evangelical verbs

Randy Alexander strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM
Fri Aug 14 07:27:03 UTC 2009


On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Neal Whitman<nwhitman at ameritech.net> wrote:
> Our church isn't especially evangelical, but when we actually attend, I've
> noticed a few lexical idiosyncrasies. One is "lift up" meaning "bring to
> your attention". Another is "worship" -- detransitivized with a definite
> understood object, and causativized (i.e. "cause or allow someone to worship
> [God]"), as in "At last week's service, we worshipped 442 people, and
> collected $2320." I've kept meaning to do a blog post on this one, with the
> title "My church worships me." They also tend to talk about "having
> fellowship" or "fellowshipping" in reference to social events like potluck
> dinners or prayer breakfasts or outings for various groups.

Or maybe "Church will worship you for a small fee" or some such.

In my minister of music days ('90s) I had never heard "worship" used
that way, but "fellowship" was very common.  But it was only a
Presbyterian church.  I shied away from more evangelical
denominations.

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu

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