naming a community
When our church was founded in 1920, the name chosen was “The Evangelical Church of Webster Groves”. The name signified two identities, our membership with The Evangelical Synod of North America and our location in Webster Groves.
Our name has been changed only twice in the succeeding 88 years, both occasioned by our denominational membership. When the Evangelical Synod of North America and the Reformed Church in the United States joined together to become the Evangelical and Reformed Synod of North America, we changed our name to “The Evangelical and Reformed Church of Webster Groves”. This first changed continued the pattern begun of using membership and location to name our community.
The second name change accordingly was inspired by another denominational shift. When the Evangelical and Reformed Synod of North America joined together with the Congregational Christian Churches in 1957 they formed our United Church of Christ. Correspondingly, our name needed to change.
Although the United Church of Christ was formed in 1957, it wasn’t until October 1963 that our name changed. Following our pattern, the likely name would have been “The United Church of Christ of Webster Groves” and this name was considered. Legend suggests that the special congregational meeting wherein our name was chosen was emotionally laden and more than a bit contentious. To adopt the name that was simply membership and location was to lose the word “Evangelical” in our name. Perhaps even more troubling was the lack of distinction from two other United Church of Christ congregations in our community, one just two blocks down Lockwood!
When we became “The Evangelical United Church of Christ of Webster Groves”, the word Evangelical conjured for our members and friends images of German heritage and the unifying spirit of Christ. Although fundamentalism was at play in the American landscape, the evangelical political movement that dominates our current landscape was not yet imaginable. For those unfamiliar with our rich heritage, the name Evangelical was simply a quirky word with neutral implications and it provided a linguistic distinction between our community and the one at 10 W. Lockwood Avenue.
In 1963, our community very much needed to be The Evangelical United Church of Christ of Webster Groves. We needed all three pieces of our name: history, membership, and location. What do we need in 2008?
As we’ve witnessed the media swirl around Trinity United Church of Christ, we have experienced a communal sense of moral outrage and shared identity. Not only do we resonate with the branding of the Still Speaking campaign, we shared a communal and whimsical defense of SpongeBob several years ago as we hung sponges on our Rainbow Fish Tree and went on MSNBC to tell our story as members of the United Church of Christ. Now more than ever, our membership name is significant for us.
On the other hand, our historical tag, Evangelical, has become misleading. Increasingly we find ourselves spending time deconstructing the cultural definitions of our name. If it weren’t actually functioning as a barrier, the dissonance between our community’s values and those of the evangelicals would be humorous. As we hear increasing numbers of stories of people afraid to enter our doors, we’ve stopped laughing.
Perhaps we are the United Church of Christ of Webster Groves. Clearly this is the pattern set by our founders. Interestingly, though, when we enter our zip codes into mapquest we discover a regional identity. In truth, our geographic tag is a bit misleading in that ours is a regional community.
What are the words that are most important for who we are called to be, both now and in the coming decades?