USA - The Southern Baptist Convention isn't just for the South anymore, its president contends, and rebranding could open up other parts of the country to new churches. It's a strategy other denominations are trying, and at least one is claiming success.
SBC President Bryant Wright announced Monday at an executive committee meeting in Nashville that he's set up a study group to research changing the 166-year-old denomination's name.
"There are not a lot of folks in New York City interested in going to a Southern Baptist church," he said. "Or in Cheyenne, Wyoming, or Boise, Idaho."
Wright, an Atlanta-area megachurch pastor who was re-elected in June to a second year in office, didn't ask executive committee board members for permission to start the study group.
Instead, he asked 19 pastors and other denominational leaders to serve. They include the Rev. Jimmy Draper, who was head of LifeWay Christian Resources in the 1990s when it changed its name from the Southern Baptist Sunday School Board.
The denomination isn't paying for the group's expenses.
The Rev. Frank Page, president of the Nashville-based SBC Executive Committee, said Wright is free to appoint any advisers he wants, but there's opposition to his plan. Committee members made two motions to table it. Both failed.
The Rev. Darrell P. Orman, pastor of First Baptist Church in Stuart, Fla., was one of the opponents.
"A name change could be a future necessity for our convention, but it should start from the bottom up, not the top down," Orman said during the meeting, according to Baptist Press, the convention's news service.
A proposed name change is part of an effort to reverse decline in membership and baptisms in the 16.16 million member convention. Southern Baptists baptized 332,321 people last year, the lowest number since the 1950s. Membership dropped for the fourth year in a row, and the convention has cut the number of overseas missionaries it sends out.
Since 1965, there have been eight attempts to change the convention's name.
In 2004, Southern Baptists meeting in Indianapolis were asked to appoint a similar study group to Wright's. That motion failed by a vote of 55.4 percent to 44.6 percent.
The Rev. Jack Graham of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, was president of the convention in 2004. He tweeted his support on Tuesday.
"Every argument I hear or read opposing a SBC name change references the past not the future," he posted on Twitter. "Tradition and emotion not MISSION."
Time is right
The Rev. Michael Allen of Uptown Baptist Church in Chicago, a member of the name change study group, thinks the time is right for rebranding. He said the Southern Baptist Convention traces its roots to the Civil War --(AT) Baptists in the South wanted to appoint slaveholders as missionaries, and Baptists in the North disagreed.
For most of its history, Southerners have dominated the convention. Now, more are in places like Chicago or overseas, where the convention has thousands of missionaries.
"A name really does matter," Allen said. "We've outlived and moved beyond that brand."
A name change for a major institution can be tricky, said David Bohan, CEO of Nashville-based Bohan Advertising, especially if it has a long history.
"There are perils and opportunities in a name change," he said. "Especially when you have a strong group of supporters."
Success story
The Baptist General Conference, a denomination whose main office is in Arlington Heights, Ill., began using the name Converge Worldwide in 2008.
The denomination didn't change its official corporate name but does business under the name Converge. That made the change relatively simple, said Doug Fagerstrom, senior vice president of Converge Worldwide. They could use the new name without the legal costs of an official name change.
Fagerstrom said the name change has been a success. The word "Baptist" isn't seen as a friendly one in many places, he said, and the new name makes it easier for the denomination to work overseas and in more secular parts of the United States.
He said the mission matters more than what a denomination is called.
"A name is just that," he said. "It's a name."
Campus Crusade for Christ International got push-back from supporters when it announced a name change earlier this year. In 2012, the organization will be known in the U.S. as Cru.