The Simple Pastor

By Phil Whittall, church planter, blogger & book reviewer

• What’s in a name?

  June 9, 2010 | 711 Views | 1 Comment

  I haven’t written anything in a while about the church merger we’re working on so I thought it was about time I said something about that. Sooner or later the issue of names crops up, ‘what are we going to be called?’

  We decided early on that a new name was important, that way we would all be caught up into something new rather than some feeling they’ve lost their identity and others not seeing the change. But how do you choose a name? I’ve been through one pretty tortuous church naming process and was keen to avoid a second.

  So this was our process:

  1. Invite everybody from both congregations to contribute to a ‘long list’. Everyone gets their chance to have their say
  2. This list (which actually wasn’t all that long) was cut to a much shorter list of five names
  3. The leadership from across the two churches discussed and talked and expressed preferences until we cut the list to three names (at this point my first choice name didn’t make the cut). All the leaders were happy to stand up for all three names.
  4. Then we asked everybody in both churches to rank their preferences on the remaining three and hope a clear preference emerged because we hadn’t really thought about what step 5 might be…

  Here are the principles I was looking for in a name

  1. The new name needed to be that expressed something of the calling of God on us as a people, that somehow spoke of who we want to be, what we are seeking to bring to the community
  2. The new name needed to be something that was reasonably understandable to people who have little or no knowledge of Christ or the church without needing long explanation
  3. The new name would hopefully be one that would help shape us into the future
  4. The new name needed to be shorter than the old name
  5. The names needed to not be one of these and while these are popular in the US was unlikely to be here

  And so we have a new name, with one or two things on the design side still to be worked out…

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  Categories: church, hope church

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• richard Hopkins

  and the name is?