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SOUTHLAKE—While convention messengers will determine if the term “Great Commission Baptists” is adopted as an alternate name for Southern Baptists, it will be grassroots Southern Baptists who ultimately decide if it’s a term worth using, says Jimmy Draper of Southlake, who chaired the task force appointed by SBC President Bryant Wright last fall to consider a denominational name change.
Whatever messengers to the SBC annual meeting June 19-20 in New Orleans decide, the legal name Southern Baptist Convention appears set in stone.
“Virtually all of the feedback I’ve gotten has been very positive,” Draper, a former Texas pastor and president emeritus of LifeWay Christian Resources, told the TEXAN. “All of the people I’ve heard from are very happy we are not recommending a legal name change, but they’re also pleased we are offering an alternative for those who feel like it’s necessary.”
He also hopes this will lay to rest the matter of changing the name of the denomination. The question of a name change has been raised and rejected seven times since 1965.
“Our hope was that we could at least present it in a way that when the decision is made it would not need to come up again for perhaps a generation. People could refer back to this and say it was decided and the convention had full knowledge, and basically discourage any kind of pursuit of a name change,” Draper said.
“I would envision the Executive Committee website, which is now using the phrase ‘Southern Baptist Convention, reaching the world for Christ,’ changing to ‘Great Commission Baptists, reaching the world for Christ,’” he said. “The strength of it is if it catches on, great. If it doesn’t, we haven’t lost anything and we would see that we certainly made the right decision not changing our legal name.”
The SBC Executive Committee approved Wright’s request to forward the recommendation to messengers—a change from Wright’s earlier position of supporting a legal name change.
“This allows us to keep our legal name but gives freedom and encouragement to all churches and entities to focus on “Great Commission Baptists,” because it so clearly describes who we are and want to be—from our origin to the present and into the future,” Wright told SBC Life.
At the first meeting of the task force, Draper provided members with extensive background on earlier proposals for a name change, including a 1999 opinion by the SBC’s attorney which warned that amending the denomination’s charter to change its name could make the convention subject to laws requiring changes in its “instruments and practices, its governance structure, and perhaps polity.”
There was never any movement toward removing the word Baptist from the denomination’s name, Draper added, calling it a non-negotiable idea.
“It came as a surprise to me that everyone agreed with that, including the church planters, African Americans, Hispanics, Koreans,” Draper said. “That probably put us way down the road because we didn’t have to debate some of those things.”
“Baptist is a name that represented too much of our theology. The things that distinguish us from other denominations are wrapped up in the name Baptist,” he said.
“There was such a consensus as we moved through it that we would not change the legal name,” he added. “Almost immediately we felt we did need to give some type of descriptor to those who felt they needed some other type of name.”
For some groups and regions, the reference to “Southern” has interfered with ministry, particularly among African-American congregations, he explained.
Draper recalled Maryland pastor Ken Fentress sharing that “every one of those pastors have paid a real price with their peers because there’s such a strong feeling that the name Southern is identified with the Confederacy and pro-slavery.”
The SBC began in 1845 after a split with Northern Baptists over slavery.
At the Feb. 20 EC meeting, Draper said adopting a new label would say to the SBC’s African-American churches and church members, “We understand your struggle, and we are sensitive to your concerns. And we are doing this as a way to let you know we value you and we want you to be a part of what we’re doing. If this will help you, we ask you to consider using it,” he said.
Furthermore, church planters and congregations in areas outside the South may prefer the identification as “Great Commission Baptists,” Draper said, adding that an affirmative vote at the annual meeting would add the denomination’s blessing.
Draper told the TEXAN, “We deliberately didn’t strategize how it might be used because we felt like it would be too restrictive. Each church or entity would determine how they would use it,” he said. No one would be compelled to use the new label or expected to abandon the terms “SBC” or “Southern Baptists.”
