Drop the baggage

Most believers carry things that make perfect sense inside the building and read as foreign, confusing, or superior outside it. The Spanish word for it is iglesioso — churchy — and it is a better word than anything English has, because it names the whole category at once.

None of it is required for following Jesus. Much of it builds walls exactly where Paul built bridges.

What is in the suitcase

Jargon. Born again. Sanctified. Washed in the blood. Under conviction. A season of pruning. Traveling mercies. Every one has a real meaning inside the church and close to none outside it. A neighbor hearing them does not conclude you are deep; they conclude the conversation is not for them.

Clothes and setting expectations. The unspoken standard about what people wear, how they sit, when they arrive. It communicates belonging to the people who already belong and its opposite to everybody else.

Habits of correcting. Quoting at people. Preaching in ordinary conversation. Answering a question nobody asked. Treating a casual remark as an opening.

Reflexes of judgment. About how people talk, drink, dress, spend, or vote — usually unspoken, always visible.

The exercise

Write the list for yourself. What comes out of your mouth that a neighbor would not understand? Then sort each item into two columns: essential to following Jesus, or merely our culture?

The sorting is fast and slightly painful. Almost everything goes in the second column.

Change how you introduce yourself

This is the first practical step, and it is smaller than you would think.

“I’m a church member.” “I’m a Baptist.” “I’m a deacon.” Each one locates you inside an institution the hearer may distrust, and it does that before you have said one thing about Jesus.

Try instead: “I’m a follower of Jesus.” “I’m learning to walk with God.” “God changed my life a few years ago.”

All true. All plain. And each one points at a Person rather than a building.

And change the invitation

The same plainness carries into what you ask for. Never “come to my church.”

“Would you be open to discovering what Jesus is really like, together?”

“Would you be interested in seeing what Jesus taught about that?”

Ordinary language, on their turf, pointing at Jesus and an open Bible. That is the whole invitation.

Sometimes the most missionary thing a believer can do is stop talking like a church person and start talking like a real neighbor.

Recite this

Essential to following Jesus, or merely our culture? Lay down the second.

Try it this week

Take three churchy phrases you actually use and rewrite each in words a neighbor would use. Then introduce yourself spiritually to one person without an institutional label.

I will introduce myself as a follower of Jesus to ________________, on ________________.