Joel Kleppinger

Christians, especially of the Charismatic/Pentecostal bent, too often use terms that most people have no clue as to the meaning.  Consider this post your Spiritual GPS to guide you through the wind imparted through the word for your spirit-filled life. 

• Impart/Impute – These words basically mean “give”… ex. “Jesus imparted his spirit to his disciples.”  Preachers use these words to sound really spiritual and knowledgeable.  No one else in their right mind uses these words.
• Thee/Thou/Thine/shaketh/stirreth/groweth/etc – These are fun words to use when praying, prophesying, or giving the interpretation to tongues.  They really sound super spiritual.  You’ll love it.
• Heavy/Strong – usually used as modifiers for God’s presence, spirit, wind, etc.  Christians are secretly 70s/80s rockers so all of the 70s/80s rock terms are now righteously awesome when tossed into other church metaphors.

• God’s presence is in this place
  1. We really feel spiritual right now and I want you to know that I thought worship was great.  We want you to know how spiritual you are not if you don’t feel it.  Spoken after worship or maybe an altar time.
  2. Similar to this, we say people or objects are anointed, which means we feel like we really connected spiritually with them.  But be careful… saying something like “LeBron has an anointing to play basketball” would probably be blasphemous to the hardcore Christian types.  But if you were to say the same about A.C. Green, you might get away with it.
• The river is really flowing here
  1. When you hear this, run for higher ground, like balconies or choir lofts.  Hope you brought your swimsuit.
  2. “The river” refers to the Holy Spirit.  We just found a way to say that we feel the Holy Spirit!  Woohoo!
  3. Can also be used as “wading/swimming in The River,” which implies something super-spiritual but no one really knows what.  It probably feels good, though.
  4. When you’re at the toilet, you can sing “There’s a river of life flowing out of me” which is even more fun when you get to “makes the lame to walk and the blind to see, open prison doors, sets the captives free”

• The wind is blowing though
  1. Another “Holy Spirit is here” phrase.  Charismatics are nothing if not creative with language and imagery.  The Holy Spirit is also known as the Comforter and the Paraclete.  For a guy who isn’t worshipped directly, he gets almost as many names as God the Father Himself.
  2. This has fun offshoot phrases like “Spiritual tornado/hurricane” or “I just caught a gust.”  There’s a lot you can do with this if you try.

• Deliverances
  1. These are actual events where people are repeatedly prayed over to have addictions/failings/demons cast out
  2. Unfortunately, they are more often deliverance in name only… it always hurts to hear “They went to 5 deliverances but they still aren’t free.”
• Use your sword
  1. For the non-Christians out there, this is NOT what you first think it is.  If you have to laugh, do NOT tell Christians what made you laugh.
  2. In this case, sword refers to the Bible.
  3. Christians use this phrase because they love the idea of swords and armor.  The meek will inherit the earth, but we still want to sound tough and cool.
• Washed in the blood
  1. This just sounds gross.  Even Christians admit that.  It could actually be the reason why so few churches sing from the hymnbook any more, but no one talks about it.
• End-time revival
  1. Pentecostals can’t stop talking about this.  Ever.  Basically, it’s the belief that just before the Great Tribulation, there will be a “Latter Rain” (i.e. revival) which causes people to experience God more like Acts and less like Conan O’Brien.  It’s inspired by Joel 2.  Pentecostals just can’t wait to yell out “WE WERE RIGHT” and looks forward to everyone else realizing how wrong they were when this happens.
• Brother/Sister
  1. Many churches refer to other people in the church as Brother or Sister.  This is based in the part of the Bible where Jesus said that the disciples were “my mother and brothers and sisters.”  Since no one is brave enough to call themselves Jesus’ mother, Christians stick to brother and sister.  Old Christians in the church insist that it is a term of respect and reminder that we are a “church family,” but no one really knows why it is still done.
• They are so on fire
  1. This is the easiest one of the bunch.  Christians hope that the “on fire” Christian will catch other people on fire and get them excited about Jesus and taking risks and the all the rest.  At least until the fire gets too close to the non-on-fire Christian, and then they want to call in the Spiritual Firemen to keep the fire under control. Which leads us to…

• Spiritual X
  1. X is anything, from GPS to book to computer to cup to saw to rocket.  As long as you add the word “Spiritual” before a word and come up with some sort of plausible explanation of the term (a spiritual instrument is that thing in your heart that plays melodies to God), you can pretty much go with anything.  Screw it, the explanation doesn’t have to be plausible or make any sense.  The spiritual sky is the limit!
  2. If you add “God” or “Jesus” in front of something, it works the same way.  It won’t be long until Nike has a line of Jesus shoes endorsed by a younger, hipper version of Benny Hinn.  The Kobe/LeBron puppet commercials are good, but the Jesus/Peter shoe commercials would be unbelievable.

• We need to really pray for XXXXX (person’s name) this week
  1. Red Alert! Red Alert!  Gossip incoming!  The next 20 minutes are usually spent with less than 3 actually praying for the person.
• Alpha and Omega, Beginning and the End, Yahweh, Jehovah, Elohim, Morning Star, Great I Am, Wonderful God, Lord
  1. Names for God.  The more of these you use at one time, the more spiritual you’ll sound.  Use them all at one time to sound like a hard-core preacher.  WARNING:  Doing this may result in being asked to pray for sick — be prepared with many energetic and crazy ideas for praying for people.
• “A word” for me
  1. Some sort of prophetic word (of knowledge/wisdom/future).  Some people use/want these like a fortune reading, which isn’t far off because the words are often just as vague and generic.
• God is doing a shaking or stirring in this church
  1. Things are changing in the church and the speaker likes the change
  2. I root that we now use the verb “slap”… I can think of a few churches that need a good “God slapping”
• Satan or Demonic Forces are at work in the church
  1. Things are changing in the church and the speaker doesn’t like the change.  This can also be used if there has been a lot of tragedy or fighting in the church.
• Manifestation of God’s Presence
  1. God was really in the zone today.  There was something that was so weird, we’ll be talking about it for years, and it probably wasn’t in the Bible, either.  This could be people shaking, mass laughter, shaking AND laughter in one, “angel feathers” falling from the ceiling, gold dust in the air, lots of tongues or other oddities.  It could also be “ordinary” healings or other miraculous happenings.  If God is manifesting, it may not be Scriptural, but you won’t be sleeping in church, either.
• “God Thing”
  1. This is a new-school term that basically attributes anything that has God’s fingerprints on it to God.  Ex.  The first time I watched Contact, it was a God Thing.
  2. An upside to saying this is that it is impossible to refute.
• I was really refreshed in that service
  1. I slept well.  Hopefully, you weren’t bothered by my head bobbing up and down.  That always looks like a sort of a slow headbang.
• I’m dating Jesus
  1. It’s certainly better than dating you!

When in doubt, use some combination of the words “deep,” “spirit,” “heavy,” “Jesus,” “strong,” “filled,” and “presence,” and you’ll be super spiritual in no time.  Now if we could just do something about having more than 5 minutes of prayer time at church….