Speaking the Same Language, but Not Communicating

Have you ever been in a conversation with someone where you knew you were both speaking the same language–even the same dialect–but somehow it felt like you were speaking different languages? Where somehow something got lost in mix, and you simply weren’t communicating?

I remember one time being in deep south Texas, near the Louisiana border, and listening to a guy with Cajun influences speaking to his son about “mudding”–driving four-wheelers through the mud. It was the funniest thing to me, because they were both so excited and animated about what they were saying, and they were speaking English, but between the dialect and the lingo I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. I just knew they were happy from the nonverbals they were using.

(Warning: I’m about to reveal my sci-fi geekiness.) One of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation is when the Enterprise encounters another ship whose people spoke entirely in metaphors. The “translator” devices were working properly, so they could hear them in English; but everything that came out of their mouth was a reference to some character from their own mythology performing some action…and it made no sense. Eventually, the crew of the Enterprise began to realize this race wasn’t crazy–they just used mythological metaphors to describe real-life events and feelings. Captain Picard wound up alone on a planet with one of them, trying to rescue him from some peril, and it was quite engaging to watch them try to overcome the language barrier while saving the day.

As this episode demonstrates, a lot of times miscommunication happens because words mean different things to different people. We can be saying words that are recognizable to both parties in the conversation, but those words will paint a completely different picture for one than for the other. One good example of this is the word “church”. Although Jesus only meant one simple thing by the use of this word–the collective body of Christ-followers–we have somehow morphed this word until it can mean a building, a meeting time, a denomination, a certain IRS-recognized non-profit entity, and about 20 different other things, painting countless different word pictures for different people.

I had a brief moment like this yesterday, when someone brought a friend to house church. After the meeting, he began asking me questions about the church, asking the typical questions about “do-you-want-to-have-a-building-someday” and stuff like that. It was apparent that his word picture of “church” and mine were way different.

We were both speaking English, but we had a language barrier to overcome.

Fortunately, because of my long experience in traditional church settings, I understood him, even if he didn’t understand me at first. Over time, God has been changing my understanding of what “church” really is, reducing it back to what Jesus meant when He used the word. But my background helped me to cross the gap for him, and hopefully, we communicated.

“House churches have a different way of looking at what ‘church’ really is,” I told him. “House churches usually don’t care much about having buildings or visibility or a recognizable organizational structure, or about how many people are coming each week, because we see church differently.”

We were standing in the kitchen, and I pointed into the living room where people were laughing and talking. “Look at the people,” I said. Look at them visiting and being together. Sometimes I have a hard time making them go home, because they are enjoying being together. In a few minutes, someone’s going to say, ‘Let’s go have lunch,’ and some of us will go out together. Sometimes, they’ll come back here after we’re done with lunch. Look at them; this is the church. We have meetings, we worship, sometimes we go out and do good things in the community…but what makes us a church is the people in community, being a family, belonging together. This is what matters to us more than anything else we do as a church. We just see it differently.”

It was cool to see his eyes light up as he began to understand.

I don’t know how much he got of what I said, or whether he will come back. But for a moment, we communicated. 🙂