We Voted to Change Our Name! Now what???
This is exciting! An opportunity to think about who we are and to choose a name that reflects this!. And at minimum, we’ve got something to take our minds off the pandemic!
Existing UU Names: Let’s start with this – Daniel Sturtevant has written an excellent analysis of existing UU congregation names. It’s really good to step back and take a look at what other churches are named. You can find the link to this on our website, under “What’s in our name?” and in the August edition of the Tapestryas well. This is a great place to start our name exploration.
A Name that Communicates … What?
In his piece, Dan advises us not to jump to specific ideas of new names – thus potentially locking each of us into a favorite choice or even a favorite approach for a new name. Rather, he asks that we step back and think about what we want our new name to convey about us. We’re providing some thoughts to you about how to do this at the end of this piece. But the direction here is clear – for the next 3 weeks,
NO NAME IDEAS! Rather, let’s spend this time immersed in why we are UUs and what we love about our own community.
Then … over the next few weeks, we will form a New Name task group. Please let Debbie Horvay in the office or Deborah Novgorodoff know if you’d like to be a part of this group. It will be time limited and operate via Zoom.
Next steps: Subsequent steps in the New Name process are likely to be as follows:
1. Creating a list of possible new names
• Brainstorming/generating a lot of options by the congregation
• Soliciting name ideas from naming professionals
2. Initial whittling down of the name list
• According to some basic guidelines
• And in discussion with the congregation
3. A series of votes on the remaining long list of names
4. Hopefully allowing us to vote on a very small selection of names at our Fall Congregational meeting in October.
What can you do in the next few weeks? Please send answers to the following questions to newname@tjuc.org
Note that you do not have to answer every question – they are meant to stimulate your thinking about what we might want to communicate. Please indicate if you are willing to have your response published on the website with your name or if you’d like to remain anonymous.
• Why are you a Unitarian Universalist? What attracts you to/keeps you in this faith?
• What attracted you to/keeps you at TJUC? What does TJUC bring to your life?
• What are you most likely to tell a friend about our faith tradition? What are you most likely to tell a friend about TJUC?
• Which of our current 7 principles is most important to you and why?
• What would you like our new name to communicate? Not – what is a possible new name but rather, what idea or sentiment or concept or value or…other! would you like our name to say about us?