The task force appointed to study the possibility of changing the Southern Baptist Convention’s (SBC) name has reached a decision that it believes “will please the Father and greatly strengthen our ability to reach more people with the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The 20-member group, including Jay Wolf, pastor of First Baptist Church, Montgomery, appointed by SBC President Bryant Wright gathered for its second meeting Dec. 7 in Atlanta.
“Every member was represented in this important meeting,” task force chairman Jimmy Draper said. “Again I was impressed with the seriousness of the group as we discussed vital issues related to this issue and the openness to discuss every aspect of the assignment given to us. There was a unanimity both in the discussions and in the decisions we made.”
The task force, Draper said, has been asked by Wright to present recommendations “with full explanation and rationale” during the president’s report to the Executive Committee meeting Feb. 20 “so all Southern Baptists can understand how we arrived at our conclusions.”
“We are excited to make these recommendations believing that we have come to decisions that will please the Father and greatly strengthen our ability to reach more people with the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Draper said. “From the beginning we have desired only to discern God’s will in this matter.”
The task force meeting came on the same day a study was released by LifeWay Research (see story, this page) saying the majority of Americans have a favorable impression of Southern Baptists but 40 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view of the denomination. Draper said the task force had the study results in hand when it met.
“It pretty well confirmed things that we expected, and I don’t think it was necessarily a surprise,” he said. “When you’ve got a culture where 35 to 40 percent of the people have repeatedly said they would not even consider an evangelical church, it’s not surprising that 44 percent of the people said the Southern Baptist name would impact them negatively.”
The flip side, Draper said, was positive in that more than half of the people surveyed had a favorable impression of Southern Baptists. “It was helpful to reinforce things that we had felt and that we had discussed,” Draper said, adding that LifeWay Research conducted the study at the request of the name change task force. (BP)
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