I was sitting in my study last Tuesday, staring at a list of names. Not the church directory—I know those names by heart, even the ones I only see at Christmas and funerals. This was a list of possible names for a new community meal our outreach team had been dreaming up. We’d been meeting for months, talking about food insecurity in our neighborhood, about the loneliness that settles into the apartments behind the grocery store, about the fact that our Wednesday night supper had become mostly a church-family affair and we wanted something that felt more like an open door. But now we were stuck on what to call it.

Someone had suggested “The Welcome Table.” Someone else liked “Neighborhood Supper.” A third person had written “Community Feast” on the whiteboard, and I could see the discomfort on a few faces—feast felt too grand, too presumptuous for what would probably be soup and bread and whatever casserole showed up. I realized, sitting there with my coffee going cold, that every name on that list carried assumptions about who belongs and what we were trying to be. Were we welcoming people into our space, or were we joining something already happening in the neighborhood? Were we offering charity or hospitality? Were we a church serving a meal, or were we becoming a place where the neighborhood could feed itself?

Naming is never neutral. In congregational life, the names we give each other, our programs, our conflicts, and our stories shape the reality we inhabit. They can honor the particularity of people and place, or they can flatten them into categories. They can open doors or quietly close them. Over twenty years of ministry, I’ve learned that paying attention to names is one of the most pastoral things we can do—and one of the most neglected. This isn’t just a matter of church culture; it’s about the health of the whole community we’re part of. The CDC’s work on healthy places reminds us that the environments where we live, work, and gather shape our well-being in profound ways. A congregation’s language is part of that environment—it can build connection or quietly erode it. And the EPA’s sustainability framework pushes us to think about the long-term viability of our practices, including the relational ecosystems we create. When we name things carelessly, we risk exhausting the very people and relationships we depend on.

The Weight of What We Call Each Other

I remember the first time I heard a church member refer to our volunteers as “servants.” It was in a board meeting, and someone was making a case for why we needed more people to step up. “We need more servants in this church,” he said, and I watched a few people in the room shift in their chairs. The word landed differently on different ears. For some, it was a badge of honor, a biblical calling. For others, it felt like a demand dressed up in spiritual language—a way of asking for free labor without acknowledging the cost.

I’ve since learned to pay attention to the language we use for the people who make ministry happen. “Servants” can be beautiful when it’s chosen, but it can also mask burnout and exploitation. “Workers” feels more honest but less holy. “Volunteers” is accurate but transactional. None of these words is wrong, but each one tells a story about what we expect and what we’re willing to give in return. When we call someone a servant, are we also making sure they have a Sabbath? When we call them a worker, are we paying attention to their limits? When we call them a volunteer, are we treating them as partners or as free help?

And then there are the names we use for the people we find difficult. Every congregation has them—the person who corners you after worship with a list of complaints, the committee member who can’t let go of a decision made three years ago, the family that seems to generate conflict wherever they go. In staff meetings, we develop shorthand. “That family.” “You know who I mean.” “Our friend in the back pew.” I’ve done it myself, and I’ve regretted it. Because the moment we reduce someone to a category, we stop seeing them as a person. We stop praying for them by name. We start managing them instead of pastoring them.

I think of a woman in my first congregation—I’ll call her Margaret, though that’s not her name. Margaret was on every committee, showed up to every work day, and had opinions about everything. She drove me crazy for the first three years. I’d see her name on an email and feel my shoulders tighten. But somewhere around year four, I started to notice that Margaret was also the person who showed up at every funeral with a casserole, who remembered every child’s birthday, who had been caring for her aging mother in silence for a decade. The name I’d given her in my head—”difficult”—had kept me from seeing the whole person. When I started calling her by her actual name, with curiosity instead of dread, something shifted. Not overnight, but slowly. She’s still opinionated. But she’s also one of the people I trust most to tell me the truth.

When Programs Outlive Their Names

About ten years ago, we tried to rebrand our youth group. The old name—”Youth Fellowship”—felt tired, and the teenagers told us it sounded like something their grandparents did. So we spent a whole spring brainstorming. We wanted something energetic, something that captured the spirit of the kids who were actually showing up. We landed on “The Gathering,” which felt fresh and inclusive. We printed new t-shirts, updated the website, announced it from the pulpit.

It lasted about six months. The kids never used the name. They still called it “youth group,” or just “Wednesday nights.” The t-shirts ended up in the back of closets. The website update was forgotten. What I learned from that failure was that names can’t be imposed from above. They have to emerge from the community they’re meant to describe. The youth group already had a name—it just wasn’t the one we wanted. And the name they used, however unglamorous, was honest. It told the truth about what they were: a group of young people who met on Wednesdays. That was enough.

I’ve seen the same thing happen with programs that outlive their purpose. We have a “Care Committee” that hasn’t coordinated a meal train in years, but nobody wants to dissolve it because the name still carries weight. We have a “Missions Team” that mostly manages a budget line for a few partner organizations, but calling it “missions” makes us feel like we’re doing something global when we’re really just writing checks. The names we give our ministries can become monuments to what we used to be, or they can become honest descriptions of what we actually are. The difference matters.

I’ve started asking a question when we launch something new: What would we call this if we were describing it to a neighbor who doesn’t go to church? If the answer is full of insider language—”discipleship pathway,” “worship experience,” “outreach initiative”—I know we’re probably naming it for ourselves, not for the people we hope will come. The best names are the ones that make sense without a glossary. “Wednesday night supper.” “The food pantry.” “The group that meets at Carol’s house.” These names don’t sound impressive, but they’re true. And truth, in the long run, is more sustainable than branding.

The Directory and the Grief of Removing Names

Every year, our church administrator updates the directory. It’s a small thing—a few new families added, a few addresses changed, a few names removed. But the removals are never just administrative. Each name that comes out of the directory represents a story. Someone moved away. Someone died. Someone left after a conflict. Someone just stopped coming, and we’re not sure why.

I keep a separate list in my desk drawer. It’s not official. It’s just a piece of paper with names and dates and a few words to remind me. “Left after the budget fight, 2018.” “Moved to be closer to grandchildren, 2020.” “Stopped attending during COVID, never came back.” “Died, funeral at the funeral home, not the church.” I don’t look at it often, but I know it’s there. It’s my way of refusing to let those names disappear without acknowledgment. The directory has to be accurate for the people who are here. But the church’s memory is longer than the directory. And part of my job, I think, is to hold that memory—to carry the names that no longer appear in print, to remember that they were here, that they mattered, that their absence is still felt.

There’s a particular grief in removing the name of someone who died. It’s final in a way that the funeral wasn’t. The funeral was about a life. The directory removal is about the ongoing life of the congregation, and it says, quietly, that we are moving on without them. I try not to do it alone. Sometimes I’ll ask the deacons to pray over the directory before we print the new one. We’ll read the names of those we’ve lost, and we’ll sit in the silence for a moment. It’s not a solution to grief. But it’s a practice of naming that honors the particularity of each person, even in their absence.

The Unexpected Grace of Letting Someone Else Name It

A few years ago, we renovated our fellowship hall. It had been the same beige room with the same folding tables for as long as anyone could remember, and we finally had the money to update it—new floors, new chairs, a fresh coat of paint. When it was done, the building committee wanted to name it. They had ideas: “The Gathering Place,” “Fellowship Hall,” “The Commons.” I was ready for another round of the naming debate I’d been through with the community meal.

But then one of our oldest members, a man named Harold who had been in the church for sixty years, spoke up. “Why don’t we call it what it is?” he said. “It’s the room where we eat together. Call it the Dining Room.” There was a pause. Someone laughed. Someone else nodded. And that’s what we did. We call it the Dining Room. It’s not fancy. It’s not branded. But it’s true. And every time I walk into that room and see the sign Harold made by hand—just a piece of wood with “Dining Room” painted on it—I’m reminded that the best names often come from the people who have been paying attention the longest.

Harold died last year. His name is no longer in the directory. But his name is still on that sign, in a way, and in the story we tell about how the room got its name. That’s the thing about naming: it outlasts us. The names we give become part of the congregation’s memory, part of its identity, part of the story it tells about itself long after we’re gone.

Naming as a Theological Act

In Scripture, naming is almost always a theological act. Adam names the animals. God renames Abram and Sarai. Jesus gives Simon the name Peter. The act of naming is an act of authority, but also of relationship. To name something is to claim a kind of knowledge about it, to enter into a covenant with it, to say: I see you, and I will call you by this name.

When we name things in our congregations, we’re doing something similar. We’re making claims about who we are and who we’re called to be. We’re drawing boundaries—sometimes intentionally, sometimes not—about who belongs and who doesn’t. We’re telling a story that will shape the imagination of the community for years to come. And if we’re not careful, we’ll name things in ways that serve our own comfort rather than the truth of the people and place we’re called to love.

I think about this every time I hear a church describe itself as “a family.” It’s a common name, and it’s meant to be warm and inclusive. But families are complicated. Families have insiders and outsiders. Families have histories of conflict and patterns of exclusion. For someone who grew up in a difficult family, the name “church family” might not feel like good news. For someone who has been hurt by the church, it might feel like a warning. I’m not saying we should stop using the language of family. But I am saying we should use it with care, aware of what it carries for the people who hear it.

The same is true for the names we give our conflicts. “A disagreement” sounds manageable. “A crisis” sounds overwhelming. “A misunderstanding” suggests it can be cleared up with a conversation. “A betrayal” suggests it can’t. The name we choose shapes how we respond. If we call something a “personality conflict,” we’re likely to treat it as an interpersonal issue rather than a systemic one. If we call it a “theological difference,” we might give it more weight than it deserves. I’ve learned to be slow in naming conflicts, to let them reveal themselves before I assign a category. Because once a conflict has a name, it has a trajectory. And the wrong name can send it in the wrong direction.

The Slow Work of Renaming

Sometimes, the most pastoral thing we can do is help a congregation rename something that’s been misnamed for years. I think of a church I know that had a “Missions Committee” that hadn’t sent a missionary anywhere in decades. The name was a source of guilt and confusion. When they finally renamed it the “Community Partnerships Team,” something shifted. The new name was honest about what they actually did, and it freed them to do it better. They stopped feeling like failures and started feeling like they had a real ministry.

I think of a woman in my congregation who had been called “the difficult one” for so long that she had started to believe it. It took years of patient relationship—of calling her by her actual name, of listening to her stories, of refusing to reduce her to a category—before she began to see herself differently. She’s still strong-willed. She still speaks her mind. But she’s no longer “difficult.” She’s just herself. And the congregation is better for having her.

In my own writing and sermon preparation, I’ve found that the discipline of naming well extends beyond the congregation. When I’m working on a sermon series or a pastoral letter, I often need to name the themes and tensions I’m addressing before I can write about them clearly. Sometimes I’ll sketch out character sketches or narrative arcs to help me see the human dynamics at play—not to fictionalize, but to understand. I’ve even found that tools designed for writers, like a character name generator I stumbled across while working on a sermon illustration, can be surprisingly useful for a pastor trying to think through the people and stories in a congregation. Not because ministry is fiction, but because the practice of naming characters with care is not so different from the practice of naming the real people we serve. Both require attention, honesty, and a willingness to see the whole person.

An Invitation to Pay Attention

I think back to that Tuesday in my study, the list of names for the community meal still unresolved. We never did settle on a name in that meeting. Instead, we decided to try something different: we’d ask the people who came to the first few meals what they thought it should be called. It felt risky, like we were giving up control. But it also felt right. If the meal was truly for the neighborhood, then the neighborhood should have a say in what it’s called. The first week, we put out a piece of paper and a marker and just asked, “What should we call this?” The answers were all over the place—some practical, some funny, some surprisingly tender. But one name kept showing up, written in different handwriting each time: “The Table.” Just that. No adjectives, no branding. Just the thing itself. And that’s what it’s been ever since.

So here’s my invitation, modest as it is: pay attention to the names you use in your congregation this week. The names you give to people, to programs, to conflicts, to rooms. Ask yourself what story each name tells, and whether it’s a story you still believe. Ask who gets to do the naming, and whose voices are missing. And if you find a name that no longer fits, consider the slow, patient work of renaming—not as a rebranding exercise, but as an act of pastoral care. Because the names we give each other shape the community we become. And that’s work worth doing with care.