What are you trying to say?

The other day I was meeting with a community outreach organizer for York city. We decided to meet at Starbucks, which is unfortunate, since I gave up caffeinated coffee a while back (read about this silly idea). He ordered a frappe, I ordered a decaf (*cough* LOSER!). The barista asked what size he wanted. He said medium.

When he said medium, I swear I heard tires screeching and dishes crashing. (Actually I didn’t swear because of this post.) The barista looked up at him with a confused look, as if to ask him what hole he crawled out of.

I whispered grande,
and immediately the wheels of Starbucks started back into motion again.

He’s not alone either. I go to Starbucks fairly regularly, and I can never remember that a small is really a tall. It just doesn’t seem right.

A friend of mine was telling me the other day about a service she went to where the minister might as well have been speaking in another language. It was like he wanted to impress people with the theological nuance he had acquired with years of study and education. People in the audience simply had no clue what he was trying to say. I can’t help wonder why this is still true in many (most?) churches. Every fiber of my being aches to make God’s truth known to people in clear and accessible ways.

Should we really need a decoder ring at church?

Should only people in the “in crowd” of Christ-followers be the ones that get it? Like some kind of inside joke?

And are these the same questions people asked about the Pharisees?