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A Church by Any Other Name ...

How Url Scaramanga thinks about cool new church names.

Have you noticed that church names are getting increasingly strange? Our friend Dennis Baker has. He's been keeping a list of church names in order to document how far we've come from the days of "First Presbyterian" and "Springfield Baptist." He sent us the following list of 129 church names. I've added my reactions in parentheses.

1. Resonate

2. Revolution (Where only senior pastors get beheaded.)

3. Radiance (Where the female vocalists all glitter like Mariah Carey.)

4. Elevation (U2 songs every bloody Sunday.)

5. Restoration

6. Renovation (You can do it! God can help.)

7. Mosaic

8. enCompass (Wii th-|-nk [outside] the box. We R crAtiVe.)

9. Epiphany Station (Next stop, Conjunction Junction!)

10. Soma (Our pastor knows Greek.)

11. Sanctuary

12. Rock Harbor (If your life hasn't run aground yet, we can help.)

13. Journey ("Don't Stop Believing" is our theme song.)

14. The Rock (If film producer Michael Bay ever created a church…the pyrotechnics are amazing.)

15. The River (The pastor ends every ...

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