image by JP Inc.

When the pastor is about to expound on a segment of scripture he likes to say he’s going to camp out on it. “We’re just going to camp out on ‘predestined.'” or “Let’s camp out for a minute on the term ‘false witness.'” Camp out = this is going to take awhile.

The pastor learned a lot of fun trivia in seminary and now he’s got a captive audience. If he has a doctoral degree and not just an MDiv he wants to impart to you the original language nuances and subtext. If he considers himself to be emergent or relevant he’ll try to be edgy and entertaining about it. Their sermons are often the longest. One word can take up the whole thing. I once heard a pastor say he was going to camp out on the word “the.”

Camp out can also be used interchangably with unpack, as in “We’re going to unpack this verse.” When you hear either of these, settle in, it’s going to be a long haul.