Yeah, well, what the heck would they call it?
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) -- Southern Baptist Convention President Bryant Wright has announced the appointment of a presidential task force to study the prospect of changing the 166-year-old convention's name.
Wright, who was re-elected to a second one-year term during the SBC annual meeting in Phoenix this past June, said he believes the study will be helpful for two main reasons.
"First, the convention's name is so regional," he said. "With our focus on church planting, it is challenging in many parts of the country to lead churches to want to be part of a convention with such a regional name. Second, a name change could position us to maximize our effectiveness in reaching North America for Jesus Christ in the 21st century."
What would Jesus say? Never "maximizing our effectiveness" I'd bet you.
Name changes are a big deal today, and a lot are done to come up with something shorter and snappier, with acronyms being the hottest thing in rebranding. Indiana's new online university is affiliated with the group Western Governor's University, but the "official" name is WGU Indiana, not Western Governor's University Indiana, and so I was informed by email when I used the name wrong in an editorial. America Online became AOL, and if you don't know what the letters stand for, what's the difference?
But a lot of renaming stems from a company trying to hide something. Changing the name of Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC nicely camouflages the "fried" part in today's healther-food atmosphere. Philip Morris changed the name of its holding company to Altria to disassociate itself from -- what, class? Anyone?
So what's the SBC trying to hide? Not, I suspect, merely the regionalism -- it's the particular region that's the problem. "Southern" Baptist conjures up an image of the redneck branch of the religious right, and God knows they might like better press than that. Don't know that I'd mess with the brand, though -- that's an image that works for many of the SBC's members. (As an aside, I grew up in a gospel church in rural Kentucky that strongly resembled the Free Will Baptist Church, which is one of the most misleading labels in religion. Yes, members have "free will" to reject faith in Christ, but once they do there is no redemption for their apostasy, so what's really free about it?)
Hey, this just in:
The best-known name in the business of renting DVDs by mail is, of course, Netflix
Comments
Someone remarked to me, the other day, that if Jesus were to come back, he'd have a big long list of people he could sue for defamation because they call themselves Christian.
Maybe "southern" isn't the problem. The "baptist" part of the name says "we're better than everyone else because we've been saved by baptism". A name that implies modesty and faithfulness might be more appealing, The poor handmaidens, who turned the Rockhill place into St. Joseph's hospital, sorta had the right idea.
How about emphasizing worship, by calling yourself something like the "Celebration Communities"? That's emphasizing the greatness of God, rather than of the church members, and it's a real upbeat name that might appeal to young families. Although in Florida, you might end up with a church known as the "Celebration Community of Celebration".