Help Me Name Our Student Ministry!

One thing I struggle with is creativity.  I have now been the Family/Student pastor at my church for about 8 months and I haven’t come up with a name for our student ministry.  I have just been calling our Wednesday night meeting, “Student Night.”  I know that is lame!  So now that much of the foundation has been laid for our new church, its time to start casting a clear vision for our student ministry, setting some clear goals, and seeking by God’s grace to attain to those goals.  While names are relatively unimportant in the big scheme of things, there certainly is nothing wrong with thinking about presentation.  So as I think through the vision and goals of our student ministry, I think its a good idea to come up with a helpful name to illustrate our vision and to draw attention to our ministry and what we are doing.

So here is what I am shooting for:

1.  I want to come up with a name both for our student ministry as a whole as well as our Student Bible study on Wedneday night.  I have had more trouble thinking of the former, so perhaps the latter is more important.

2.  I want both names to be Biblical (the name doesn’t have to be Biblical words, but it should relate to the Bible’s teaching in some way that isn’t weird).

3.  I want both names to be related.

4.  It would be nice if there was a direct connection to a Bible verse that illustrates our theme/purpose.

5.  It must NOT be cheesy.  If there is even a wiff of cheese in the name that would be disastrous.  Some of you would argue that the very act of “naming” a student ministry and/or Bible study night is cheesy.  That may be, but I want to attempt the feat as faithfully as I possibly can!

I don’t know how many of my students read my blog, but if you are one of my students and you read this, feel free to give your two cents as well–I intend to you get your feedback before making the final decision anyway.

Here are some ideas I have so far (I don’t have many, like I said, I am not very creative):

I thought we might call our Wednesday night Bible Study:  “Boast” and our Scripture would be Galatians 6:14–”But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”  The idea here is that what we do primarily on Wednesday night is boast of the Lord Jesus Christ and even more specifically we boast of the gospel–what Christ has done for sinners like us on the cross.

I thought of making T-Shirst that say:  “I Boast”  or perhaps just “Boast”  and of course people would think that is a little odd or perhaps arrogant, but the explanation would be gospel-centered–”we boast in the Lord Jesus Christ!”

Under this same Scripture, Gal. 6:14, we could also call our Wednesday night meeting: “6:14″  What do you think?  We actually start our Wed night student activities at 6:00, so 6:14 doesn’t work for the time that we start, but I suppose I could actually start activities at 6:14, and have the first 14 minutes of our night devoted to fellowship.  What do think? Is that cheesy or clever?

Most of my other ideas focus on Philippians 3:1-11 simply because that is probably my favorite passage of Scripture.

I could call Wednesday night:  “Glory” (kinda similar to Boast) as Christians are those who “glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh” (Phil. 3:3).

T-Shirts could similarly read “I Glory” (which is less clear to those outside our group than “I Boast” I think but perhaps you like that better?) or “Glory”

We could also go reverse psychology and call Wednesday night:  “No Confidence” which would be more intriguing on a T-shirt.  Of course what we would mean by that is that we put no confidence in our flesh or in ourselves but all our confidence is in the Lord Jesus Christ and his sacrifice on the cross.

I have tried to think of what we could do with the verse numbers here but cannot think of anything.

Another wonderful portion of Phil. 3:1-1 is verses 8-9, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ. (9) and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith-”

If you can come up with a theme incorporating verse 8-9 or just verse 8, that would be awesome too and I would love to hear it.

Anyway, let me know what you think of my ideas, if you think they are kinda lame, feel free to express that, I don’t want to present something to my students that they will laugh at me about!  And if you have an idea completely unrelated to what I have shared thus far, feel free to share that too!