Off the Soapbox (Seriously): Theses Regarding Church Name Changes

 Could there be good reasons to change a church's name? Probably. Could there be good reasons to not change a church's name? I think so. In the genre of straightforward assertions, here are some serious points regarding churches changing their names: 

1. Relevance in and of itself is not the goal; faithfulness is. 

In his book Bad Religion: How We Became A Nation of Heretics, Ross Douthat convincingly argues that an absolute commitment to relevance is a big part of the decline of mainline denominations. The idea that "we have to get with the times or die" is not a new one. The irony is that many of those churches espousing it are dead or dying, not of irrelevance, but of over-relevance (hey everybody! We like U2 too!). They were so relevant that there was no real difference between the church and world. (By the way, Douthat doesn't just pick on mainline, more liberal churches; he shows how conservative Christians have essentially bought into heresies that work against the gospel).

2. Real faithfulness to the gospel must include missiological sensitivity (a good kind of "relevance") to our particular culture. 

As John Howard Yoder has said (and I paraphrase), if we can't speak the gospel in terms our audience will understand, then we have not yet spoken the gospel. This is not capitulation to our culture, but commitment to a missionary God who accommodates himself to us and commands us to go and do likewise. In Paul's words, we have to become all things to all people (1 Cor. 9:22). 

3. It might seem like a paradox, but commitment to real faithfulness produces true relevance. 

If Jesus is our measure of relevance, then we realize that acts that often seem faithful to God's will but irrelevant by outside standards (like the cross of Jesus) are actually the way that God accomplishes his purposes in the world. This is why #1 involves not just a bad strategy but a mistaken worldview: it fails to ground itself in the God who is revealed in Jesus.

4. The New Testament is filled with great examples of Christians who recognize the context and framework of their audience, and adjust their language accordingly.  

A frequent example is Paul at Mars Hill. This example is good for two reasons: Paul clearly adjusts his message to accommodate his audience on some points, connecting with Greek poets and the reality of creation vs. an emphasis on the Old Testament narrative (as when he's speaking to Jewish audiences). But he also is very clear about the gospel: Jesus died and rose again. When he talks about the resurrection, he loses a great majority of his audience because of his faithfulness to the scandal of the gospel. But the point is to be scandalous and offensive precisely where the gospel itself is scandalous and offensive. Too many Christians have been scandalous and offensive for non-gospel-focused reasons, and that's a shame.

5. Misguided attempts to be relevant might still better than entrenched appeals to the status quo. 

In other words, it's better to change your name with some sense of mission than to keep your old name for no other reason than that it is the status quo. Even a misguided focus on relevance may show that you have some sense of mission. A church that has lost any sense of mission has lost its reason for existence. 

6. We should not talk about genuine relevance (missiological sensitivity to our culture) with language taken over from consumer capitalism (i.e., "marketing," "branding," etc.)

Why? Words are really, really, really important. In our culture, marketing may involve telling the truth about a genuinely good product in order to help people see why it might be a good thing; but marketing also may involve appealing to inherently sinful desires (greed, lust, envy, etc.) in order to manipulate people into buying genuinely bad things. To simply take over language of "marketing" and "branding" as terms usable with respect to communication about our church unwittingly capitulates to the spirit of the age, which is about power, not truth and goodness. It frames how we think about missiological sensitivity in terms that are incompatible with the gospel. Again, I think there is irony here: the gospel really is good and true, so when we communicate it clearly and winsomely, it is naturally attractive. To paraphrase Yoder again, if people don't hear the gospel message as genuinely good news, then we are communicating it badly. The gospel is inherently beautiful, attractive, and relevant (in the good sense), and so we already have the best possible advantage when it comes to saying something that people will need and want to hear.

7. Sometimes the most faithful thing to do is to simply hold steady. 

In a culture that is market-driven, faddish, transient, and rootless, sometimes the most radical thing to do is to hold steady. This may involve keeping a name that marks you by geography or (church) history. It's an old but true quip that "he who is married to the spirit of the age will soon be a widower." When the bride of Christ is truly faithful to the One who was, and is, and is to come, she will always point to the heights of God's love and therefore be relevant to the deepest needs of humanity. 

I'd love to hear feedback on what you like/don't like, agree/disagree with on these points. Feel free to comment below. I've heard lots of good feedback via Facebook and personal conversations as well.