Need They Speak This Way?

Here’s a shock: Ecumenical leader tells Pentecostals: ‘We need each other’ . It’s undoubtedly a good thing that the world’s Pentecostals invited a leader of the world’s liberal Protestants to speak to them, and that he came. With a secularizing West and an increasingly aggressive Islam elsewhere, any new connection between Christians helps.

But why do they have to talk in such cliches? Maybe it’s just me, but reading the quotes from the head of the World Council of Churches, Olav Fykse, made me wish someone nearby was running his fingers down a blackboard. For example:

“I cannot say to any brother or sister in Christ that I have no need for you. We need each other because it is only together that we can grow into the one body of Christ,” the ecumenical leader stated.

and

“This liberating and renewing power of the Holy Spirit is a reminder to all of us to not only recognize and search where we are, but also where we are coming from and the new places we will go to find the gifts of God so that the Holy Spirit can empower us to bring peace and justice to the world together,” Tveit said.

I don’t really know what that second quote means, but in any case I’ve heard it a lot before. The language is dead, and I’m fairly sure it’s also deadening, in smothering whatever spark of real fellowship and interest the speaker had lit by being there.

But perhaps its the ecumenist’s version of talking about the weather or sports with a stranger, where all you want to do is make a connection. But even so, should Christians speak so inanely? Does this kind of thing really bring people together — leaving out people like me who have heard it all much too often, does it warm anyone’s heart, rouse them to meet the other person, think more charitably about long-time enemies? I suspect not.