DOES THE CHURCH HAVE A NAME?

Dear Bro. John:
Do you think that the terms in the scriptures which refer to the church are actually names?  Is it not a sectarian practice to identify our congregations as Churches of Christ with a capital C? Fred.

Dear Bro. Fred:
Thanks for your comments and insights. I agree with you that the church has no official name, yet by identifying it as the church of Christ or church of God we are naming it, in the sense of identifying it, especially when there are a thousand false churches clamoring for the public's attention. Webster defines name as "A word constituting the distinctive designation of a person or thing."

The thing we must not do is identify it with terms that take the glory from her founder, head and husband and the Father that sent him.

If there were no other religious bodies in our world claiming to be the church of which Christ is the founder, then we would be able to communicate our thought to the world by just saying "the church."  As it is, to say that conveys nothing to the average no member today, since his first response would be, "Which church?

We identify ourselves as churches of Christ for several reasons. To help us find each other. If you came to Phoenix today and wanted to find a congregation with which to worship and only found the term church, West Bell Rd., you would have no idea who we are.  The same is true with nonmembers who might wish to locate us so they can visit our services.  I write a weekly newspaper sermon.  Many agree with the lessons presented and often visit, but they need to know who we are and where we meet.

Although many good brethren make much ado about whether we spell church with a capital or small case "c," I cannot see that using the large constitutes a violation of any precept or instruction, nor can I see that by using a small case "c" one is any more of a true and faithful teacher or church. To my mind it is a practice that one can or cannot follow, with impunity.  When we make strong points on such small and often insignificant issues we need to think how such impacts on our neighbors. If they see a church sign that says, church of Christ, their first thought would probably be, "Look, someone misprinted the word church on their sign."   If we leave it that way they could conclude that "They don't care that they have their name wrongly printed."

One other thought, since the Koine Greek language chosen by God to communicate his will to mankind was written either in call upper case or all lower case letters, this could not have been an issue for the earliest Christians.

I hope these thoughts are useful to you. We must not allow such matters distract us from the real enemy whose troops are massed at the gates of the kingdom.  If we do not focus on the threat of the change agents and use our powder and shot on them, there will be few congregations left to discuss how to print the identifiers of their congregations.