You had one job

Of all the societal and psychological changes brought on by the dominance of social media, one of its most interesting effects is on our language. Headlines have been replaced by hashtags as a means of capturing the essence of a story, and terms can be coined, duplicated and globally disseminated in a matter of minutes. Many of these are meaningless memes, but some carry an important message. Humour accounts now regularly use the words ‘You had one job’ to describe the abject folly of an individual or organisation who fails at a single, simple job assigned to them, and the phrase serves as a valuable means of showing just how readily we miss the mark as human beings.

When it comes to preaching, ‘You had one job’ can be a helpful motto, and a measure of how the minister understands their message, their manner and their function within the body…