Christ's many names

In my younger years I grew up in First Baptist Church, Asheville (see left). And along my life's journey I've run across many other first baptist churches. I've even seen some second baptist churches and the occasional Third Baptist Church such as this one in St. Louis. In high school I attended a Methodist church named Covenant Community United Methodist, which I always thought was a "neato" name considering its Old Testament roots. I've also attended West Asheville Baptist (can you guess where this one is located?), and I currently serve at University Baptist of Chapel Hill (right).

There's something about Baptists that make us want to give our churches names that tell where we're located. Now, of course, this isn't a universal fact as we shall see. We Baptists, and many other denominations have come up with some pretty interesting church names. Here are a few that I've run across, or recently found.

A friend of mine worked at BBQ Baptist Church in rural North Carolina. The church has no a website.

The Fire Baptized Holiness Church is actually a small denomination headed out of Greenville, SC. My favorite part is the "fire baptized"!

It puzzles me, but there are a number of churches that named themselves after the biblical city, Corinth: Corinth Freewill Baptist Church of Dunn, NC; Corinth Reformed United Church or Christ of Hickory, NC; Corinth Baptist Church of Seneca, SC; Corinth Reformed Church; Corinth Christian Church; and Corinth Church of Christ.

This puzzles me, because what I have learned about the 1st century church of Corinth is not really something I would want my church to emulate. From what we can tell from historical study and from reading into the problems addressed in First & Second Corinthians is that the church was very troubled. They were plagued with problems during worship and communion, pride within many members, Gnostic influences, immoral members here and there, rowdy women, and plenty of other problems. Many parts of Paul's letters to the Corinthians were disciplinary and frustrated.

Not that I think these churches' names are bad names, but I don't understand why they would name themselves after such a troubled church. Of course, on the other hand perhaps Corinth reflects our modern congregations a little to well at times...?

Here are some more interesting church names:

Yoe, Christ UMC of Yoe, PA
Coolville United Methodist Church of Coolville, OH
Grooverville United Methodist Church of Boston, GA
North Pole Church of God of Fairbanks, AK
Penguin Baptist of Penguin, Tas., Aust.
Arctic Circle Baptist Church of Fort Yukon, AK
Snow United Methodist Church of Lowell, MI
Frostproof United Methodist Church of Frostproof, FL
Thawville United Methodist Church of Thawville, IL
Caliente Community United Methodist Church of Caliente, NV
Ignited Word of Las Vegas, NV
Church on Fire of Amory, MS
Franklin Furnace United Methodist Church of Western Ohio
Cowboy Church on Fire or Iraan, TX
Pigeon Run United Methodist Church of Massillon, OH
Runs Baptist Church of Aiken, SC
Brown Swamp United Methodist Church of Conway, SC
Airport Freeway Church of Christ of Euless, TX
Devils Lake United Methodist Church of Devils Lake, ND
Assumption United Methodist Church of Assumption, IL
Looney's Creek United Methodist Church of Whitwell, TN
Horseheads United Methodist Church of Horseheads, NM
El Camino Christian Church of Sunnyvale, CA
North Chevy Chase Christian Church of Chevy Chase, MD

...and the list goes on and on and on.

Needless to say, we Christians can get pretty creative, boring, silly, and everything in between when it comes to naming our churches. But the good news is there is so much diversity within the Body of Christ that we are able to have so many different names. The body of Christ is and should be very diverse, because Christ came and died for all people; and people are different. That's just the way it is.

"For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ."
1 Corinthians 12:12