By Fraser Henderson
Greetings from Grace Communion International – some of you who have read these columns before may remember us as Worldwide Church of God. We recently changed our name and it was suggested that maybe we should explain why.
There are many reasons a church may change their name: the name no longer fits, to get a catchier acronym, boredom, to hide their identity as an evil organization bent on world domination, all or none of the above.
The truth is that the Worldwide Church of God has a chequered history (though it was never bent on world domination) and has changed by leaps and bounds over the past twenty or so years. A decision was made by votes from the members in each country in which the church is present, as to whether they would change their name to the new one, Grace Communion International. Members from Canada along with the U.S. voted “yes.”
The old name did fit, we are worldwide, we are a church, and we do believe that we belong to God, but that name describes a multitude of churches all doing the amazing work of telling people about Christ across the world. The new name, it was thought, describes us better: as a community (communion) changed by the amazing Grace that God has poured out upon us.
For that reason, combined with the negative reputation we had (in many cases rightly so) accrued before we were transformed by God’s Grace over the course of the early 90’s) we decided that the name change was past due. If you want to learn more about that transformation you can check out or international website at www.gci.org and click on the “about us” link.
It is our hope that by embracing this new name we can begin to move away from some of the stigmas that came with the old name, and take hold of the vision that comes with a name which calls us into a greater communion with God and one-another.