. Jim Wegryn

Regardless, this buzz word often shows up in mission/vision statements of new church web sites in various forms such as:

• "Fresh Vision Church is going after the unchurched."
• "Relevant Revival Refuge or R3 is called to reach the unchurched."
• "Here at (insert any cool word here) Church we are a missional community of relevant Jesus followers and we will invade a post modern society by hanging out at Starbucks to gather the... unchurched."
  

Ok... I made all these up... you get the picture!

But consider the absurdity of this term being used anywhere other than the church...

"Hi, my name is (insert heathens name here) and I am unchurched. May I come to your church?"

I grew up playing hockey in the North. When I was about ten my family moved South where very few boys my age played hockey. Did that make them Unhockeyed? And if so, should the North send missional communities to the South and get them hockeyed before Jesus returns or Wayne Gretzky finds out?

Call me old school or unmodern, but can we just go back to "sinner" and ditch unchurched? Maybe it's less offensive to stick with the latter, but essentially what we have done is create more church only lingo or "Christianese" that further alienates us from the world we are trying to reach.

Consider 1 Timothy 1:15-16 (New Living Translation) This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them all. But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners. Then others will realize that they, too, can believe in him and receive eternal life.

One need only replace "sinner" with "unchurched" to see how ridiculous that verse sounds! Leave it as is and you find a way to relate to people that you used to be just like.

But if we Church planters are really honest with ourselves we should acknowledge that although our demographic my indeed be the unchurched, we don't intend for them to stay that way. We want to get them churched! And by churched I mean vitally connected to the Body of Christ by means of the saving grace of Jesus. Oh, and hopefully tithing!

At the Branch we are doing our part to get 'em churched as young as possible. The proof lies in a recent event where my three year old niece walks into Chuck E. Cheese & exclaims, "Look Mommy, Chucky Jesus has a miracle-go-round!"

That's what I'm talking about! She walked right in and churched that unchurched Chucky.