Feeling Edgy?

While proofreading a rough draft of our church's outreach booklet, I noticed that we claimed to offer lots of friendly “hostitality.” Now, if you've ever visited a church that seemed more hostile than hospitable, you may agree there ought to be such a word!

In a newspaper advertisement, a dry cleaner bragged, "We do not tear your clothing with machinery. We do it carefully by hand." A used car dealer's ad asked, "Why go elsewhere and get cheated? Come here first." And then there was the ad for a superstore that boasted: "Unequaled in size, unmatched in variety, unrivaled inconvenience."

Sometimes, it's necessary to intentionally create a new word. For example, I came up with thinformation to describe the shallow sound bites that often pass for news on radio and TV. A writer in a business magazine coined the term coopetition to describe what it's like when people pretend to work together as a team while secretly competing for power and resources.

A list circulating through e-mail includes some other words-that-ought-to-be:

Blamestorming—sitting around discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.

Irritainment—media spectacles that are annoying, but you find yourself unable to stop watching them (like the O. J. trials).

Adminisphere—the high-level realm from which leaders hand down decisions irrelevant to the problems faced by the rank and file.

Ohno-second—the tiny fraction of time in which you realize you've just made a big mistake.

Cube farm—an office filled with cubicles, where people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.

Here's another. Have you noticed how people use the word edgy these days? In the past, no one wanted to be edgy. It meant you were nervous, anxious, ill-at-ease, on edge. Today it has a positive connotation. There's edgy music, edgy clothing, even edgy preaching styles—appealing, but slightly outside the norm. If you're not sure what's considered edgy these days, ask some of your twentysomething friends. They know. Born in the unsettled 70s and reared amid the burgeoning postmodernism of the 80s and 90s, they're a bit edgy (anxious) about the future, the economy, and the family. Yet Christian young adults also display a spiritual vitality we dare not ignore. Many of them are innovative, teachable, and eager to serve the Lord on the cultural cutting edge.

Jesus was barely out of his twenties when he began his public ministry (Luke 3:23). The angst of Martin Luther's twentysomething years prepared him to nail his 95 Theses to the door of Wittenberg Castle Church when he was only 34. Thomas Jefferson was 26 when he began his political career in the Virginia House of Burgesses, and at 33 he served as principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Barton W. Stone was only 28 when he led in the Cane Ridge revival, the same age at which Alexander Campbell preached his pivotal "Sermon on the Law."

My advice to middle-aged and older adults? Love your younger Christian brothers and sisters. Listen to them, pray for them, and serve alongside them. Develop their leadership ability. Join them in proclaiming Christ to the next generation. Develop a sharper edge with the Word of God (Hebrews 4:12); there's nothing edgier than the Word of God.