The Story: A task force of the Southern Baptist Convention was appointed last September to study a possible name change for the country’s largest Protestant denomination. After considering 535 possible names, the committee is recommending the convention keep its legal name but adopt an informal, non-legal name for those who want to use it: Great Commission Baptists.
The Background: As Jimmy Draper, chairman of the task force, explains, the name change is an “issue that just won’t die.” The first attempt to change the name was in 1903; since then, it has been presented to the Convention in one form or another 13 times.
When the Convention was formed in 1845, the Baptist founders intended for the name to identify with the Confederacy in the years leading up to the Civil War. “This signifies that the name has not only been a source of difficulty for church planters serving in areas outside the American South but also that the name has been a source of some difficulty among African Americans precisely because of its identity with the Confederacy,” says Ken Fentress, senior pastor of Montrose Baptist Church in Rockville, Maryland.
Changing the name, however, would “require a great cost in dollars, in energy, as well as re-branding the name to recapture the meaning that our name now represents,” says Draper. “The value of the name change does not justify the risks involved.” Instead, the task force recommends the SBC adopt an informal or “non-legal” name that could be similar to a descriptor or auxiliary name that would be approved for use by those who would prefer a different name.
Why It Matters: As Fentress notes, “There are two important theological reasons why we have been engaged in a discussion of a potential name change for the SBC: 1) The progress of the Gospel through evangelism; and, 2) The progress of the Gospel through racial reconciliation. The fact that we are having this discussion is good because it signifies the progress of the Gospel. . . . Removing impediments to Gospel-driven evangelism and reaching across historic barriers in order to achieve Gospel-driven reconciliation is precisely what progress is all about. The progress of the Gospel brings people to God while also bringing them together.”
