'Obsessed with the one': Lakeland church's new name reflects vision, desire to grow

LAKELAND — Sarah Rodgers, a church employee since 2011, recalled greeting a woman who showed up at what was then called Highland Park Church, asking for an employee with whom she had been communicating.

Not recognizing the name, Rodgers eventually realized that the visitor had been talking to an employee of a Highland Park Church in another state, not the one in Lakeland.

The story illustrates one of various reasons that church leaders decided on a name change for one of Lakeland’s most prominent congregations. In February, Highland Park Church became Church for the One.

The 71-year-old church, a fixture in South Lakeland, plans to open a second location soon on the north side of town. Lead Pastor Kevin Jack said it would have been geographically confusing to use the “Highland Park” name for the new site.

It will not be the first name change for the church, founded in 1953 as Florida Heights Nazarene Church at a location off South Florida Avenue. After moving to its current site on Lakeland Highlands Road, the congregation adopted the name Highland Park Church of the Nazarene in 1987, later shortened to Highland Park Church.

While the prepositional object in the new name, Church for the One, might seem an obvious reference to God, Jack said the name reflects the congregation’s philosophy. Jack, an Ohio native, came to the church two years ago, having been a guest preacher there for a few years.

After Jack joined the church in 2022, he launched a six-month “vision process” to clarify the congregation’s values, resulting in a four-paragraph vision statement. The declaration describes the church as “obsessed with the one,” meaning it seeks to reach “those who are doubting, done with religion, and disengaged from faith.”

“So then, the thing that came out of that was, honestly, we say we're a church that's about the one,” Jack said. “And we are proud of the fact that we are a church – like, we love it. And so from that, putting ‘church’ first, where it's usually last in the name, came Church for the One.”

Jack said church leaders also wanted a name that would be unique for Google searches, in contrast to “Highland Park.”

Plans for North Lakeland

Church for the One, which occupies about 31 acres straddling Lakeland Highlands Road, is certainly not the first long-established church in Lakeland to rebrand itself. The Lakes Church, one of the largest congregations in Polk County, discarded its decades-old name, First Baptist Church at the Mall, in 2019.

Church for the One remains part of the Church of the Nazarene, a Protestant evangelical denomination headquartered in Kansas. The denomination, which emerged from Methodism in the late 1800s, has more than 30,000 congregations across the globe.

The church plans to begin holding Sunday services in the fall at Sleepy Hill Elementary School, and 130 people have committed to attending that site, Jack said. Church leaders plan eventually to purchase a site for a permanent building in North Lakeland.

That is only the beginning of the church’s aspirations of growth.

“We do plan on expanding into other locations, locally and nationally,” Jack said. “Some of that information is kind of more under the radar for our congregation, but just to say, we have plans in place already in other states and other venues.”

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The name change followed a redefinition of the church, as distilled in the vision statement.

“Our language was, we wanted a vision that would compel and repel — that some people would say, ‘That's absolutely what I want to give my life to,’” Jack said. “And as part of that, the other option is other people would go, ‘Nope, no interest.’ And so that happened as part of it. The exciting thing is the response to the name has been overwhelmingly positive within the congregation itself because it is true to our identity and everyone understands that.”

Jack acknowledges that some congregants departed in response to the new vision, but he said overall attendance has risen dramatically. Sunday services drew about 1,100 people two years ago and now attract about 2,400, he said, with another 950 following online.

Broad-shouldered and muscular, Jack wore a black T-shirt over matching pants on a recent morning at the church office. He said congregants are welcome to dress casually, and services feature a praise band employing electric instruments to serve up energetic, modern songs.

But Jack said his church follows the example of Jesus in embracing a muscular and demanding form of faith. The vision statement includes the sentence, “We are not a cruise ship, but a battleship.”

“A lot of churches that try to create an environment for people who don't know God, they do really short services,” he said. “That's not us. Our services are about 85 minutes long. Most sermons are 45 minutes long. So we're not light on scripture.”

Aiming for diversity

Church for the One holds three Sunday services — 9 a.m., 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. — with the same formats and content. That contrasts with some churches that hold traditional and contemporary services, with differing music and worship elements.

Rodgers said that services have become more diverse, especially with regard to age, since Jack arrived.

“I'm watching a lot more of the older congregants become more willing to change their — many of them, not all, but many are embracing the idea that we can create a shared worship space where we could have a 19-year-old worshiping side by side with a 70-year-old,” she said. “They're worshiping the same God. They're singing the same praises.”

The involvement of younger congregants was apparent on a recent morning as a group of college-aged volunteers, some wearing T-shirts and caps, gathered at a table in one room of the church offices.

“Everything that I've seen Kevin do as our leader and as a boss, he is respectfully known for showing all his cards as he's making a decision,” Rodgers said. “He doesn't do it in isolation. He does a really good job at bringing a variety of voices into rooms where decisions are made.”

Rodgers, who headed the children’s ministry for years and now supervises systems and operations, noted that her 19-year-old daughter recently participated in a meeting to which she was not even invited.

A small sign posted on the wall of a conference room bore the message, “Obsessed with the 3571,” with the final digit circled. Jack explained that Polk County contains 357,100 people who claim no religious affiliation, and his church has set a goal of baptizing 1% of them — or 3,571 — by the year 2030.

Baptisms have become the rule during services at Church for the One, and those going into the water range from young children to seniors.

“We started doing baptisms every single week, and now we've seen 65 straight weeks of someone getting baptized, every single Sunday,” Jack said. “So this has been a really cool thing that's happened within the community as part of that.”

He added: “I don't know of that happening anywhere, where people are baptizing every Sunday.”

Gary White can be reached at gary.white@theledger.com or 863-802-7518. Follow on Twitter @garywhite13 .

This article originally appeared on The Ledger: 'Obsessed with the one': Lakeland church's new name reflects vision, desire to grow