No matter where you currently are they are all around you. The NAMES of so many brands and products whose logos you recognize are always all around us. And without any statement being vocalized, we hear all of these various names and brand shouting for our attention. They are ever in competition with one another.
Without realizing it we are ever in pursuit of making our own names something memorable. It can be seen in the resume' we send out. It highlights all that we did well, all we accomplished, and in a nutshell it is the best side of our professionalism and education. There are no marred records on a resume' of any serious job-seeker. And it is this way because we seek to make sure our name is synonymous with something great (hopefully greater than any other resume' alongside ours that sits before the human resource director). Too, it can be seen in the stories we tell of ourselves. We rarely start a meeting with a person we don't know and spew out the ugliest parts of our lives. Instead, we paint a rosy picture of who we are, while hiding the ugliest side of who we are. And this helps preserve a good-standing of our name. And still in so many other places this reality is understood: we seek to establish and maintain our names.
You don't have to look far, even in church world (especially in church planting world) to find how pervasive this reality of the advertising, marketing, and preservation of a good name is insisted upon. The qualifications upon which we measure a local church is assessed in terms of how quickly it is growing, its overall numbers, and the perception of its appeal to outsiders. And without realizing it, branding, the advancement of our church name is paramount (or so viewed to be). And still underneath that, or behind that, is the thought that the name of the pastor must be front and center and that once he is known, he will become more known. In other words, so much of church ultimately becomes about the name of the church and the name of the pastor.
But what if there is a different way of thinking? I dare think there is. Last I checked the desire to impact and influence people is an admirable one. The desire to cause people to see and behold the grace of God is something to be highly esteemed. And so let us ever keep that up. But let us be very wary of the manner in which we do this.
Last I checked my name has changed nobody's life. And last I checked the name or brand of church we advocate has changed nobody's life. And even if it could be proven that my name or my church's name has some capacity to change lives, it is infinitely less than the measure necessary. The change people need, the eternal well-being, the spiritual, emotive, physical, relational sides of people are not changed by me or my brand. I do however know of ONE NAME that is capable of such: the name of JESUS.
And so I am intent on broadcasting HIS NAME. And the measure of my ministry model has become less about how many names I can get to assemble and buy my name or my brand, but instead HOW MANY NAMES CAN I SHARE THE NAME OF JESUS WITH? That is the metric for ministry that I ever seek to uphold. It maintains a purity. It maintains a Christ-centered nature to it that will ever transform. But anything less, our name-advancing, and our branding, creates no substantive change. As a well-known preacher (I intentionally exclude his name) once said, "Let [my name] perish, but Christ be glorified. Let my name die everywhere, let even my friends forget me, if by that means the cause of the blessed Jesus may be promoted."
And that is my battle cry. Let my name, and the name of Redemption Church be as nothing. But let the eternally-powerful, life-transforming, grace-giving, forgiveness-offering NAME OF JESUS be glorified.
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