The vocabulary, without the jargon
The words we use, explained.
Church circles have their own expressions, and they mean nothing when you arrive from outside. Here they are in ordinary English. Everywhere on this site, these words link back here.
- Micro-church Micro-Église
- A complete church, just a small one: about a dozen people meeting in a home rather than a building. Everything a church does happens there — reading the Bible, praying, sharing a meal, caring for one another, welcoming newcomers — at a scale where everyone genuinely knows each other. It is not a step on the way to a “real” church: it is one.
- Church planting Implantation d’Églises
- Helping a new Christian community begin where there isn’t one yet, rather than expecting people to travel to an existing church. It almost always starts small — a few people, a home, real relationships — and it is done alongside the churches already in the area, never against them.
- Unreached peoples Peuples peu rejoints
- A term from the missions world for peoples where very few are Christians and where there is almost no church speaking their language. It describes a situation, not a worth: nobody is “less” for not having heard something. We use it because it is the common term, but we speak first of neighbours, families and newcomers.
- Disciple
- Someone learning to live the way Jesus lived, not merely someone who believes certain things about him. The word means “apprentice”: it assumes time, mistakes, and someone walking alongside. Nobody becomes a disciple in an evening.
- Maritime francophonie Francophonie maritime
- Everyone who lives in French across the Maritime provinces: Acadian communities rooted here for generations, people who arrived recently from Africa, Haiti, the Middle East and elsewhere, and those reconnecting with a language they learned as children.
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