1. Church business > when sermon is given by a character and he/she gives a praise to someone, the sermon progress bar (blue) becomes 0 and the character starts the sermon from beginning. So if she performs the sermon for like 2 hours from the total 4, and praises someone, she continues for another 4 hours from the praise, so total length of sermon comes to 6, 7, 8 hours.
That does not happen with the priests/employees giving the sermon. They praise and the sermon continues normally.
That is indeed an exploit, that is still in a game many patches behind, I wonder why no one reported it yet! Maybe because its minor/micromanaging and slightly beneficial, also you reset the cooldown timer.
2. The change in names works ok, both for house and business, as far as I tried it.
Unfortunately it doesn't work in Multilayer.