[DMcKay]

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Several times in the last few weeks I have had similar questions posed to me. These question, while not Earth shattering are important to the people asking them and usually take a great deal of time in answering. The questions I am talking about are those that are asked by new Christians and even more mature Christians who may have never heard or understand certain Christian terms that many of us take for granted.

I have seen this as being a problem while I was in the service. If you have ever watched a war movie you will see the troops look like they are speaking another language because they are constantly using Military terminology which is often just the Military's abbreviations for different things such as "Sargeant, I want you to set up an NDP over there with M60s arranged at guard positions with overlapping FOF." Means " I want you to set up a Night Defensive Position in that area, with the belt-fed machine guns set up so that they can overlap where the bullets will go so that it won't allow hole in our defense that the enemy can get through.

As Christians there are many terms that we use on a daily basis, or maybe even just on an occasional basis which many of our members may not have ever heard before or have any idea of the meaning. I would like to set up a Christian jargon dictionary Forum in the Theology section that can be used like a dictionary for all of our members. So I am going to set up a folder in the Theology area called terminology. If you have terms that you don't understand or terms that you do and would like to share them with us post them in that folder. I will go through them and make sure that the meanings that are given are correct and as easy to understand as possible. If just the terms you want to understand are posted I will give the meanings from a Biblical position and keep everything alphabetized so that things are easy to find. Some of us use these terms like we think that everyone knows what we mean and I know that this isn't true.

The more people who get involved the faster this tool will be provided for the use of our members. If you are giving the meaning of a term, remember that you can't define a term by using that term in your definition. If we have more than one answer or meaning given for a term I will either decide which is the most concise, or combine them if the cover different aspect of the terms meaning. If you would like credit for you assistance them write you name at the bottom of the definition and I will cite you as the source of the terms meaning.

Remember, I am not talking about the terms that people can just open BibleGateway and do a search. I'm looking for the terms that can be completely baffling to many members. For example the term "kenosis" is used quite a bit when discussing the birth and ministry of Jesus Christ. this short word takes a fairly long paragraph to describe in English terms and not all of our members are speaking English as their primary language.

Remember if you have a question or doubt about a meaning of a term others do as well.