Stuff – What’s in a Name?

In the fall of 1992, I had the opportunity to spend almost a month in the country of Lithuania. It was then just about a year removed from its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union. While there, I found myself able to talk to only one person for the vast majority of the time. That one person was my host who was a Lithuanian born Chicagoan, by way of war-time Germany, Chile, and Pittsburgh, as I recall.

Due to the language barrier, I generally carried a book with me to read during times when I could not understand what was going on. Towards the end of my stay, I met a young man about sixteen who could speak a little English … very little in fact. But he saw my book, Improving Your Serve by Charles Swindoll, and asked if he could look at it. He wanted to try to read. Every few minutes he would ask me the meaning of a word, and I would try to explain the word using simpler words that he already knew. The watershed moment for me came when he pointed to a word on the page and asked, “What is ‘stuff’?” I was at a complete loss. I had no idea how to define “stuff.” I knew what it meant. I had used it in conversation countless times with people who also knew what it meant. But I couldn’t tell someone what it meant. I stumbled around. I stuttered. I thought. And then I said, “It’s stuff.” (Very profound, isn’t it?) I enlarged on that profundity by saying, “It’s like a pile … of stuff.”

That occasion is the genius behind the name of this blog. My mind has often returned to that conversation that day, leaning over a small paperback book, and racking my brain to find a definition for stuff. Each week, I stand to preach to a congregation and I can imagine them asking “What’s stuff?” As I contemplate the science and art of communication, particularly in the realm of theology and preaching to the culture that we live in, I wonder if we can’t define “stuff,” how we will tell our world that Christ died for their sin to free them and give them eternal life. Yet even that little phrase requires explanation and clarification for most of our world today. They don’t know much about Christ, sin, or eternal life. They don’t know what it means to be free, or to be given eternal life in a spiritual sense. So they might point to the “words on the page” and say “What is ____________?” They might think that if our message was really important, we would have told them what we meant by it. Or they might think that we are talking about the same thing they are thinking, and walk away satisfied. But if they walk away not understanding, it is our fault.

“Stuff Out Loud” is my journey in honing my “tell them what I mean” skills. It is an "out loud" collection of my thoughts about how we should interact with the time of human history in which God has placed us. It will no doubt be sharper at times than it will be at other times. My definitions of various stuff may be different than yours. But in this world that needs to hear the timeless truths of God’s Word made clear, should we not at least try to figure out how to define stuff?