Church
Why We Chose the Name "Milestone"
August/28/2008
I was wrong.
It was a nightmare.
For over a month we asked for suggestions, ideas, and prayer. We had a great response and quite a few solid suggestions. But we also faced some formidable challenges.
One thing we noticed is that many church names sound more like country clubs than communities on a mission: Scenic Drive Church (no, I'm not making that up), Ridgecrest, Glendale, Parkview, etc., etc. It's not that these are inherently bad names; they just seem more like places you'd go to play 18 holes than commune with Christ and live life with fellow believers.
And this was part of our challenge: to come up with a name that actually symbolized where we were as a church. I think we finally did just that.
In Genesis 35, God assures Jacob that the promises made to Abraham and Isaac will continue to be carried out through him. God promises that an entire community of nations will come from Jacob and He even gives Jacob a new name: Israel.
Sound familiar?
Jacob is so incredibly honored by the Lord’s promise that he builds a stone pillar on the very spot where God spoke to him. As it turns out, this wasn’t an uncommon practice in Jacob’s day; Noah, Moses, and Joshua all set up similar stone altars or pillars and they all had a similar meaning: God has spoken and nothing will ever be the same.
Today we don’t have much use for stone pillars. Altars are a thing of the past because of Christ’s offering on the cross. We do, however, have a term in the English language for describing life-changing events: the kind of events where God calls a group of His people to form a church and reach out to their community in a different way.
We are Milestone Church. God has spoken and nothing will ever be the same.