The Language of Christianity

My mother, an elementary school principal, shakes her head in shame whenever I mention the following fact: I've never diagrammed a sentence. Never. Not once. Wouldn't know what to do if I had to. I can write a sentence and I can read a sentence, but I have never in my life been asked to break one a part and diagram it. Frankly, I don't know why. I might have been in school at the time when diagramming sentences was not en vogue; whatever the reason - I don't know how. My assumption is that the education trends at that time were for students to learn grammar by reading comprehension. The more you read, the thought might have been, the more you will just naturally pick up the nuts and bolts of nouns, verbs, and adverbs. And I think to a large degree that is true. The others in the class and I might have absorbed most of the grammar we needed, but if you asked me to explain it, to break it down, I would look silly (stupid).

My own feeling is that for a long time, the leadership in mainline churches has also assumed that members will just 'pick up' the vocabulary and grammar of faith. The more they come and worship and they more they are involved with this or that, the more fluent they will come in the language of Christianity. I think that is true. If we volunteer at Habitat for Humanity or go on a mission trip we will pick up some very important parts of the language of faith. If we sit in worship for years and years we will have absorbed an incredible amount of spiritual nouns, verbs, and adverbs. But can we articulate it? Can we explain it? Can we share it?

At St Timothy's we will not assume everyone knows how to diagram a spiritual sentence. And if we can't, it doesn't mean that we aren't spiritual or faithful or wanting to learn (after all, I finished college and graduate school and never learned how to diagram a sentence). We will seek to teach and live both by doing and by learning. We want to absorb the sentence of faith and we want to learn more about what we have absorbed.