Conservative Presbyterian leaders who recently formed a new denomination say they have given it a new name to prevent confusion with a separate denomination. http://www.fellowship-pres.org/what’s-in-a-name/
The Fellowship of Presbyterians had originally called the new denomination the Evangelical Covenant Order of Presbyterians, or ECO for short. The new name, announced April 9 on the Fellowship’s website and effective immediately, is ECO: a Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians.
The Fellowship announced the original name at a conference in Orlando, Fla., in January. Soon afterward, the Web posting said, the Fellowship was contacted by the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC), a denomination of about 800 congregations based in Chicago.
The ECC expressed “concern that our new name is too close to the ECC and has the potential to cause confusion,” the Fellowship posting said.
In response, Fellowship leaders decided to keep the acronym ECO but change the rest of the name. “It is a small change for us but has major significance for our partners in ministry in the ECC,” the posting said.
The Fellowship of Presbyterians grew out of conversations during 2011 among several Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) pastors who shared concerns about the PC(USA)’s steady loss of members and its ongoing disputes over theology and bureaucracy. According to the Fellowship’s website, those disputes had created “a culture of contention more than vitality,”
