Name Calling New City Church

The privilege of choosing a name—whether for a newborn child or a soon to be born church—carries with it the power of identity, purpose, and calling.

My first granddaughter was born on a Tuesday, but she didn’t get a name until Friday. It was fun to hold her and talk to her in that interim period but while we waited for Brooke and David to make their decision on her name, calling her “Baby Girl” was a bit unsatisfying.

Finally they made the call. She was named after her other grandfather, Robert Eugene Dunbar. Those who knew him called him Bob. I never knew Bob but he was known by many of my friends as a man of integrity, generosity, and influence. Bob Dunbar had a good name and “a good name is to be chosen over great wealth; favor is better than silver and gold.” (Proverbs 22:1)

So I was happy when my granddaughter was named Bobbi Gene Dunbar. Her name will forever call her to become like the man for whom she was named. Naming someone or something is more than just attaching a label. A name has the power to call us to something to live up to.

Pastor and theologian, Os Guinness writes, “To call means to name, and to name means to call into being or to make. Thus in the first chapter of Genesis, “God called the light ‘day’ and the darkness he called ‘night.’” This type of calling is far more than labeling, hanging a name tag on something to identify it. Such decisive, creative naming is a form of making. Thus when God called Israel, he named and thereby constituted and created Israel his people. Calling is not only a matter of being and doing what we are but also of becoming what we are not yet but are called by God to be. Thus “naming-calling,” a very different thing from name-calling, is the fusion of being and becoming.”

Around the same time Bobbi Gene was born another baby was conceived, a new church God has called me and Andrea to plant near St. Augustine, Florida. Soon we will get to witness the birth of a brand new baby church. Saying yes to church planting has all the feels of being pregnant. Well, maybe not all the feels (Andrea tells me), but certainly the sense of hopeful expectation.

We don’t know much about the church yet. We don’t know where we will meet. We don’t know who will come. We don’t know how big it will be upon the delivery date or how quickly it will grow.

But we do know one thing. Unlike Bobbi Gene, we do know its name before it is born. Our church will be named New City Church. Like Bobbi Gene, there is purpose behind the name.

New City Church will be a new city in an old city.

St. Augustine, Florida is widely recognized as “the oldest continuously occupied settlement of European origin in the United States.” It was founded on September 7, 1565. Interestingly, September 7, 2025 will fall on a Sunday. We don’t know exactly when the church will be born, but September 7 seems like a good date to target the founding of a new church in the old city.

New City Church will be a city within a city.

“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” (Matthew 5:14)

“City” doesn’t refer to where we live. It refers to how we live. Jesus called his people to live as a city designed to light up the darkness wherever they lived.

New City Church will be a city sent to a city.

“I do not ask that you take them out of the world…As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” (John 17:15–18)

A church is not a bunker in which Christians hide from an increasingly secular world. A church is a missionary outpost from which Christians are sent with good news into the city in which they live, work, and play. We don’t just live in a city. We are sent to our city for the purpose of proclaiming the good news for the city.

New City Church will be a city looking for a better city.

Hebrews 11:10 [Abraham] was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

Hebrews 11:16 They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Hebrews 13:14 For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.

No matter how much we love our city, Christians will always be homesick for the eternal city of God. What keeps us living on mission in our earthly cities is our joyful expectation of living in the city God has prepared for all those who are citizens of Christ’s eternal kingdom.

St. Augustine, Florida should know this better than any city in the world because it is named after Augustine of Hippo, who wrote The City of God in response to the surprising fall of Rome in 410 CE. Many were questioning how God could allow such a disaster to Christianity's primary earthly stronghold. His response was to reframe how Christians should view their relationship to earthly cities in light of their true citizenship in the City of God.

“Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.” — St. Augustine, City of God, Book XIV, Chapter 28

Augustine made the case for why citizens of God’s City should faithfully engage but hold loosely to the cities of man. Augustine’s message is as relevant now as it was then in light of our current political environment in America.

My prayer is that New City Church and St. Augustine, Florida will both live up to the significance of their names.