Would a rose by any other name really be as sweet? Suppose it was named “Mud” or “Goop”? Would you want to send a dozen red goops to your wife or girlfriend?<\/p>\n
I’m always interested when people or organizations change their names. I was born James Michael; and until age 12, I went by Jimmy. I didn’t like the name Jimmy—and that was before the Jimmy Carter presidency. So when my family moved from Florida to North Carolina when I was 12, I began introducing myself as Mike. It took my parents a little time, and some aunts called me Jimmy to their dying days; but all the new folks just assumed I always had been Mike, so the name stuck. Transformation complete! (At least until I got married and discovered my bride preferred Michael. Re-transformation complete!)<\/p>\n
The most recent example of a name change is with Campus Crusade for Christ. Excuse me—I meant to say Cru, its new name. After 60 years, leaders of the evangelical organization decided it was time for a change. Their work is no longer limited to campuses, and the word crusade apparently has been tainted by connection with the Crusades; though, I must admit I never once saw a Campus Crusade worker wearing a coat of armor; and I’m almost positive Bill Bright had nothing to do with battling Muslims for the Kingdom of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
“We don’t want the words we use to get in the way of the message we have,” said a Cru spokesperson.<\/p>\n
That’s a reasonable position, and it got me thinking of other words that might be due for a change.<\/p>\n
For example, a lot of folks think the word sermon<\/em> isn’t very attractive these days. Sermonizing<\/em> is what we hear from the politicians on the side we don’t favor. (Our politicians, on the other hand, offer insightful observations, unlike those nasty sermonizing types.) If sermon<\/em> is no longer a useful term, maybe we should try something different such as serm<\/em>.<\/p>\n Just think of how popular the preacher’s kids will be when their peers find out that crowds come every week just to hear the parent give a serm. Whereas a sermon is old-fashioned and dated, a serm is fresh and trendy. In fact, this new name is likely to be so popular that we’ll start calling the preacher a serm guy<\/em>.<\/p>\n Or we might just change the name preacher to something new and less threatening such as pre<\/em>. Preachers are middle-aged guys who tell people what to do; a pre, on the other hand, is a current and fashionable leader who shares a great serm with people. Hey, who wouldn’t want to be a pre, after all? It even sounds ahead of the game!<\/p>\n Of course, some churches call the sermon a message, but I’m not sure we want to go with mess<\/em> as an alternative. Though I have heard some sermons for which that would be a perfectly accurate appraisal.<\/p>\n Would a rose by any other name really be as sweet? Suppose it was named “Mud” or “Goop”? Would you want to send a dozen red goops to your wife or girlfriend? I’m always interested when people or organizations change their names. I was born James Michael; and until age 12, I went by Jimmy. … Continue reading “Back Page Pulpit: A Goop by Any Other Name?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}