Remnant Church
I inherited the name of our church when I started here fifteen years ago and I’ve never loved it. It’s better, in my opinion, than the original name—Waterville Open Bible Church—or something even stranger like “The Tabernacle of Victorious Believers,” but it’s still not great.
It’s long, which means it doesn’t roll off the tongue easily, but neither is it easily abbreviated. JC Penny became JCP and that seems to work. Maybe it’s just me but WCC isn’t as catchy.
I like that our name emphasizes community, but I don’t love that its focus is exclusively on Waterville. Yes, we’re located in Waterville, but for those familiar with the area we think more in terms of the entire Anthony Wayne community if not all of northwest, OH.
But despite my lack of enthusiasm regarding our church’s name, I’ve never seriously considered trying to change it. Rebranding is a mine field: there’s a chance you could navigate it safely but not likely. Just ask the people at Twitter or Cracker Barrel.
That being said, if I were doing some exploratory research on a possible new church name I might start with Remnant Church.
Remnant is a prominent theme in both the Old and New Testaments. Prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah predicted that a remnant of Israelites would be left behind in the land following the Babylonian exile but that a remnant would also eventually return.
Out of the masses would survive a remnant people who would remain obedient to God.
The Apostle Paul picks up on this theme in his letter to the church in Rome, writing that not all Israel is Israel, meaning that not all people who self-identify as religious truly love and worship God.
Remnant is how the church survives. Not all people who identify as Christians are seriously interested in following Jesus. But there are always some within the church who are.
They are the Remnant.
Now, an obvious problem with this church name is its implied arrogance, and that might be reason enough to strike it as a legitimate option. Some might take the name to imply that we think we’re the only real Christians.
I certainly wouldn’t want to communicate that. I don’t believe that.
But if the name Remnant Church focused more on some of the things our church is trying to preserve and pass along as minority positions in a majority Christian culture, that could be really powerful and energizing. In other words, Remnant Church could communicate, “we’re trying to serve the larger church and the future church by emphasizing things that seem to have been forgotten (or never learned).”
A Remnant Church preserves and passes along remnant convictions; truths left behind but which one day might return.
For instance, as odd as it should sound, most Christians don’t seem to believe that God is just like Jesus. For the average Christian, God is a mysterious pastiche of Bible verses. But the earliest followers of Jesus clearly believed that he was the fullness of God’s self-expression in the form of a human person.[1]
How do we know what God is like? We look at Jesus. The early church built the entire movement on that belief. Many contemporary Christians seem to have lost it, or never had it to begin with. Our church is trying to preserve and pass along this most fundamental of Christian convictions.
Second, again as odd as it should sound, lots of churches do not clearly name for their people the goal of Christian spirituality. The de facto goals end up being securing a spot in an afterlife paradise or transforming culture through activism. And without wanting to devalue either of those objectives, neither have ever been the goal or telos of the Christian journey.
The goal of faith is union with God.[2] We are to become partakers of the divine nature.[3]
And that means our journey on earth is a journey of being conformed to the image of love. Love is the goal of Christian spirituality. If God is a relationship of persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—or as the Apostle John says it, “God is love,”[4] becoming partakers of God’s nature is to become love ourselves. As we are loved by God we grow in love for God which expresses itself in our love for our neighbors, extending even to our enemies.[5]
Again, the earliest followers of Jesus understood this and embraced it. It seems many Christians today do not. Our church is trying to preserve this conviction and pass it along to future generations.
And lastly, today’s church seems to have lost the hope that God will one day make all things new. Most Christians seem to uncritically accept that in the end God will save some people and condemn others, either because he didn’t want to save all people or because he wasn’t capable of it. But the grand vision of the New Testament authors is that eventually every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.[6] Jesus himself said that when he is lifted up on the cross he will draw all people to himself.[7]
Not some people. All people.
In the end, after God has destroyed sin, death, and the devil, he will make all things new.
That idea, as I have painfully learned, is not only foreign to many Christians but unwelcomed. It seems many Christians today want some people to suffer interminably.
But I think the church began with a much larger hope than has become the stuff of popular Christian teaching and belief. Our church is trying to preserve that hope and pass it along to future generations.
This is just me riffing. I’m not seriously entertaining changing our church name (though I would be interested in hearing feedback from anyone reading this), but the more I think about what our church has become and the kind of church we aspire to be, Remnant Church would be a strong candidate.
Again, not as a way of communicating we’re the only real Christians around here, but as a way of communicating our intent to serve the wider Christian movement by making sure that certain convictions and truths that drove the earliest Jesus followers but which have become minority views in today’s church are preserved for future generations when perhaps their time for broader acceptance will return.
[1] Heb 1:3
[2] Jn 17:20-26
[3] 2 Pt 1:4
[4] 1 Jn 4:7-12
[5] Jn 13:34-35, Lk 6:32-36
[6] Ph 2:10-11, Rm 14:11
[7] Jn 12:32
It’s long, which means it doesn’t roll off the tongue easily, but neither is it easily abbreviated. JC Penny became JCP and that seems to work. Maybe it’s just me but WCC isn’t as catchy.
I like that our name emphasizes community, but I don’t love that its focus is exclusively on Waterville. Yes, we’re located in Waterville, but for those familiar with the area we think more in terms of the entire Anthony Wayne community if not all of northwest, OH.
But despite my lack of enthusiasm regarding our church’s name, I’ve never seriously considered trying to change it. Rebranding is a mine field: there’s a chance you could navigate it safely but not likely. Just ask the people at Twitter or Cracker Barrel.
That being said, if I were doing some exploratory research on a possible new church name I might start with Remnant Church.
Remnant is a prominent theme in both the Old and New Testaments. Prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah predicted that a remnant of Israelites would be left behind in the land following the Babylonian exile but that a remnant would also eventually return.
Out of the masses would survive a remnant people who would remain obedient to God.
The Apostle Paul picks up on this theme in his letter to the church in Rome, writing that not all Israel is Israel, meaning that not all people who self-identify as religious truly love and worship God.
Remnant is how the church survives. Not all people who identify as Christians are seriously interested in following Jesus. But there are always some within the church who are.
They are the Remnant.
Now, an obvious problem with this church name is its implied arrogance, and that might be reason enough to strike it as a legitimate option. Some might take the name to imply that we think we’re the only real Christians.
I certainly wouldn’t want to communicate that. I don’t believe that.
But if the name Remnant Church focused more on some of the things our church is trying to preserve and pass along as minority positions in a majority Christian culture, that could be really powerful and energizing. In other words, Remnant Church could communicate, “we’re trying to serve the larger church and the future church by emphasizing things that seem to have been forgotten (or never learned).”
A Remnant Church preserves and passes along remnant convictions; truths left behind but which one day might return.
For instance, as odd as it should sound, most Christians don’t seem to believe that God is just like Jesus. For the average Christian, God is a mysterious pastiche of Bible verses. But the earliest followers of Jesus clearly believed that he was the fullness of God’s self-expression in the form of a human person.[1]
How do we know what God is like? We look at Jesus. The early church built the entire movement on that belief. Many contemporary Christians seem to have lost it, or never had it to begin with. Our church is trying to preserve and pass along this most fundamental of Christian convictions.
Second, again as odd as it should sound, lots of churches do not clearly name for their people the goal of Christian spirituality. The de facto goals end up being securing a spot in an afterlife paradise or transforming culture through activism. And without wanting to devalue either of those objectives, neither have ever been the goal or telos of the Christian journey.
The goal of faith is union with God.[2] We are to become partakers of the divine nature.[3]
And that means our journey on earth is a journey of being conformed to the image of love. Love is the goal of Christian spirituality. If God is a relationship of persons—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—or as the Apostle John says it, “God is love,”[4] becoming partakers of God’s nature is to become love ourselves. As we are loved by God we grow in love for God which expresses itself in our love for our neighbors, extending even to our enemies.[5]
Again, the earliest followers of Jesus understood this and embraced it. It seems many Christians today do not. Our church is trying to preserve this conviction and pass it along to future generations.
And lastly, today’s church seems to have lost the hope that God will one day make all things new. Most Christians seem to uncritically accept that in the end God will save some people and condemn others, either because he didn’t want to save all people or because he wasn’t capable of it. But the grand vision of the New Testament authors is that eventually every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.[6] Jesus himself said that when he is lifted up on the cross he will draw all people to himself.[7]
Not some people. All people.
In the end, after God has destroyed sin, death, and the devil, he will make all things new.
That idea, as I have painfully learned, is not only foreign to many Christians but unwelcomed. It seems many Christians today want some people to suffer interminably.
But I think the church began with a much larger hope than has become the stuff of popular Christian teaching and belief. Our church is trying to preserve that hope and pass it along to future generations.
This is just me riffing. I’m not seriously entertaining changing our church name (though I would be interested in hearing feedback from anyone reading this), but the more I think about what our church has become and the kind of church we aspire to be, Remnant Church would be a strong candidate.
Again, not as a way of communicating we’re the only real Christians around here, but as a way of communicating our intent to serve the wider Christian movement by making sure that certain convictions and truths that drove the earliest Jesus followers but which have become minority views in today’s church are preserved for future generations when perhaps their time for broader acceptance will return.
[1] Heb 1:3
[2] Jn 17:20-26
[3] 2 Pt 1:4
[4] 1 Jn 4:7-12
[5] Jn 13:34-35, Lk 6:32-36
[6] Ph 2:10-11, Rm 14:11
[7] Jn 12:32
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