So, you’ve started a church plant. You’ve gathered together a few faithful families and individuals from within a community, and you’re likely now meeting in homes, rented office space, or more likely — a public school building. Hopefully, you’ve decided (and founded your church) upon sound doctrinal tenets and have identified at least a few church leaders.
Your next order of business — even before you secure adult-sized folding chairs and an electronic drum machine — is to decide up on a church name. While there’s ample biblical precedent for the naming of animals, textual support for the naming of a church is scant.
Thankfully, we evangelicals (who are typically disoriented without written instruction) have found a way to remedy this. I’m not sure as to the origins of the method, but the system below can account for approximately 83.585 percent of all evangelical churches. It’s really a rather simple process.
STEP ONE: Start with the list of words below:
- Grace
- Life
- Community
- Covenant
- Fellowship
- Creek
- Calvary
- Fire
- River
- Road
- Word
- Bible
- Memorial
- Chapel
- Spirit
- Faith
- Cross
- Hope
- Light
- Redeemer
- First
Of course, one could readily add the word “Pointe” into the mix above, but by all means, make sure that the trailing “e” is in place if you want to look like a bona fide evangelical church. Otherwise, congregants might miss the “point.”
STEP TWO: Take any combination of the words listed above, in any order, add to them your denominational (or lack thereof) appellation, and tack on the word “Church” at the end (unless you’re really progressive, then you might want to go with “gaggle of Christ-followers,” or “seekers”). Voila! Your church now has a name.
There will be outliers, of course — the Chevrolet Missionary Baptist Church I once spotted while driving through rural Kentucky certainly didn’t fit the mold — but as a general rule, the system works pretty well.
Are there any other church-name-words that I’ve missed?
September 29th, 2010 | 2:59 pm | #1
Do my bone fides increase by stringing together additional words from the list? And if so, is it a linear or exponential scale?
September 29th, 2010 | 3:03 pm | #2
How about using the word “Liberal” in Step One?
Won’t that be part of a good name for an Evangelical Church?
September 29th, 2010 | 4:02 pm | #3
Names do tell a story. What comes to mind when you hear of a church with these in their names?
Zion
Mercy
St. … (you pick)
Tabernacle
Temple
Second …
or any church that strings together more than four words in its name?
September 29th, 2010 | 4:08 pm | #4
“Trinity” and “Gospel” should be in the list.
The one that still gets me is “Full Gospel”.
September 29th, 2010 | 4:31 pm | #5
I’m always fond of the “New Testament Bible Church” moniker myself. For one, it’s (we hope accidentially) Marcionite on its face, and second, I’ve read the New Testament and I’m not quite sure those are the churches we want to emulate. (1st Church of Corinth, anyone?).
September 29th, 2010 | 4:46 pm | #6
Or how about the 1st Church of Liberal Laodicea?
Truth-in-advertising, eh?
September 29th, 2010 | 5:03 pm | #7
Well you folks are obviously not familiar with the truly cutting edge. These days the supercoolreallyawesomeemergentevangelicalseekerfriendly ______ (supply your own trendy term of art here) ummmm “fellowship” would not be caught dead appending “church” to it’s cherished moniker. Much better to go with a single or at most two word “brand”. In our area we have The River, New Hope, The Summit, Emmaus Way, Connections, The Ark and so on. One of these days one of these fellowships is going to go the full Prince route and simply brand themselves as some sort of unpronounceable symbol. One can hardly wait for the advance of the Kingdom that such a move would protend.
September 29th, 2010 | 5:16 pm | #8
Jeremy beat me to it.
September 29th, 2010 | 5:18 pm | #9
One of our local churches is “The Bridge.” Everything happens in zero to sixty minutes. Not 59 minutes, not 61: 60.
I was looking for “Community” and there it was in your list. For churches with perhaps lesser aspirations or a different focus, you can substitute “Family.”
September 29th, 2010 | 5:36 pm | #10
Our church has the very ordinary moniker of Central Presbyterian Church. My wife and I got married in a First Presbyterian Church. My experience is that Presbyterian churches in Canada are far more likely than their American counterparts to be named for a saint, e.g., St. Cuthbert, St. Columba, St. Andrew (a definite favourite).
September 29th, 2010 | 6:30 pm | #11
I know of a place that beats them all and does so with only one word: Reality.
Look it up.
September 29th, 2010 | 7:24 pm | #12
I think you need “House” or “Lighthouse” on your list.
September 29th, 2010 | 7:34 pm | #13
What about Bethany, Bethel, Beroea, Smyrna, Mars Hill and other geographical designations? But, no, I’ve never run across an evangelical church named for Corinth, Gomorrah, Ninevah or Constantinople.
September 29th, 2010 | 8:34 pm | #14
I think i mentioned in a previous comment on a post that the Baptist General Conference changed its branding name to Converge Worldwide. ‘nough said.
September 29th, 2010 | 9:53 pm | #15
My birth family was once affiliated with a BGC congregation, but that was long before the name change. I can’t imagine where they came up with a name like “Converge Worldwide,” which implies that it is a global communion rather than an American denomination.
September 30th, 2010 | 8:01 am | #16
BGC is now “Converge Worldwide”?
You gotta be kidding me!
That’s gross.
Isn’t Piper’s church BGC?
Converge Worldwide? That’s a horrible name.
September 30th, 2010 | 8:28 am | #17
It sounds like a wireless provider.
September 30th, 2010 | 9:47 am | #18
Why not simply the Holy Catholic Church or Church of Jesus Christ or something more obviously ecclesial?
September 30th, 2010 | 10:11 am | #19
Not only is Converge Worldwide ugly, cumbersome, and sounding more like a wireless provider than a church, it isn’t even a name for something. How can something be a name if it contains a verb and a modifier, but no noun?
But isn’t the BGC a global communion? Looks to me from the website as though they’ve planted churches all over the place.
September 30th, 2010 | 11:01 am | #20
You nearly got us. We chose New Covenant Baptist Church. You should stick “New” in there.
September 30th, 2010 | 11:38 am | #21
#1: What denomination is your church a part of?
#2: Converge Worldwide.
#1: Excuse me? I asked what denomination, not what wireless provider you have.
#2: Seriously, the name of our denomination is Converge Worldwide. John Piper’s church is a member of Converge Worldwide.
#1: Oh! Oh really. That’s really, uh, something.
——-
John Piper to board of elders: “Who else will go with me to the Converge Worldwide conference this year?”
September 30th, 2010 | 12:49 pm | #22
It’s always handy if you include the .com or .tv in your church name.
We’ve got some in town that do.
Believe it or not.
September 30th, 2010 | 1:58 pm | #23
What about a .church domain name? E.g., zionlutheran[dot]church?
September 30th, 2010 | 2:16 pm | #24
Yeah, I think “Reality” is the winner.
Dibs on realitynowworldwide.church!
September 30th, 2010 | 2:51 pm | #25
Hmmmmm? Are you talking about Reality Church the atheist website? Or Reality Ministries in Durham NC — the (wonderful — my daughter goes) ministry to folks with disabilities and “at risk” inner-city teens?
September 30th, 2010 | 2:52 pm | #26
Reality LA and other So Cal cities.
September 30th, 2010 | 3:00 pm | #27
Thanks orthodox — I went and looked. Reality looks very hip and now — they could, however, use a good dose of real editing — this sentence is in the pastor’s bio — “Becoming sexually active in the ninth grade, he consented to his first abortion by the tenth”. Oy. I think I know what they mean but sheesh.
September 30th, 2010 | 4:16 pm | #28
one of my favourites:
Hot Rod Church (for Sinners)!
http://www.hotrodchurch.com/
September 30th, 2010 | 6:33 pm | #29
“Victory” would be a common one; “Praise” and “Celebration” would be good for a generic charismatic church. Also, you need to include “fellowship” and “chapel” as an alternative to “church” at the end of the name. “Tabernacle” or “Cathedral” can be used as either an adjective or a “church” alternative.
“Road” only works if you have the actual name of the road as the modifier, like Wheeler Road Church of Christ.
September 30th, 2010 | 6:40 pm | #30
I have a question for those familiar with Converge Worldwide: do their churches now have to use this name in their own names, e.g., Bethel Converge Worldwide or Zion Converge Worldwide? If so, I should think prospective newcomers would be altogether baffled.
September 30th, 2010 | 8:00 pm | #31
In NZ, we have Elim (place name), Destiny, and Assembly of God (I used to belong to the Assembly of God in my misspent youth).
Apostolic pops up now and again, too – a name like the Apostolic Community of Zion creates a mental image.
October 1st, 2010 | 10:34 am | #32
“Reality looks very hip and now — they could, however, use a good dose of real editing — this sentence is in the pastor’s bio — “Becoming sexually active in the ninth grade, he consented to his first abortion by the tenth”. Oy. I think I know what they mean but sheesh.”
Wow. I think I’d call this one TMI Fellowship.
October 2nd, 2010 | 3:19 pm | #33
Aww come on guys, I’m a proud Converge member… ok proud of BGC not necessarily the new moniker. It seems a lil silly to me, also. Our church watched a video from the BGC leadership that explained the thinking. Basically, they think that the “Baptist” title causes unchurched folks to associate negative stereotypes with new church plants. Since church planting is a major emphasis for us, a more neutral “brand” was desired.
Hey, but our church (a church plant of the first ever BGC church) is still proudly Bethany BAPTIST Church! lol
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