World-Changers, Manic Panic, and Other Perils of Christianese

One summer night in high school, a classmate named Becca showed up at a festival in my Midwestern downtown. She told me and a few friends that she’d just returned from a youth retreat, and at the end of the week God revealed that she is going to “be a world-changer.” That she will lead many people to Christ, “thousands or even millions.”

She said this while we were eating elephant ears and drinking lemon shake-ups. My friends and I were much more preoccupied with college rock, Manic Panic, and skateboarders. Later that same night after a local band performed, a youth pastor’s son I went to church with would jump on a concert stage and pull down his pants while facing his young audience to shrieks and gasps. Really, it was an unusual night to reveal “world-changer” status. I was startled when she told me, even though I didn’t really know what she was talking about. And I was embarrassed for her, I distanced myself instead of listening or inquiring. Decades later I’ve not forgotten the audacity of her claim.

I googled “world-changer” and found a 2016 article in Christianity Today discussing the term. It turns our Becca wasn’t alone. Not even close:

“For years, I moved in Christian circles where young people were coached into adulthood with motivational victory-speak that called on them to do great things for God. Even now this sentiment can be found in every corner of the evangelical world: Christian colleges, discipleship programs, and among both conservative and more progressive streams of our movement. How many 20- and 30-somethings among us have attended a youth conference … and heard at least one speaker tell their audiences they were destined to be world changers? And how many well-meaning youth pastors echo that call with the kids in their youth group?”

Words have weight, and even as an Evangelical kid in the 90s the phrase “world-changer” bothered me. Because I could sense its irony-free earnestness, its sales pitch guarantee of success. Like a lot of people, I’m suspicious of Christianese, and of being marketed to or submerging myself into the zeitgeist. Clearly “world-changer” is good copy for an event program, it punches up a PowerPoint slide.

If as Christians we’re called to live in pursuit of human flourishing, how do we find inclusive and genuine language to express it? Language that doesn’t exclude our brothers and sisters of color. Language that doesn’t exclude the marginalized and oppressed, but makes room at the table.

Poets, painters, and musicians use imagery and imaginative language to explore the audacity of Jesus’ message. But the best example of where we can look to push past Christianese and press into the language of hope in God’s goodness and promises for the afflicted leads straight back to the Old Testament prophets. Here’s a heavy-hitter:

Isaiah 58: 9-13

9 If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
   with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
10 and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
   and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
   and your night will become like the noonday.
11 The Lord will guide you always;
   he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
   and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
   like a spring whose waters never fail.
12 Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
   and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
   Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.

In contrast to Christianese, these verses push the bounds of reality. In a way, the term “world-changer” pushes the bounds of reality, too. But unlike a phrase that sets most kids up for disillusionment and skips over what it looks like to a life of faith for decades — the slow burn of loss, separation, and estrangement mixed with deep joy and freedom — the prophets cast an ambitious vision of beauty and hope. Isaiah’s voice is a catalyst to bring into reality what it imagines. That the world can indeed change, that in spite of sorrow God is setting all things right.

In The Prophetic Imagination, the Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann says,

“Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing ... It is the vocation of the prophet to keep alive the ministry of imagination, to keep on conjuring and proposing futures alternative to the single one the king wants to urge as the only thinkable one.”

Let those futures be so.