What's in a Name?

I'm a life member at a old United Methodist Church in South Minneapolis, Asbury UMC. The beautiful organization has been struggling to find new members and has suffered financially for the past decade. Last fall we considered merging with another UMC, Oakland UMC, not far away. This past spring both churches voted whether to come together under one roof or to close. The vote passed and just a little over a month ago we started worshipping together at the previous Asbury building.

The agreement decided upon if the merger went through was that the church and congregation would be considered brand new. This means new committees would be organized, a new worship service would created and a new church name would be chosen.

I was very excited and honored when I was asked to serve on the 'New Church Name Committee.' They liked my history with Asbury, my PR expertise and want me to give a young person's perspective.

A name is very important. It's what we will put on the building sign in the front yard, it's what will use to represent our self on every piece of stationary, it's how people will search for our website, it's where people will make their donation checks out to and most importantly it's the first thing new potential members will see.

The idea of a church organization and even the word 'church' has changed drastically recently. Studies have shown that using the word 'church' in the title of a religious organization carries certain negative connotations with it. I'm exactly sure why this is and why it would attract new people more than another religious organization with word church at the end of its name. Another Methodist church in the same area as ours used to be called Hobart UMC. In the last year it closed due to the same reasons we are facing. Recently a new group reopened it as a UMC, made many changes and renamed it Solomon's Porch. It's doing very well now.

At our next meeting we will start determining criteria we want our name to have. I'm doing some research on the side to see what I find about church names and am curious to see what we decide is important for our name.

How important do you think a church name is? What name would you like to see on the front of your religious organization?