I recently had a flyer on my door that said:
“Are you sick of being told a feel good message? Do you want to hear about being washed in the blood of the Lamb? Do you want to know about being justified in the Spirit? Do you want to feel the power of the Holy Ghost? If so, then come to ________ Church where all visitors are welcome.”
Forgive me for sounding critical, but no one without a theology degree is going to be able to decipher that message, much less an unchurched person on my block.
Too many times, we feel everyone talks “the language of Zion” simply because we are only around other Christians. The reality is that most people have no idea what any of the language on that flyer means.
Someone was in our church office recently, I used the term “the Lord’s Day,” and he thought I was talking about Christmas rather than Sunday.
If we are going to promote the message of the Gospel or the existence of our church, we need to do it in a way that unchurched people will understand. If you want to reach people who are far from God, you need to use terms they are familiar with rather than terms we’re comfortable with.