My two year old daughter is a trip. She loves shoes, makeup, dressup…anything girly…and she’s only two. I guess the girly thing just came about naturally (even though she is more sports oriented than a lot of little boys I know).
One of the things that is funny is letting her pick out her own shoes. She always goes for the pairs she likes the most, even if they may be a little snug, and she laments any shoes being taken out of her closet. One pair in particular is a cheap pair of lace up tennis shoes. Given the chance she chooses this pair anytime you ask her to get her shoes.
But then my wife stumbled onto a little secret: instead of telling Melody to pick out a pair of shoes, she said “Go get your Nike’s”. That was all it took. If you ask her to pick out her shoes she looks over all the choices and goes with the one which is the greatest chore, but if you stress getting her Nike’s then she gets all excited about something that is to her beyond a shoe.
Now this is not a plug for Nike, but I think it brings across a valuable point. When we say “Church” what do people expect to find? What about other words like “Worship”, “Service”, or even “Praise”? Let’s take it a step further; what do people think when they hear the name “Church of God”?
When I was a kid the Church of God was pretty much the same anywhere you went. Now that mindset has become a limitation. Our names should somehow coorespond to what God is doing and where God is taking us.
When I approached my congregation about changing the name from a church identified by it’s address to a church identified by it’s personality I found that the majority supported the idea. The problem was we fell just short of the 2/3 majority needed to change the name. But that ends up being OK for now because the primary focus of outreach has become the community surrounding us…a community riddled with drugs and violence.
In the future we will address the name again…and possibly even again beyond that…but eventually people will look at our church for who it is and not just where it is.
Until then, I’ll just keep chasing after Melody, and trying not to go broke buying Nike’s.
