Wow, what a journey! Picking a name is hard! So much of your identity as a group of people comes from what you’re called. We brainstormed, got suggestions from lots of people, prayed, made lists, filled white boards with ideas, googled a whole lot of random stuff, prayed, dug through thesauruses, brainstormed some more, came up with the some great names that we already taken, prayed some more and so on and so on.
Finally, as is often the case, we started to feel uncomfortable with the lack of a name so we set a deadline. We wanted to have a short list before the Mega Mission in early August. We made it happen, by God’s grace.
We took our short list out to downtown Rochester on a rather cool misty day in August and asked people what they thought about it. The people in Rochester overwhelming chose the name Living Hope! They felt like it was a friendly name that demonstrated the ability to answer tough questions about life. I’m not sure how you get all that out of a name but that’s what our survey said.
Oh yeah and there is the whole reason why this name was on the list in the first place:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead
1 Peter 1:3 (CSB)
We believe that this is truth from God about our lives both individually and collectively.
We are raised to new life – to a living hope. The crucified Christ risen again is THE living hope inside of anyone who believe!
It has been a journey of identity. From the start we knew that it all comes back to Christ and we are excited to have that right smack in the center of who we are – We are Living Hope Church!