What should a new congregation be called?
Question:
I am starting a small church in my home. I have attended the Church of Christ here most of my life and preached there as well. I greatly value your site. I am starting this church because the two churches of Christ here have a nasty reputation around town. They make the church of Corinth look like Heaven. Greed, luke-warmness and such like run deep. They won't associate with each other because one has Sunday school and the other doesn't -- kind of stupid isn't it? Anyway, I am still going to teach the values of the church but had to name it differently due to this conflict. I am naming it The Church of The Holy Sacrifice and I was wondering if you thought that name was biblical enough.
Answer:
Unfortunately, just because a church claims to be of Christ, it doesn't necessarily make it so. We can read Revelation 2 and 3 and see that many churches had to deal with many internal problems.
If you are interested in staying with biblical names, you won't find "Church of the Holy Sacrifice" in the Bible. Nor will you attract people interested in dealing with life in a biblical way with such a name. The church in the Bible is called by a variety of phrases, each emphasizing a particular spiritual aspect of the people who worship God as Christians. You will find:
- Churches of Christ (Romans 16:16)
- Church of God (I Corinthians 1:2)
- Church of the Living God (I Timothy 3:15)
- Church of the Firstborn (Hebrews 12:23)
- Or just plain Church of [name of some town] (Colossians 4:16; I Thessalonians 1:1; II Thessalonians 1:1; Revelation 2:1; 3:14)
- Kingdom of Heaven (Matthew 7:21)
- Kingdom of God (I Corinthians 4:20)
- Kingdom of Christ and God (Ephesians 5:5)
- Kingdom of the Son of His Love (Colossians 1:13)
- Kingdom of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (II Peter 1:11)
- Body of Christ (I Corinthians 12:27)
I know of a congregation whose sign simply says "Christians meet here." They have a legal name to satisfy the government's requirements, but their attitude is that one single name is not an adequate description of who they are.
Why not for the moment simply focus on teaching the ancient gospel? As a group of like-minded Christians join together, you can discuss as a group by what legal name you wish to be known.
