But all of those things (and if you don’t like the list, make your own – you don’t get to not have one!) need to be embedded in the life of the community and into the minds and hearts of our members. I’m not talking about rigid indoctrination, like a cult. But I am saying that being a Christian brings certain realities to bear and calls us to think and see differently as a result.

If there is a crisis in Christianity it is because of one of these two things. First, either people don’t know what it is we are about or second, they have only a surface knowledge of it and so it is useless at shaping their responses on a daily basis.

In other words, remembering whose we are and who we are is not one thing we do among many. It is the primary thing we do out of which flow all the other things we do. It is the difference between Christianity as a worldview that shapes daily life and church as an activity that gets a certain percentage of our time. Get those wrong and you will be frustrated forever. Get them right, you have half a chance. We are about faith formation at the inner level, not just activity in the outer one.

So, we who lead, and especially those of us who preach and teach regularly, need to have these front and center all the time. Most of them should find their way into sermons in one way or another weekly. To do this, we each need to internalize not only the idea, but some redundant language that we use again and again. This is hard for some of us. We want to be creative and be sure people think each week is fresh and new (and to some degree it should be). But the underlying theology should be consistent and the same. And to internalize this, people will need to hear the same ideas (often using the same words) over and over.

For example, let’s just look at one idea, “In the gift/covenant of baptism, God claims us and promises to be “in, with and under” everything about our life in Christ (Our lives are sacramental).”

Five phrases I use over and over include:

•      * You are God’s beloved.
•      * In baptism, you have been united with Christ. That’s a lifetime reality. (or “that’s a 24/7 truth”)
•      * God is going to keep on loving you no matter what - and there is nothing you can do about it.
•      * There is nowhere you can go and nothing that you can do that will be done apart from God’s presence in your life.
•      * Jesus has taken up residence in your life.

This isn’t magic. It’s how ideas embed themselves and help people build vocabulary. It’s how children learn language – they repeat and make sense of what the hear and see. When the words and experiences match, they not only understand what adults say, they can carry on a conversation.

Now it's your turn. As you think about teh ways you speak and the theological ideas that are at the center - what words and phrases feel natural to you? How can you be sure to use them (over and over and over) so people learn to use them too?

If we want people in our congregations to be able to carry on a faith conversation, they need to hear the same words over and over, often enough to make sense of them and find ways to say them for themselves. We’ll talk more about that next time – but that’s one of the goals of all of this.