Why are your studies written like that?

At the 2019 Christian Camping Conference, I had a few early copies of our first Luke study to hand out so I could get feedback. Seeing as I was after honest feedback, I didn’t always say that I had written the material I was handing out. Though one camp managers first question after he had a read through was "did you write this?"

The reason he asked, the wording in the study was exactly the way I would talk to Children about the Bible. What did he mean by that?

What I’ve found throughout my time in Children’s Ministry is that most children are intelligent but not biblically literate. Even from my own experience growing up in the church, as a 12 year would have struggled to explain any “Church words” like grace, prodigal or faith without circular references to other “Church words”.

So one of my aims when talking to children about the Bible is to make sure any church words (or Christianese) is translated into plain English.

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with the church having its own jargon. I have even been known to insert phrases like “double imputation” into conversations at Children’s Camps, but always with an understandable English explanation (Though R.C Sproul does it better than I do). Any group of people will develop its own jargon and learning it is a key part of becoming a member of that group.

This is the reason why we include a “Bible Words” section in each of our studies. We don’t want to avoid Christianese, but we do want to make sure Christianese isn’t hiding the meaning of the text. Hopefully, this means the children who use studies from How Can This Happen can feel like they know the language Christian communities use and can provide translation services to anyone who isn’t a fluent speaker of Christianese.

We want children who use resources from How Can This Happen to feel like they are chatting with someone who both respects their intelligence, and realises that there are some words and concepts that they will need a bit of help understanding.