What’s In a Phrase?

By Renee Ruchotzke

oil pump jack

Lately I’ve been noticing how many common idioms use the language of extraction, exploitation, coercion or hierarchy:

  • Pipeline to Leadership
  • Drill a Little Deeper
  • Firehose of Information
  • Canary in the Coalmine
  • Changing of the Guard
  • Burn the Candle at Both Ends
  • Rank and File

Most – if not all – of our current social ills (war, the climate crisis, racism, immigration, economic inequality, for-profit healthcare, for-profit schools, mass incarceration) are a result of a worldview that looks at both people and planet as things to be used to profit those who have more power.

I’ve been encouraging myself to notice when I use these or similar terms and find a better phrase that is in alignment with our theological values of mutuality, creativity and interconnection.

  • Nurturing Future Leaders
  • Let’s Deepen our Understanding
  • Learn from One Another
  • Let’s check in on How We are All Doing
  • Shared Leadership
  • Take Time to Rest
  • Networks

You might remember this quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Letter from Birmingham Jail”

“In a real sense all life is inter-related. All ... are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be...This is the inter-related structure of reality.”

Using the values mutuality, creativity and interconnection as touchstones in our faith will help us “extract” ourselves from extraction/exploitation language and move us closer to the Beloved Community.

More on Theology for Leaders from LeaderLab.

About the Author

Renee Ruchotzke

Rev. Renee Ruchotzke (ruh-HUT-skee) is a Congregational Life Consultant and program manager for Leadership Development.

For more information contact .