Names of Churches

What’s in a name?  What’s in a name for a church?

A new church is meeting at a high school near my house.  It is called Kingdom Come.  Interesting name.  I haven’t yet found out why this name was chosen, and I am sure there must have been a good reason, but I am having fun thinking about what that name means.  It probably has to do with a verse from the Lord’s Prayer, or about wishing Jesus would come back.  But what do people driving by the sign in front of the school think it means.  Most people use the words “kingdom come” in a sentence like, “The tornado (or hurricane, or explosion) blew that house to kingdom come.”  So, is this church explosive, or the aftermath of an explosion? Or, perhaps the church members know that the Hebrew word for spirit is the same as the word for wind, so they are very poetically thinking that the Spirit is blowing in the church until the Kingdom comes.  The problem is that the Bible says:

Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, 'Here it is,' or 'There it is,' because the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20-21, NIV).

To me that says the Kingdom is already here.  

Anyway, I don’t want to argue Kingdom of God theology at this time; instead, this post is about church names. 

I find them very interesting.  Historically, we have named churches for a saint or other leader, for a biblical place, for a doctrinal position, or a combination of these.  Some churches are named for the area or the street on which they are located.  Sometimes, that creates problems when the church relocates.  When I was a young student minister in Louisville, KY, the biggest church in town was Walnut St. Baptist Church: it was located on Broadway and had been for many years.  The First Church of God in Wichita, KS was pretty much in the middle of town when it changed its name to Central Community Church.  A couple of years later they moved to what was then the west edge of town and kept the name.  (Central Community has a sister church named West Side.  West Side is now 5 miles closer to the middle of the city than is Central—confusing.)  It has also long been the practice for churches to use numbers to identify themselves.  Usually, the only number they use is First, but I have seen a few Seconds.

Some churches that started in the 70s and 80s, perhaps inspired by 7Up’s uncola commercials chose to use an unchurch name.  They took names like Christian Fellowship, or Koinonia, or Ekklesia and left out the word “Church” … I guess to show they were different from your Grandma’s church.  Also, in that period lots of churches put “Community” in their names:  Faith Community, Fellowship Community, Ourtown or Our Neigborhood Community.  Many of these were inspired by Robert Schuller who chose not to name the church he founded Reformed Church of Garden Grove, but instead, Garden Grove Community Church.  His purpose was to identify with the people of the town.  Of course, when they built an amazing building, the name was changed to Crystal Cathedral.  Hmm … that church, which for decades was one of the most influential ones in the country, recently declared bankruptcy.  I wonder if the emphasis, like the name, turned from the community to the church.  I don’t know about that particular case, but I know that a lot of other churches have turned inward, which has led to their downfall.

In the last 10 or 15 years the fad has been for churches to choose a one word name that somehow describes the mission, so we now have churches named Journey, Catalyst, Discover, Hope, or _______pointe (fill in the blank with Life, Bridge, Faith, Touch). 

There are also some very unusual names for newer churches.  Last week I heard a speaker from Australia whose church is named Small Boat, Big Sea.  It’s located in a depressed area and wants to bring God’s rescue to the people there, at least that’s what I think it means.  Also, there is a church in Denver, CO that is called Scum of the Earth.  No kidding.  They are targeting people who feel rejected by everyone.  A good thought, but I think it might limit their clientele. Perhaps that’s the idea, and they are only interested in reaching that niche which they feel is being rejected by other churches.  I can’t help being reminded of a youth pastor friend of mine who, when we were young, was fond of saying he was going to move to Beverly Hills because he felt called to minister to the filthy rich.  I wonder how the name Church of the Filthy Rich, or Rich and Famous Community Church would have worked out.  Maybe it’s just as well he never went there.

Some church leaders are saying churches should think about changing the name every five years.  I don’t know about that.  It seems to me if a church has a reputation for being a loving community that welcomes and accepts new people, a name change is probably unnecessary and may be counterproductive.  However, if a church which has been declining or on a long plateau because it has become inward focused is choosing to turn over a new leaf, repent, and seek to have an outward focused future, then a name chance should be considered.  The new name can reflect the new life the church is now living.  Changing the name won’t change the focus, but if the focus is changing, then changing the name can make sense. 

Naming the church is a big decision.  I had the privilege of naming a church that I planted.  It was the middle 80s and I wanted to name it Hope Community Church.  (Basically, because we had little money, little training as a church planter, no people, and hope was the only resource we had.)  When I shared the name with the congregation, which at that point was my wife, my 6-year-old son and myself, the vote was 2 to 1.  My wife was fine with Hope, but my little son, being wise beyond his years, said, “Name it Jesus’s Church, because it’s His church anyway.”  I learned right then that naming a church causes controversy in any size church.  Of course, Jarad’s statement was correct, but Dad and Mom won and we named it Hope Community anyway.  As I think about it, perhaps Jesus’ Church would be a pretty good name.  Maybe it would help a body of believers to remember who is in charge and keep the focus on Him and his design for His church. 

What’s in a name?  For a church there can be a lot, especially in this day when people are less and less impressed by denominational and doctrinal names.  I think the name should reflect what the church aspires to be and the mission it hopes to accomplish.  Is your church living up to its name?  Beyond that, is it living up to the mission that Jesus gave it?

Hope for the Church (Part 6): The Church must show Christ to the World

More than anything else, if there is to be hope for the plateaued or declining church, it must clearly show Christ to the world. That sounds like a no-brainer, but surveys are finding that, while Jesus is very popular, the church isn’t. It seems people want to know Jesus, but don’t want to know the people who represent Him. We have to find out what we’re doing that turns people off. What do we do that blocks, rather than magnifies the love and hope of Jesus? People crave love. They desperately desire hope. They want relief from the guilt and pain they carry, and they want to know that their lives have purpose. Jesus offers all of these things to everyone, but the church is often the last place people go to find them. What is it that congregations are doing wrong? Why don’t people realize that we want to share what we have found? Here are four common reasons that must be overcome for the church to turn around or get unstuck from a plateau.

1. Churches often seem irrelevant to people living in the 21st century.
The message of Christ is for every generation and every kind of person, but many people don’t believe that. To tell you the truth, in many cases I don’t blame them. Many congregations and some denominations are stuck in another century. For some it’s the 18th or 19th century; even if a church is still acting like it’s living in the 20th century, it’s passé. Congregations get hung up on traditions and appearances. These are things that only the members care about. A world that needs love, hope and salvation, doesn’t give one wit about worship or music style, and can’t figure out why it’s such a big deal to the church. If and when they show up to worship, they simply need to be able to understand the message. A congregation that puts its preferences for any kind of style over its desire to communicate the Gospel is asking to be considered irrelevant.

2. Congregations keep to themselves.
Declining churches talk about being a family, and perhaps they are, but not the kind of family Jesus envisioned. He declared that we would be an open family, always welcoming the new brothers and sisters that our Father adopts. Declining and plateaued churches are often great families to each other, but they are closed families. If you ask them if their church is friendly, they would say, “Oh yes.” More often than not, they are very friendly … to each other. They don’t realize how hard it is for a new person to become more than a guest. They aren’t prepared for new people. They don’t think about new people joining them. In the abstract they say they would like new members, but in reality they fear that new people would upset the way things are. New people can make the old-timers feel uncomfortable, and perhaps, dilute the old-timers’ position of power within the congregation.

3. Too many congregations present an angry face.
Unchurched people are repelled by congregations that show anger at people. God hates sin, but he loves sinners so much He sent His Son to be an atoning sacrifice for their sin. Some pastors and congregations seem to have forgotten that. They’re always against “this” or up in arms about “that.” It’s scary for people who aren’t part of their group and it doesn’t attract people to join. Don’t get me wrong. Sin is abhorrent, and Satan’s schemes should make us angry; however, we must not repel the very people who God loves and wants to save from sin. We do that every time we are perceived as hateful people. The face of the church should be God’s love. His judgment and wrath should not be hidden; they are parts of the story, but it was God’s love that drew Him down from heaven to bring the lost to Him. Love was the hallmark of Jesus’ earthly life. Churches that are plateaued or declining need to find ways to be seen as places where His love is shared.

4. Internal dissension turns unchurched people and new Christians off to the church.
Finally, the people God wants to reach often resist becoming involved in a congregation because of church fights and disagreements. Some people who have called themselves “Christian” for a long time seem to think (and some say it openly) that their role in the church is to be the “devil’s advocate.” Folks, the devil needs no advocate, particularly in the church. He does just fine advocating for himself. I have actually heard people say they wanted to make sure that someone kept the pastor in check. In other words, they thought that someone in the church should make sure the pastor didn’t get his way. If the pastor’s intention is to make disciples, and he is not proposing anything heretical, why does the church need someone to get in his way? If, in fact, the pastor’s way is the way God wants the church to act, these people are in God’s way. The Apostle Paul had an opinion of those who cause dissension in the church, “Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy” Romans 13:13 (NIV). Look at that! In Paul’s opinion, dissension is a sin on par with orgies. I think many church dissenters would be offended to be lumped in with orgy participants. If that is the case, they should quit dissenting and get with the program. The earthly consequence of this sin is not merely frustrating the pastor, it also turns prospective Christians away from becoming part of the Lord’s work in your congregation.

There is hope for the church! Even for churches that are plateaued or declining. That hope comes from the Lord and will become reality when pastors and congregations are willing to pay the emotional and financial prices, choose making disciples as their top priority, become willing to adopt new methods, organize for agility and growth, and become known as communities of God’s love that both want and expect newcomers to join with them.

(If you are interested in having Ray present the "Hope for the Church" series, or any other blog topics as a conference or sermon, you can contact me at ray.houser@gmail.com for scheduling information. If you are interested in seeing Ray speak, go to Vimeo.com and put Ray Houser in the search box. You will find several of my sermons there.)

Hope for the Church (Part 4): The Church must be Willing to Choose the Right Methods

So many congregations these days are plagued by stagnant attendance figures, or find their attendance dwindling, that the church is in crisis. Some churches realize the danger and are afraid of the future; others are as oblivious as the band that played on the deck as the Titanic sank. However, there is hope for plateaued and declining churches if they realize the danger and do what needs to be done to once again become places where people find the love, hope and salvation Jesus offers. In this series, we have looked at the price the pastor and the congregation must pay, and the priorities that the church must adhere to. The next avenue of hope for churches to fulfill God’s mission of making disciples is to discover and/or choose appropriate methods of sharing the Good News of Jesus.

Let me point out four assumptions which are both frequent and problematic, that congregations make when choosing the methods it uses for building God’s Kingdom.

It worked for Grandpa.
When a congregation, particularly one that has had past greatness, realizes that it must do something to regain its old vitality, it often decides to start doing the things that worked years ago. Tactics that were effective in days gone by seldom bring the same results today. So much of life has changed. Means of communication have changed. People have a higher degree of expectation for quality in preaching, teaching, and music. Also, most Americans these days know much less about the Bible and the claims of Christ than did the unchurched of a few decades ago. As much as it hurts some folks to realize it, Grandpa’s methods will likely fall flat these days.

It worked in another place.
The location of a congregation is unique. The fact that a method works well in one area does not guarantee its success elsewhere. A lot depends on the demographics of the community in which the church finds itself. Still more depends on the make-up of your church. The first thing a church must do is figure out who it is and who it has the best chance of reaching. Many churches balk at the idea of targeting a group because they like to say they want to reach everyone. But the truth is there is a segment of your community that you have the best chance of reaching. I would go so far as to say those folks are the people God has called you to reach. Now, hear exactly what I am saying, and don’t read any underlying meaning into that. A church should never be exclusive; in fact, I think God calls us to be inclusive. However, reality shows that there are some people that some churches can reach with greater ease, likely because that is who God has in mind for them to reach first. And as a practical matter if a church has no target, it will get what it aims at, nothing.

An idea that has worked at another church might work if that church works hard to tailor it to fit their situation. Very few methods or programs are “one-size-fits-all.” Assuming you can plug a program that worked in another location into your church is a mistake that many churches have made over the last 40 years. A better way might be to allow a borrowed concept to inspire an idea that is made for your church’s very special situation. Borrow ideas. Don’t transplant programs.

It worked for so-and-so
Methods that have worked for big name churches or leaders are a blessing to the Kingdom of God. Don’t expect those methods to work the same for you. You are not that other guy. You don’t have his personality, his resources, or his situation. Don’t assume someone else’s methods will work for you. Robert Schuller and his Crystal Cathedral inspired Bill Hybels as he developed Willow Creek Church near Chicago, and also Rick Warren in Orange County at Saddleback Community. Neither of those churches resembles the Crystal Cathedral, nor are they anything like each other. Hybels and Warren skillfully adapted Schuller’s principles to each of their unique situations. Learn principles and apply them … don’t copy. If you copy you will likely be disappointed when you don’t get the same results as so and so.

We never did it that way before
Congregations sometimes resist trying new methods simply because they are new. They fear doing something they haven’t tried before. Some will even keep doing things that haven’t worked in a long time because that is all they know to do. To discover the methods a particular church should use in a particular time and place takes study of both the community and the congregation; wisdom to choose the things that have the best chance of working, and, most of all, the courage to take a risk and try different things. Many churches are paralyzed because they fear that if they try something new it will fail. The truth is some things will fail, but the church and its leaders must have the freedom to fail and learn from the failures. You can learn a lot by failing. You can learn what not to do, and/or what needs to be changed to reverse a failure.

God gave the church the mission to make disciples. He won’t leave us without a way to do that assignment. To reach this generation congregations must get creative and be willing to take risks. This could well be the dawning of the finest hour for the church in America, if she takes the challenge and refuses to retreat. First of all, open your heart to those who need to know Jesus, then open your head to the ideas God wants to give you for reaching them, and finally, do the life-giving work.

Comments?

Next time: Part 5: “The Church Must be Organized so that it Can Fulfill Her Mission”

Stopping Time

As we turn the calendar page to a new year, some of us think we would like to stop time. Perhaps, if 2010 was a great year for you, it would be great if 2011 was just the same. For the rest of us, the possibility that 2011 will be different, and maybe even an improvement, makes us anxious for it to begin. I think there are times when everyone would like for time to stop. Each of us have years, months, weeks, day, even moments, that are so sweet we want them to go on forever. Like when she said, “I do”, or you hit the game-winning home run.

I can think of times like that for me: college days when there was so much to learn and more pretty girls than there were Saturday nights; when my wife and I set out on the great adventure of life with nothing but dreams; those wonderful summers I got to teach my son to love baseball and to play it with all his heart; the day the new church building opened, signifying not only the culmination of many dreams and lots of work, but also the potential for many, many lives to be changed. I could go on, but that would be fun only for me.

The fact of the matter is that time doesn’t stop. No matter how much we wish it would. Sweet, inspiring, important times can never be caught and held on to. We get to keep the memories, but time moves on. It is easy to forget that as it moves, it can bring more amazing moments which we would miss if time was held back.

As I get older, I find the temptation is greater to try to hold back time. (I prefer listening to the classic hits radio stations, and I sometimes find myself watching old TV shows and movies on Hulu.com.) But as great as the old times seem, they are passed, and it is dangerous to let them get in the way of new and wonderful things God wants to do in and through me. He isn’t done with the world, or with me, or with the part I am to play in it. So, I will do my best to approach 2011 with great anticipation, high expectation, and courage. That is the choice I have made. Not always easy. If I choose to live as if time were stopped, I am taking the reins of my life out of God’s hands. That is something I never want to do.

That brings me to a most troubling observation. I am seeing many evangelical churches doing their best to stop time. They have determined that there was a golden age for their congregation and they want to stay there, or go back to it. This is disturbing because the world that Jesus assigned us to reach is moving headlong into the future. Surveys of young people (Unchurched by Kinnamen and Lyons ) are finding the church to be irrelevant to their lives and to their futures. They see the church as something for old people. I think this is largely due to the fact that churches do their best to stop time.

I have seen this happen over the years of my ministry. At first, I didn’t understand what was happening. I thought the church was trying to guard the purity of Christianity. As I became older, and, I hope, wiser, I began to realize that what was being guarded was most often tradition, and/or the good old days, at the expense of doing the mission of the church.

I knew one church that had an open road to become a very influential beacon of God’s love and hope in the community, but it decided that it was big enough at about 120 attenders. They chose to spend their money to pay off their rather small mortgage rather than invest in timely opportunities for the future. As a consequence, 28 years later, the church sits in its paid-off building with a congregation of 25, looks back to the days when the sanctuary was full and wonders what happened.

Another church was considered a very large church in the 1960s when a great man was the pastor. He retired and moved on, but the church wouldn’t move on and tried to preserve the 60s. The 120 people that meet there now are taught about the greatness of the old days.

A friend of mine who oversees about 150 churches in a state ministry told me that most of the churches in his adjudicatory are all ready for next year, if next year happens to be 1955. How sad. How heartbreaking it must be for the God who is always contemporary, whose name is “I am.”

Many congregations in His beloved church have chosen to fall behind. Perhaps those churches would feel more comfortable worshiping a God named, “I was.” I could go on, but it would only serve to bring depression. The point I want to make is that the future is open. Wonderful times are ahead, if we are alert, if we are willing, if we are living in time as it comes. This is true for individuals, and it is true for congregations.

Join me in 2011. May it be a year so great we wish it would last forever!