So why is our church named Discovery?
For some “church-y” people or people who think they know about church the name can initially not compute.
To others, well, there is the Discovery Channel and the space shuttle and the charge card.
To me the word has a certain child-like quality, like a Vacation Bible School curriculum. But I also have to say that like Harry Potter’s wand, and for better or worse like a marriage—the name seems to have picked us.
As a new body of previously existing churches we could have strung our names together…and sounded like a law firm, a brokerage or a funeral home. This would have been OK, but really we sensed a calling to be named something new.
The naming process took about four months — along with a spirit of openness and prayer that long preceded that. About 100 name suggestion slips were submitted in a jar left on the communion table. We had eight principles of discerning names. All the names were scrolled before our eyes during worship services. I had a sermon series on naming theology and the background on four names that eventually seemed to be getting the most traction.
The congregation, people we met at Synod School and elsewhere, friends on Facebook, etc. kept the matter in prayer and were part of a gentle discernment. The church’s Transition Team and Session(s) were on the front line of data collection and thought wrestling. (Does X name Google well?) For anyone who is curious to know more about our process, I hope you’ll contact us.
Meanwhile I’ll comment on Discovery Theology…so far.
I believe it was a God-thing how we were led to the new name and that God is going to continue to grow us into it…kind of like the way things happened yesterday.
Yesterday our worship team leader Sue had concocted a way for Ezekiel’s gorgeous vision in Ezekiel 47:1-12 to come to life (the conclusion to our 13 week study of Ezekiel). Chapter 47 features an amazing life-giving river flowing out from the sanctuary (similar to Revelation 22:1-2). Sue envisioned a waterfall flowing from the communion table. She and Ruth constructed this on Saturday. I knew their work had to be featured in our “children’s sermon” – which we call Time for Discovery (yes, this aspect of worship resonates with the new name.) Anyway, I envisioned how the kids could crawl under the communion table (something they love to do) and “gently” help the flowing streams spread out from the table.
Well, by the time “Time of Discovery” began, the stream carefully tucked under the communion table was toast. The area before the communion table was a mosh pit of water streams and kids flailing around in the faux falls.
It maybe wasn’t what we intended but it certainly matched the kind of joyful, somewhat chaotic (to our eyes) moves of the Holy Spirit with whom we Presbyterians often struggle to keep up.
So far Discovery Theology is about prayer, discerning and constantly adapting to (or would that be discovering) what God is up to and trusting that. And then it’s diving in beyond our usual “church-y” or even human comfort zone.
Pastor Sarah Dickinson