There are phrases that bug me when people carelessly blurt them out. The biggest one is, “are you going to church?”* Can’t stand it. What’s worse, I was one of those people. Until I saw the light. (*Relax, this isn’t a religious post)
If you were ‘born’ in a christian family or have attended a church for months, then surely you have heard these phrases: “church is far from where I live” or “let’s go to church”. For conversation’s sake, we understand what it means. Except church is not a place. It isn’t a building. It’s the people. But again, for conversation’s sake, 96% of the people who refer to church as a building know what they mean. And this is what I want to clarify today.
If there isn’t clarity in which words we use and what they truly mean then that only welcomes confusion. Confusion that may lead to embarrassment. A church is its people, not a building therefore it should correctly be referred as a ‘church meeting’. If a certain church have a big event in a bowling alley then you’d say, “most of the church was in the bowling alley”. Now, I am not going to open up a petition site so I shove this opinion of mine into people’s throats. What I’d like for you to do is bring this mindset of conciseness, of being punctual to your everyday matters.
You may find yourself referring to a group of hispanic-looking people as Mexicans when they could well be Brazilians or Colombians. Not a big deal. Another day your boss may send you on a lunch run and he orders a vegan wrap from Panera but you bring him a low-calorie, steak, spinach wrap. It’s similar but it isn’t vegan. He doesn’t eat it. That’s a big deal.
Next time you invite someone to a church meeting think about the words you will use. I pray you are 4% less ignorant after reading this post.
Nelson Guerra 
