Pastor Brian says "I had known for years that I would end up Pastoring in New England but was unclear exactly where. Fifteen years ago God made clear to me that Maine was the place for us. One day as I looked at a map of the USA the city of Portland jumped out to me. For many months we prayed as a team and God confirmed to us in many ways that this was the area we were to move to. (At that time "us" included my wife and I and our associate pastors who have been with us from the beginning Gordy and Kim Johnson).

Even then we were pretty clear that Portland was the general area and we wouldn't necessarily wind up within the city limits, none the less we thought (while still in Oklahoma) a great name for the new church would be Portland Faith Center.

Once we got to Maine and started the Church (In South Portland) it didn't take very long to realize that the name didn't fit well, but we felt stuck with it and at least we were in SOUTH Portland.

After two years we were literally given our beautiful campus in Gorham. We felt that our name fit even more poorly now but we still hated to change so we stuck with it. In addition to the obvious that we had never been in Portland and now had a permanent home even farther away we started to realize other reasons we weren't happy with our name.

Our understanding of "Church" had grown and changed so much we simply could no longer stick with a name that didn't even have "Church" in it. We weren't a "center" we were the "Church" - the body of Christ. It would take a book to fully describe the growth in our understanding but suffice it to say we no longer cared about the fallout that changing our name would bring. We simply were not Portland Faith Center (in our hearts -include or not) - so we simply could not call ourselves Portland Faith Center.

There never was a new search for a new name. Just like God had made clear that he had called us to this place he made clear our real name, we were LifeChurch. We had always been LifeChurch, it was just time to make it public. So in Jan 2008 we officially announced our name change from Portland Faith Center to LifeChurch.

Our change in understanding of "Church" - is definitely more responsible than the simple name change but it is no coincidence that in the two years since we have changed our name the church has more than doubled in size and grown amazingly more effective in ministry.