Ash- as usual, thanks for the acknowledgment.

If we are just us trying to define ourselves with a name, so we can tell the world who we are, any label we come up with will fail.

The world will know we are His by our love – not by a name we call ourselves.

Some of the comments brought up have made me think, especially saying that “follower of Christ” describes an action, rather than static. While I agree and understand that point, of the people that I know that use the term “follower of Christ” rather than “Christian”, almost all of them are simply trying to separate themselves from other “Christians”.

Too be honest, it bothers me a lot.

I went to a Church last week, their motto is “Want God, not religion?”. Fine, bashing religion is about as cool as it gets (never mind that the word ‘religion’ simply means ‘reverence of God’). There is weight in saying that, they want to separate themselves from works based religion, whatever.

On this churches particular website, all over the place they talk about how they are “not like other churches”.

I really do find this irritating.

I feel like so much time is spent separating ourselves from a different Christian group, rather than affirming our very Christianity.

You aren’t like THOSE Christians?

How so? You would probably agree with the Apostles or Nicene Creeds, 100%. You both worship the same God, namely Jesus.

You voted differently and dress differently (but not even that different. Is a 20 something hipster dressing in his coolest looking clothes and making his hair look perfect, that different than a 65 year old woman putting on her Sundays finest down south?) and of course have other differences, but you probably would agree on many things.

of course, i’m a writer and journalist, so to me, semantics ARE important and i think the change of words…and therefore mindset could be a great thing our generation in not only our lifestyle but reaching the lost.

Secondly, it is just semantics. Christian means “little Christ”. I personally like that. It really does have the same meaning as “Follower of Christ” for me. Therefore, I don’t see the need to replace one handy and useful title for a less meaningful (in my estimation) one.

Perhaps it matters what we call ourselves, but I suspect it really tells more of a story about ourselves than it does about reality. It’s more about the story we tell ourselves than what the world actually sees. So, it has always struck me as sort of odd that such this is even an “issue”.

I’m sure there will be another new term sometime in the future..’follower of Christ’ VS *insert new term here*

I think this is similar. However, I don’t have any particular problem with it. But it might amount to basically personal affirmation. “I’m not one of *those*…”

This doesn’t mean that we make the term “Christian” some kind of taboo word, it is understood that when used in the right sense, by the right people, it can still be perfectly fine. But we recognize that using it as the default way to describe ourselves is usually more problematic than helpful…

The scriptures tell us that the first “Christians” were dubbed as such by outsiders, it was not a term they came up with themselves. For a time, Jesus-followers were also known as “Followers of the Way”, which is a pretty cool way of describing ourselves if you ask me! Jesus is the Way, and He is who we follow…