What Is Important When Choosing A Church Name?

So it's time to name your church plant. Well this is fun and exciting. But also can create some anxiety. There are lots to things to think through when selecting a name.

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Danny Parmelee: 00:05

Welcome back, listeners, to 101 questions at church planners ask. I'm your host, Danny Parmele. Here's our question today. What's important when choosing a church name? Well, choosing a church name is certainly fun and exciting.

Danny Parmelee: 00:20

It can certainly bring about some anxiety, almost as nerve racking if you've had to choose your child's name before. You know, there's some permanence there, maybe not so much with the church plant, but you still do not want to mess it up. I'm actually gonna use this metaphor of choosing your child's name kind of throughout this episode to kind of help think through some of those important factors. So if you have named your child before, want you to kind of think back to what you did. What my wife and I did when it was time to name our first child is we bought one of those baby name books.

Danny Parmelee: 00:55

And to kind of help you get started, I have a list of over 200 church names so you can head over to the blog, churchplantersask.com, and you can download it absolutely for free. I'm not selling anything. And, you can look at that. And as you look through it, I want you to pay attention to names that resonate with you and, also those that don't, and maybe you can start off by circling, maybe writing down some variations or new combinations. So if you saw Valley Brook Church and City Lights Church, and maybe it inspires you to come up with Valley Lights Church or something like that.

Danny Parmelee: 01:29

You get the idea. So just like naming a baby, think through how you can generate this large kind of list of names, and then step two, you're gonna start narrowing down this list. So start by sharing your church name ideas with others, and over time, you're probably gonna see that some of the names that you originally liked are gonna drop off the list. Others may rise to the top. Now here's a tip.

Danny Parmelee: 01:55

Once you have your list down to about five or six, you should be asking non Christians which names appeal to them. Now why do this? Well, I'd argue that Christians are notorious for coming up with some of the cheesiest, most cliche names. And as a church plant, this is really who you're hoping to reach, those that don't know Christ and those that aren't a part of a church. So you get their amazing insight.

Danny Parmelee: 02:22

And kind of as a double bonus, it allows you to strike up conversation with them about spiritual things. This is what we did when, we planted in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I literally went to coffee shops and parks, had my list of names, and asked complete strangers. So give me some moment of your time. I'd like you to look at this list, which one of these appeals to you.

Danny Parmelee: 02:43

And, I also gave this list to those who were starting to form the launch team and had them do the same thing. And it was great because it was a way to kind of train soft evangelism skills and ingrain in our culture early on that our church plant would engage in spiritual conversation with nonbelievers and to value what those nonbelievers had to say. So part of narrowing down your list, though, will also be, thinking through negative connotations. So I don't know if anyone else, when they were thinking through names for their children, thought through, like, how they would negatively be used on the playground, like Cindy Cindy, Bobindi, Banana, Fanny, Fofindi, Phi, Momindi, Cindy, or what accidental names might come about. So maybe you'd avoid naming your child Richard because you didn't want him to become icky ricky on the playground.

Danny Parmelee: 03:39

Well, you should kinda be doing the same thing when narrowing down your church name and not that you'd actually use the church or that you'd use the, you know, childhood name game, but instead think through how it might be misinterpreted or negative connotations. So you have to be careful of unintentional association. For example, using names that contain recognizable big churches that have gone through bad things. So for example, Mars Hill, Harvest, Willow, though you may have zero connection and maybe even like some of the those names or parts of them, subconsciously or even consciously, people can associate you with them. Even churches that have a good reputation, there's a danger there.

Danny Parmelee: 04:22

Maybe you like Life Church or Elevation, and, you know, there's maybe nothing wrong. But people can again wrongly assume that you are connected, and then whatever perception they have of those churches or ministries will have a indirect impact on you. So step three is finding kind of that balance of uniqueness and clarity, And I can speak to this from a personal experience. I shared how we went around. We asked people which name they like.

Danny Parmelee: 04:53

Now keep in mind that we were next to a university, and we were reaching primarily 20. And the name that rose to the top was epic two forty two. Two forty two, of course, being a reference to acts two forty two, the description of the early church. Well, after some time, I felt like, well, having a number in the name, this wasn't the best idea. I felt it was sounded too much like a youth group.

Danny Parmelee: 05:17

So I had the brilliant idea of taking the first word, epic, but to jazz it up a little bit, take the Greek form of the word. So that word is epikos. It's not even found in the Bible. And side note, as it caught on, it caught on as epikos, so not even pronounced properly because it was hard to say. Now keep in mind that our church was being formed during the emerging church movement, if any of you are around for that or can remember that.

Danny Parmelee: 05:45

And there was kind of this rebellious attitude, towards organized religion. So my second brilliant idea was not even to use the word church in our name. We didn't want to be a church. We wanted to be a Christian spiritual community. And we were so edgy, so cool, you wouldn't even believe it.

Danny Parmelee: 06:06

Well, we hit the uniqueness out of the park. No one had named their church that before. We were the first. Two thousand four, you can look it up. There's other epicas or epicos churches now.

Danny Parmelee: 06:19

But now to the disadvantage, there were so many downsides to it, and that was that it was confusing. I'll start with the fact that we didn't have church in our name. All of our signs, marketing, or even conversation, we left out the word church. So imagine if we put up a poster somewhere, people would have no idea. Maybe it was some sort of outreach or picnic or gathering that we were going to have.

Danny Parmelee: 06:45

Well, maybe there was a certain intrigue factor there. People were wondering what it was, but most people didn't even give it a second look. And then when people did start asking, I would do everything I could to avoid the word church. So I would go on the we're a Christian spiritual community, and they had this kind of wrinkled up weird look on their face of confusion. And after a few conversations where people are like, well, I'm looking for a church.

Danny Parmelee: 07:14

And I'm like, oh, well, that's actually what we are. We eventually changed it and added church to the name to become Epicos Church, which helped somewhat. But even after ten years, I would meet people in the community and introduce myself as the pastor of Epicos Church. And someone would respond such as one person I remember in particular said, oh, that Greek church on the corner of National And Greenfield. See, in their minds, they saw our name, it was Greek, and they assumed we were a Greek Orthodox church, that I was a priest, that I wore robes, that I had a long beard and gold jewelry and icons all throughout the church simply because of the name.

Danny Parmelee: 07:59

I never thought our unique name would be so misunderstood. All that to say, put on a very critical thinking hat to think through how your name could be misunderstood. Now am I suggesting suggesting that you go with some common generic name like Grace Bible Church or Faith Fellowship, which, by the way, if you're listening and that's the name of your church, I'm so sorry. But better yet, maybe you could go with the most common name. So Thomas Rayner did some research and found out that First Baptist Church is, the most common church name in The United States, over 5,000 churches, probably not the best name for your church plant.

Danny Parmelee: 08:44

But, no, I'm not suggesting that you throw out creativity altogether. If you do that, you probably will lose out on expressing what God is doing and maybe even doing something unique in this local church body that you're shepherding and leading. So, instead, just try to find that balance of creativity without being confusing. Last step before you name your baby, make sure the name is available. Now most churches are not trademarked, but you should check with your state to make sure that you can use that name.

Danny Parmelee: 09:22

Most states have a website usually connected to their department of revenue where you can just type in a name and see if it's it's available for, you know, small businesses have to do this all the time. Secondly, you may wanna check to see if the name is available as far as a domain. Now this isn't a deal breaker because you can get creative with domain names and add, you know, different things that kind of help to to specify it. But, you know, you you may have one domain you may be down to two names and one domain name is available, so it helps to kind of push you in that direction. Now finally, a word about using a city name or neighborhood name.

Danny Parmelee: 10:03

The upside to using, the city or the neighborhood in your name is that it creates clarity on your location and the people you serve. So even if it's, you know, Grace Church Milwaukee, then it's very clear that you're in Milwaukee or Grace Church West Allis, then you know it's even this specific suburb that's on the outside of Milwaukee. But the problem is or the downside to it is that if you're too specific to a neighborhood, is if you ever move from that community or move from that neighborhood, then you've got a little bit of a problem on your hands. And this does happen, especially in metropolitan areas, and it's frustrating to me. I've seen this before where churches have a certain city name and they actually don't and they meet in that city.

Danny Parmelee: 10:53

However, because of, you know, having moved, there's a different name for that. So all this to say is that naming your church is a very fun process, but do give it some thought. Give it some time to kind of think through. Invite others to be part of the process. Finally, if you think that you have a creative name for a church and you want some advice on your top choices, please contact me or leave comments in church planters ask dot com.

Danny Parmelee: 11:23

And until next time, keep asking your questions. Questions.