Last Sunday morning, I told our students we were going to have an ice cream bar on Wednesday night. I caught myself afterward and changed it to "ice cream buffet" just in case some kid went home and told their parents there would be a bar at church. Yesterday I posted an update on facebook about my 2 year old son landing on my crotch on the trampoline. My friend and fellow pastor asked if a pastor was allowed to use the word "crotch" on facebook. And finally just this morning a well known communicator and writer posted a tweet with the phrase "piss you off" in it. All of these incidents, in addition to the fact that I'm in the middle of a sermon series called "Words", got me thinking about what words you can and cannot say if you work at a church.
I'm not a cusser. I used to be. I'm not even much of a closet cusser, although if I injure myself badly enough one or two may sneak out. This isn't a post to judge those of you who do either, it's easy to learn to watch your mouth when there are a lot of other people watching it as well. Besides profanity, there are some other words that may seem harmless that ministers may not be allowed to say. Ministers are expected to put their speech through an extra filter that everyone else is seemingly exempt from. Upon ordination, ministers are gifted with an internal auto correct feature that descends upon them from heaven much like the flaming tongues at Pentecost. I just realized ministers aren't supposed to use the word flaming either, crap. Great, now I'm 0 for 2 on the last two sentences.
The funny thing is, if a preacher uses a word that's not on the pre-approved list (your church has one somewhere), people tend to remember it more than anything else he said. I think this is just as telling about the audience as it is the pastor. Now, by no means am I advocating being able to say whatever the heck you want from the pulpit and not be judged. We must measure our words carefully, especially during those times of preaching. But the fact remains, pastors are human and sometimes the words we use aren't necessarily bad in and of themselves they are just unexpected. So I've developed a short list of words pastors can't say without reservation, and some potential alternatives. This is nowhere near an exhaustive list, but at least it gets us started.
The no-nos: crap, pissed, sucks, butt, crotch, hell* (unless it's in a verse - but even then proceed with caution), breasts (avoid Song of Solomon), shut up, and if you're reading from the King James try to replace the word 'ass' with donkey (your autocorrect should catch that), gay, and freaking.
The replacements: poop or doo-doo, ticked, stinks, hiney or rear or bottom, groin, hades or heck, chest, be quiet, donkey, dumb, and friggin' (I guess?).
There you go, a short list of things your minister isn't supposed to say. I know there's more - what are some others?
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