Translation Dictionary: Christianese/English

• Clap offering (n.) Known to the rest of the world as Applause. Putatively directed at God and not the person who is on stage encouraging it.

• Offering (n.) The act of passing small baskets through a crowd in the hopes that they will be filled with money. Also used as a term for any type of onstage activity the speaker wishes to depict as spiritual endeavor rather than performance.

• Love offering (n.) See Offering. (It is still uncertain at this time which type of gift a Hate Offering would involve, if any. Research continues.)
  


• Walk (n.) - This is somewhat nebulous but seems to refer to the day-to-day quality of one's relationship with God. See also Journey.

• Journey (n.) Originally, a trendier alternative term in reaction against the mainstream term Walk. A mainstream term.
  

• Mars Hill (1) (n.) A church or type of church which operates under the simultaneous belief that it is not a church yet counts as going to church. Founded on principles of discussion, expensive coffee, and general reactionism against mainstream Christian tendencies such as Christianese Biblical references.

• Mars Hill (2) (n.) A Christianese Biblical reference to a Greek location in the New Testament where the Apostle Paul once preached.

• Worship (n. or v.) Any act or action of submitting oneself to God in active communication with him. In recent times, generally interpreted to mean repeating the top three to four cliche-filled songs of the month three to four times apiece at the beginning of a service.

• Emergent worship (n.) Forms of worship considered "alternative" or otherwise nontraditional. May include drum circles, stream-of-consciousness poetry, or coloring with crayons. Now used most often by mainstream corporations in the selling of traditional worship music CDs.

• To share (v.) To speak about one's feelings or experience. This term most likely has its linguistic origins in early Pop-Psychologese; however, in modern Christianese it is most often spoken entirely without irony.

• To sow [into] (v.) To invest in, occasionally with time, but most often financially. Used frequently by pastors to explain expenditures, possibly on the assumption that referencing a New Testament parable will lessen a congregation's instinctive desire for accountable results.

• To bless (v.) Similar to sowing [into], but more inclusive. Originally an extremely grave and powerful concept for the ancient Northwestern Semitic cultures in which it originated, this modern Christianese term can be generally summed up as "to make [one] feel nice."

• Testimony (n.) A spiritualized summary of one's significant life events, told in public. e.g., a "conversion story." See also Share. NOTE: In correct usage, must never include anything negative that has not already come to a clear, happy, facile conclusion.

• Witness (n. or v.) Confusingly broad in actual usage, but probably related to Sharing, Testimony, Offering, and possibly Bless.

• A work (n.) Any personal interventive action attributed to God, as in, "God's really doing a work." Due to the frequency of its usage, was most likely born out of the desire for a more spiritual-sounding word than "thing."