The Importance of the Article

“You forgot to use ‘a’.” “Say, ‘I’m going to the park today.” “Don’t forget your articles!!!”

In case you’re just tuning in, I am teaching English to elementary students at a private school in South Korea. I just learned today that one of the reasons that Koreans have such a hard time learning to add articles in their sentences has to do with the fact that apparently they don’t have articles in their language. Intriguing, but I’m still going to jump on them when they forget it in my class, because that’s the reason they are here: to learn English. Articles are a part of the language just as much as the vocabulary.

Yet as much as I get onto my kids because they forget to add the article, how many times do we in the church forget our articles? “I’m going to church.” What are we saying? Is church a noun or a verb? If we are thinking “church” as in our destination of where we are going, than the answer is noun, but we are forgetting the article to declare it as such. Without the article to define “church” in a statement such as that as a place it sounds like a verb, like something we are doing. If we are leaving it as a verb, what does that mean? What does it mean to “church”? Are we referring to the repetitious pattern of going to a building to meet with people of similar belief to sing songs and hear a small lesson to remind us to be closer to God? What do we mean? It seems silly to refer to “church” as a verb. I think there would be general agreement because of our years of hearing this that the church is not a building but the body of believers.

Ah! A body of believers! Then the word we are using is a noun, as it refers to a group of people. So why do we still speak of it as a verb? I read an article recently recommended by a friend about the development of the word, “FAIL.” (You can read the article for yourself here.) The author points out how it is common for verbs to become nouns. He cites examples such as lock, bike, and meet. These can both act as nouns and verbs. But here we see just the reverse action: a noun that has become a verb. What a confused word! It knows itself to be a noun, but is used like a verb. Imagine having a child who knows his name to be Todd only to begin hearing people call him Bill. The confusion would be unbearable.

So while it could be said that “church” has simply changed from a noun to a verb, the problem is simply that the word “church” simply makes no sense as a verb. It’s definition then is confusing. How do you describe that? What definition do you give? It is best left as it was intended to be – a noun. Listen to the sentence again, now with the article in place as it should be: “I’m going to go to the church.” Understanding the word “church” as a body of believers, it makes more sense with the article.

From here it is simply a matter of actually reminding yourself to change your vocabulary this little bit. It will likely take some time. For me it’s taken a year or more just to finally get an even mix of “I’m going to go to service at…” and “I’m going to church.” We simply have to be patient and constantly check ourselves.

It seems such a trivial point to fix, yet our language holds such power, sway and meaning within it. We treat it so carelessly and flippantly – oftentimes even more so in our church language. We cause those outside the church to become so confused by what we say because we are so used to speaking among Christians that we forget the vocabulary of the world, or we forget that words have taken on new meaning in the body of believers.

If we are to serve the people around us, it would benefit us all greatly if we watched how we said things, and what we said around others.