Q. In some of our advertising around Christmas, we used the name Centerpointe Church. How come we didn’t use the word Presbyterian in the name?

A. Thank you for your question. Across the country churches are recognizing that we are dealing with the first post-church generation in the history of the country. Most of the people God has called us to reach did not grow up with any church experience and have no clue what denominations are or what they stand for. Language that believers and members of a given denomination readily understand means nothing to this post-church generation.
One of our key goals is to eliminate as many “barriers’’ as we can when reaching out into our community. Language is very important. During the process of deciding on the name Centerpointe Presbyterian Church, we said that we would use the formal name on some occasions and, on others, just use Centerpointe or Centerpointe Church, depending upon what population of people we were trying to reach and whether or not a denominational name might create a barrier to engaging us. Our formal name reflects our identity and heritage, which is something we celebrate as a church body. Our communications to the community on the other hand, reflects our desire to eliminate any roadblocks to connecting with us so that we can in turn share our identity and heritage with them.
Elder Tim Hunt

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