Hello All,
We know you’re wondering, what are the next steps in the name change process? Good news! The Name Change Team has been working hard and having long spirited discussions about the merits of each name remaining on our slate. Here’s what is coming next:
- On Sunday November 15, in place of coffee hour, your Name Change Team is going to host a Town Hall. (Please make yourselves a sandwich that you can munch during this time! We don’t want grumpy participants and have no way to serve you coffee and cookies!). This will be a time when you can respectfully discuss what you love about certain names and what concerns you have about others. We will use the hand-raise function on Zoom and you can place (respectful) comments in the chat. We will not break into small groups.
- We will also “publish” written comments if you can’t make it on Sunday or would like to continue the conversation. You can either:
o Join a Facebook conversation at: Facebook.com/groups/namechangeforum
o Write an email to namechange@tjuc.org and we will compile thoughts and share with the congregation.
- We will soon conduct one more “first name” survey, asking you to choose your top 3 names from the list of 13, and rank them in order of your preference.
- And then we will hold a Zoom Town Hall for the final vote, date to be determined. But hopefully in November!
As a result of the polling and our extensive pondering, here are some of the decisions we’ve made:
- We dropped names that are identical or very similar to Christian Churches in the Louisville area. These included Covenant, The Journey, and Peoples. We’d caught others earlier, e.g. River of Life and Unity.
- We moved forward with names that had received the most votes in the survey AND that had available social media handles.
- We kept names that the Team thought might attract a younger audience. When considering a name, it is important that we look to the future, rather than try to satisfy the past.
- There were three sets of names that were similar. People who had voted for these initially were sent a follow-up question about which they’d prefer. Green Arbor won over Arbor, All Peoples won over All Souls, and Brownsboro Grove won over Brownsboro Rd.
- We eliminated Truth and Justice – we were not only concerned that this name sounds like we are full of ourselves, with a lock on Truth and Justice, we realized that it is Superman’s motto – a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way! Awkward!
Name Change Team Editorial
Friends, we’ve been staring at these names for quite a while now. Some of us have been thinking about names for over a full year – those that will work in social media, for marketing, and to create interest and intrigue among potential new members, people in our community who might be curious about us. We have strong feelings about some of the names on the list, yet don’t think we can fairly just drop them. So permit us please to share these feelings with you! You may hear more about these thoughts on Sunday.
- First and foremost, we hope that we will have a new name that reflects our values. As a congregation, we spent nearly all of August and early September thinking about what we wanted in a name, and you clearly said that our name should communicate who we are as UU’s. We can think about these in light of our Principles.
o So here’s the concern – a name that merely tells people where we are located does not accomplish this. Many of the geographic names have been eliminated, but Brownsboro Grove remains. Names that describe our East End location not only don’t communicate our values, they telegraph our white privilege. The Name Change Team feels that we have much better choices. Please consider this point of view in your next vote.
- The second “point of view” that we would like to share is that we should move away from our TJ initials. We can no longer remember who advised us of this, but someone we respect (maybe from the MidAmerica region of the UUA?) said that we need to truly walk away from our Thomas Jefferson name. We know it’s hard to not say “TJ” – and maybe we still will among just us kids – but for our public name, we should strongly consider not using a TJ name. That would eliminate Towards Justice.
We appreciate your consideration of these points. We’re nearing the finish line on this!
Your Name Change Team
Here’s the latest slate of names. Several of these names are not recommended by the committee, for the reasons described in the editorial above. Keep in mind, each of these names need to be checked for viability of usage (local conflicts, like named UU congregations, available urls (website), and social media handles). We need all of those things in our new name, so that prospective and current members can easily find us online.
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