Married to the Empire

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Renaming the church

Our church has been in a transitional phase for a while now. A couple of years ago, we sold our property that we could no longer afford to a local Christian school. We've been renting from them and paying 1/7 of the utilities. Our lease says we can continue like this for 5 years, but other circumstances are causing us to move out much faster. For one thing, the city has issued a ridiculous ordinance that no one other than the local school district can have portable buildings. That means we're losing our youth building in October. We have to move.

We found a property to lease, the city approved signage, we have an architect to re-do the inside, and we're good to go! The only problem now is what to call our church. Our current name is tied to our current location. Move locations and the name no longer makes sense. So, our whole church has been given the assignment to come up with name ideas.

This is really hard. We're leaving Baptist out of the name so as not to frighten potential visitors. But all the trendy church names just sound so cheesy to me! I'm hating all the suggestions so far. Things like "Family Life Church" or "The Journey" or "Triple Cross Church" leave me gagging. I never realized before how difficult it can be to name a church!

Ruf keeps reminding me that if I don't want to be stuck with a cheesy name, I have to actually contribute some ideas. I'm well aware of that, but right now I'm uninspired. If anyone has any suggestions...

2 comments:

Catherine at Frugal Homemaker Plus said...

Thanks for stopping by my blog! It is nice to hear from another SAHW/sub! I see you used to be an English teacher- my BA and MA are in English! We really do have similar lives. I bookmarked your blog!

JunkMale said...

Sorry, I don't have any name suggestions, but I do have a tip for when you have a few names to choose from.

Make sure you blog the prospective names to make sure you're not naming your church after a cult or otherwise controversial group. For example, do not name your church Westboro anything, or do not name it Morningstar (my previous church almost did that).