Based on my experience with domain names, this is what I've come up with...

1. If you don't care about a worldwide reach, go with what makes sense. In your particular case, I think aitkinswestside is appropriate. Even aitkinswestsidechurch would be appropriate. There's no need to condense the name when you're looking at local viewership. For instance, I did the web site for a friend of mine for countrysidedrycleaners.com. They have no desire (hope?) of being bigger than the local area, so it's best to call it exactly what it is. Other examples for things I've worked on are charlottesville-dining.com and lee-jackson.org.

2. If worldwide exposure is your desire, short is sweet. For instance, I couldn't believe 2dips.com was even available when a friend and I had an idea for an ice cream tasting web site. Needless to say, I snatched it up right away. I also have pixelhills.com. The shorter, the better. BUT, don't comprimise your name too much for this. 2dips.com makes sense, but we also bought twodips.com. The 2 is logical in this sense. Don't do something like me2u4fun.com or some crap like that.

3. If you want what you want, then get it. kafenatid.com was what I wanted. I got kafenatid.net as an extension of that. ihatemyinlaws.com is another example. I could have looked for other, shorter, domain names, but I wanted what I wanted. Same with my personal site smoothysmooth.com.

4. Stick to .com, .net, and .org. The others seem to be overrun with cybersquatters and people out to hit you with a million pop-ups. I can't recall a single .biz, .info, etc. that was useful. I'm sure they exist, but I don't know of many (any?)

5. Hyphens are NOT evil. A lot of people will tell you that hypens are bad. They're not. They're practically expected nowadays as cybersquatters have bought most of the useful domain names. Most people don't just randomly type in a domain name anymore. They usually run the name through Yahoo or Google for fear of accidentally stumbling upon a porn site. Which brings me to...

6. Rank, rank, rank. It's all about rankings. charlottesville-dining.com is ranked 2nd on Google for a search for "charlottesville dining" and 1st for a Yahoo search for "Charlottesville Dining" and 1st for a Yahoo search for "Charlottesville Restaurants" . That qualifies for a significant portion of the traffic to my site (about 90 unique visitors a day, which is significant for such a city-centric site). Most of the other portion comes from...

7. Linking, linking, linking! You need to get other people to link to your web site. Other sites with similar content are the best way to do this. Set up a link exchange. Trade a link for a link to your web site. It'll push your ranks through the roof.

I know this got a bit off topic of domain names in general, but there's more to it than just the name. All these things need to be taken into consideration... and then some! For your particular purposes, I would work with something specific to the name of your church. To me, westsidechurch is too ambiguous. There's no identity there. aitkinswestside is more intimate for your target audience, IMHO.

Lastly, for now, use nameboy.com to search domain name availability. You can store ones you like in your cart forever (at least I have). It also looks for combinations for you that you might not have thought about. Also, they're not tracked. I checked an obscure domain name on register.com once and an hour later it was registered. Yeah, THAT happens all the time, right? Not. I've never had a nameboy search bought out from under me.

Personally, if it were my web site, I would buy both of these and point aitkinswestside.org TO aitkinswestsidechurch.org. For less than $8/year with Powerpipe, you might as well get both.

For charlottesville-dining.com, I actually also have cville-dining.com (cville is a local shortening of the city name) and charlottesvilledining.com. In the end, I stuck with the hyphenated version to separate myself from the other sites attempting to offer the same info. I actually used the hypen to my advantage in this case. Further, this was an availability/branding decision as I was originally planning on having other sites for other cities around the area. All the hypenated versions were available, so it made sense to brand my sites with the hyphen all the way around.

For 2dips.com, I went with the shorter version, but didn't want to have to say to everyone, "It's 2dips.com, and that's the number 2, not spelled out." It's just easier to have both and point to the one I want to use.

In the end, for your case, it's about options. If you want to use the short version, you can use it, but you also have a backup, just in case people want to have church in there. Or vice versa. You can start with the longer version (which I would do) and then if people find it too long, you can just switch to the shorter.

It's always easy to switch when you have both names. It's not so easy to do when some cybersquatter grabs the other name after your initial purchase shows up. Within a week of 2dips.com launching, my site was getting a lot of hits to twodips.com through whois search engines (A whois search tells you the info of who owns a domain name. I always use Easy Whois as I've never had a problem with my searches being tracked and subsequently losing a domain name through that tracking). I guarantee you that had I not purchased both, I would be stuck with just one. You shouldn't run into this problem, but always better to be safe if you have two options in mind.

I've heard good things from some people about GoDaddy and a friend of mine offers much better service/prices at GleemHost.com

So, you could set up one email account for your site and forward others, like info@domain.com, sales@domain.com, admin@domain.com, etc. to that one account.