Editor’s note: Charleston pastor Marshall Blalock served on the SBC name-change task force. Click here for his first-person perspective.
The task force appointed to study a possible name change for the Southern Baptist Convention is recommending the convention maintain its legal name but adopt an informal, non-legal name for those who want to use it: “Great Commission Baptists.”
The report Feb. 20 ended weeks of speculation by Southern Baptists and fellow evangelicals as to what the task force would do. The convention was formed in 1845 and a name change was first proposed in 1903, although one was not adopted then, or since.
The task force was appointed by Southern Baptist Convention president Bryant Wright.
“This is an issue that just won’t die,” task force chairman Jimmy Draper said in presenting the task force’s recommendation to the Executive Committee, which approved the recommendation Tuesday, sending it to SBC messengers for a vote at the June annual meeting in New Orleans. With about 80 Executive Committee members present, only about six members voted in opposition.
The name “Southern,” Draper said, is a barrier to the gospel in some regions of the country.
The recommendation would mean that the legal name of the convention would remain “Southern Baptist Convention” and could be used by any church that wishes to use it. But other SBC churches could call themselves “Great Commission Baptists” if they wish. Draper said the new term would be a “descriptor.”
“We believe that the equity we have in the name Southern Baptist Convention is valuable,” Draper said during the task force’s recommendation. “It is a strong name that identifies who we are in theology, morality and ethics, compassion, ministry and mission in the world. It is a name that is recognized globally in these areas.”
Draper continued: “We also recognize the need that some may have to use a name that is not associated with a national region as indicated by the word ‘Southern.’ We want to do everything we can to encourage those who do feel a name change would be beneficial without recommending a legal name change for the convention. We believe we have found a way to do that.”
The goal from the beginning, Draper said, “was to consider the removal of any barrier to the effective proclamation of the Gospel and reaching people for Christ.”
Two task force members spoke to the Executive Committee regarding the report: Ken Fentress, pastor of Montrose Baptist Church in Rockville, Md., and Paige Patterson, president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
“Why am I Southern Baptist?” Fentress asked. “This is a question that I’ve been confronted with several times over the years, and it’s probably true that most African-Americans are Southern Baptist despite objections of many in the larger black Christian community.”
The convention’s ties to slavery upon its founding in 1845 are a barrier to some in the African-American community, Fentress said, saying the name “Southern Baptist” is “full of meaning, significance and history.
“For many African-Americans, our reasons for being Southern Baptist are theological – not cultural, not political, not geographical,” Fentress said. “I am a Southern Baptist specifically because of the theology for which the Conservative Resurgence stood.”
The 2009 SBC Annual Church Profile report showed that 6.5 percent of SBC congregations were predominantly African-American, while an additional 12.5 percent reflected other ethnic identities.
The SBC name, he said, has been “a source of difficulty for church planters … serving in areas outside the American South.” It also “has been a source of difficulty among African-Americans precisely because of its identity and the history of the Confederacy.”
Paige Patterson, a task force member and president of Southwestern Seminary, told Executive Committee members he has favored a name change of the convention for a while, saying the convention is no longer regional and that “Southern” is offensive to some.
The report, he said, is one that “satisfies my conscience on all levels to a degree I never thought possible. I support it enthusiastically.”
Patterson also urged Southern Baptists to discuss the issue with charity in coming months.
“If at the end of the process, you do not agree, that is fine,” Patterson said. “But may we agree that we will debate and decide the issue without recourse to a discussion of motives and intentions of the heart, which only God can see and know.”
The task force, Draper said, is praying that when messengers come to the convention in June, “the people [will] at least have a background on which to make a decision.”
“We’re not stipulating that anybody do anything,” Draper said of a church’s usage of a name. “Already, Southern Baptists can do anything they want to do. But it really would be very helpful … to so many who have become disenchanted [that] if they use a name other than Southern Baptist, Southern Baptists said, ‘That’s OK.’?”
The usage of the term, Wright emphasized, is purely voluntary.
“Every entity, every state convention, every local church is just going to have to decide how they can best use the phrase ‘Great Commission Baptists’ as a way of communicating to the world who we are and what our mission is.”
Added Draper: “It can become a rallying call.” – SBC