What's In A Name

It happened once again as it does about twice a month. Arriving at the memorial gardens to officiate the burial of a church member’s mother, I chatted with the young undertaker as we waited for all the cars to pull up.

“So,” he began, “What is Orthodox Presbyterian?”

I guess I am not a good Orthodox Presbyterian, because this is the point at which I always feel a little apologetic.

“Well,” I always begin sheepishly, “It doesn’t mean Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox or any thing like that. It means” – and, here, I always begin searching my own mind – “It means, basically, conservative Presbyterian. It sounded great in 1936.”

Suddenly, a bold idea struck me. I asked him, “What did you imagine it to mean?”

“The strictest of something, I guess,” he answered. Yes. Don’t we all guess?

When first visiting our church and reading in small print on the back of our bulletin – “Rockford Springs Community Church is a congregation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church” – a young woman looked at her husband and quipped, “If they bring a goat down the aisle for sacrifice, I’m leaving.” This young woman and her husband are now fantastic, active members. I got them over the name.

In a church information class a few years ago, after explaining what Orthodox Presbyterian meant, a woman looked at me quizzically and asked, “What is Orthodox Presbyterian?” I looked back at her as baffled and then realized she was still stuck on trying to really understand what the Orthodox Church had to do with the Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian is hard enough).

“Oh, no, no,” I corrected her, “It has nothing to do with the eastern or Greek Orthodox Church or Russian or anything like that.”

I know what you are thinking. If we had that name on our sign outside to begin with we wouldn’t have that problem. You are right. We wouldn’t have that but neither would we have about three fourths of our members (including church officers) who have said that if we had Orthodox on our sign they never would have visited.

Having been a pastor in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and still receiving e-mails in Greek, I have learned two things about naming a church: 1) Culturally, the connotation of a church name supersedes it’s definition and 2) the intent of the church’s name is to communicate something understandable to the community in which it finds itself.

Yes, I know. I am supposed to be thankful to explain the rich meaning of our name. Let’s see, the litany goes something like this:

“Orthodox Presbyterian. Ortho is Greek and it means ‘straight’. Dox is Greek and means ‘teaching’, so, orthodox means ‘straight teaching’. That’s clear, isn’t it?” Then I remembered an article in the New Horizons in which two OP pastors where debating the actual meaning of ‘orthodox’. Obviously, the word has to be interpreted dynamically. I would say that it really means, “sound teaching.” This brings me to the third thing I learned about naming a church: if you have to break it down etymologically and then dynamically, you may as well throw it out.

Once, somehow, a brief discussion arose in a presbytery meeting, about the name Orthodox Presbyterian. It was a very emotional discussion. There is a lot of pride surrounding the name. In 1936, the name served as a banner to rally conservative Presbyterians to the new standard. It served its purpose.

The names we give to our church and our congregations are not to help us feel secure about who we are or what we are. Names are intended to communicate something to people in the community which they can understand and, to some degree, to which they can relate. People make associations. Names should not be unnecessary stumbling blocks for them. Names should be as easily understandable as possible. The people the Lord is drawing to himself want to connect the name of a church to the Bible or, at least, to what they associate with the Bible. They don’t want to connect it to church history or to eastern culture. You can see from my letter that I would love for the OPC to change its name. After all, it is for those we are trying to reach.