At the Seeker Small Group Conference in Bloomington, Indiana on April 14, 2007, Garry Poole had a playful contest on what to re-name this ministry. Certainly the name "seeker small group" is descriptive of what it is all about. But if the first time I invited people to come to my home to engage in life-changing spiritual conversations, I told them it was called a seeker small group, I would have probably discouraged more than a few people from attending with that name. So I called it a "Tough Questions group." People liked that name because it had relevance to what happened there: we wrestled with tough questions. We were also using the Tough Questions discussion series, which matched nicely with our name.
Over the years, some people in our community would overhear the name and unintentionally (I think) distort the original label for our group, and call it the "tough Christians group!" I guess seriously exploring the tough questions of faith did make us tougher in our faith and/or brought many people into a faith that had been adequately examined. So that alternate moniker wasn't a bad name, and generally brought a few laughs both from inside and outside our group.
I heard a clever name from someone at our March conference that came up with Discover Groups which stems from "DisCoVer" ...
- Discover who Jesus is
- Connect with each other
- Verify if what we've learned is true to life!
Another church up in Sandpoint, Idaho calls their seeker groups, "Starting Point groups," which allows people to start at the beginning in figuring out what they believe about Christianity. Others like skeptic forums, neighborhood Bible studies, tough question forums, seeker Bible studies, Open Table, Open Forums, and Faith Clubs, are all names that have been suggested as possible ways to communicate in a few short words what this is all about. The Indiana contest winner in April was "Common Ground." In checking out many of these names, there are organizations that already exist with these handles.
So what do YOU call it, if you have started a group? If you haven't started one yet, what will you call it? It certainly isn't something that should trip you up and become an obstacle. But the name does communicate something important about what will go on each week. We'd love to know your thoughts. - Mary
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I named the group I started two years ago in San Francisco and still lead each week "pause..." It is an all women's group and one of the husbands of a member asked my husband to start a male version and name it men o' pause..
Posted by: Joy Libby | June 14, 2007 at 09:48 PM