Acronymity

An email correspondence with a couple of friends yesterday (thanks Steve and Graeme) got me thinking about acronyms. One of the bizarrest I came across a while ago was an acronym that young people in a Baptist Church had come up with for the Deacons (servant leaders) of their church: Very Old Men In Thought!

One of the things that was obvious in the correspondence yesterday was how it is easier to think of a good word and create an acronym from it. So, describing a support and prayer group that we have (we are all Baptist Ministers), the name ‘NERDS’ was suggested by me:

Niggles, Encouragement, Refreshment, Doughnuts, Sanity

I suspect that the same may be true of VOMIT. Were all the Deacons very old men? Were they thinking? What happened if women joined the team? What happened if they stopped thinking? A good acronym should not just make a word, that word should be descriptive of the group as a whole. I’m not sure that VOMIT is such a word in that context!

I am part of a sub-group that is emerging from an ecumenical group that is led by the Bishop of Colchester. We have decided to call ourselves ‘Acts Colchester’. And Acts is not an acronym. I thought hard about what name we could have and what it would be as an acronym. Then in our discussion we decided that we did not need to be shackled by having to have an acronym. We could just have a name!

Acts Colchester describes what we believe churches are doing and are called to do. To act. And for us it is acting in Colchester. Acting in the tradition of the church that goes back to the Acts of the Apostles where the early church “were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as they had need.” (Act 2:44-45)

I have commented before that the significant thing that churches often add to the text is that they change ‘anyone’ to ‘each other’. The Bible does not put restrictions on the people in need who were helped and certainly does not say that the help was limited to Christians!

The aim of Acts Colchester is to engage with our town and our community and ask, “How can we help?” It is perhaps more significant in these times when services are reluctantly being cut that we stand up and act as God would have us act – on his behalf and for the weak, vulnerable and disadvantaged.

Be blessed, be a blessing.

If you want some daft acronyms and have hours to spend, try here or if you want to offer some of your own, please feel free to comment below!