Kids and sports lingo
I've noticed some weird things adults do now that I'm a parent. I coached, if you can call it that, my 9 year old son's basketball team this past winter. We were in the middle of one of the first practices and I said we were going to work on lay-ups. A couple of guys nodded their heads but one or two had that kind of "what language are you speaking" look. I had assumed that because they were guys and we were playing basketball, everybody would know it and do it. It is basic stuff to the game of basketball but they had never heard or knew what it was called. You should have seen the look on their faces when I mentioned that we would run a man-to-man defense, "Huh?" I've also noticed this in our boy's baseball. One year a coach said, "I want everyone of you to run through the bag at first." I'm pretty sure I heard several think, "There's a bag? What's it doing on a baseball field? And why am I suppose to run through it?" Other humorous moments have been, "choke up," "swing through the ball," "you need to tag up before you run." I can't wait for "lay down a bunt."
Kids are such literal thinkers. They aren't hip to the language of symbols or abstract things, yet. I kind of like that around church. Kids don't get the churchy definitions. It is cool when questions fly around the house or in the car and Kendra and I have to stop and think, "how are we going to communicate that?" Think of all of the cliches and descriptions we have for God, walk through the fire, baptized in His death, the Spirit, Jesus, heaven, the Cross, sacrifice, washed in the blood, atonement, born again… We try to keep it simple and we pray. I've got to think that is one of the reasons Jesus loves kids, they make him laugh and they ready to learn. It just needs to be explained as simple as possible. Basically the ontology, the theology, pneumatology and sotieriology co-exist pre-eminently and inherently construct a syllogism that makes sense, right? I'm not sure what that means.
April 26th, 2006 at 12:42 am
Latley I have been trying to cut the church terms out of my vocab. It is tougher than I thought… especially when I think of myself at least leaning towards the postmodern (can you be postmodern if you consider yourself postmodern?). Even tougher than that has been trying to tell my story (give my testimony) without giving any reference to age or dates. The “why” is simple. If I tell a early thirties islamic man how I trusted Christ with my life at 8, he may not understand or he may think he has already missed out. He may think it is a ritual for Christian children. Most of the people I have met recently have no context for terms we use often in the church.
Berries and cream sounds nasty. I may stick with cherry coke in the fruity cola world for now.
Baseball is called Honkball in Dutch.
Trey
April 27th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
Lately i have been playing sports and not ministering to muslims in Amsterdam so hopefully i am qualified to respond. Living with a non-christian this year has been awesome but it has also opened my eyes to how church cliches are percieved from non-Christ Followers. It has really made me re-think my language when talking about my faith and the Love i have for Christ and his Love for me….Everything i have said about being a christian and why I am a Christian sounds regimented and structured…like it is a step by step process. However, my christian walk is anything but regimented and structured…it is a free and flowing lifestyle that has no schedule or time table….I am here to love people and be loved by God and that is it…while that is simple it is also pure… when i use cliches to describe my walk i am limiting my walk to something that is common, when in fact it is anything but common….
Honkball sounds pretty lame…what is dutch for dorkball?
jason
May 7th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
Dorkball is dorkball in any language. It is still the greatest sport ever. Still I want to learn handball and curling.