Southern Baptist leaders OK 'Great Commission'

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Some Southern Baptists worry that their denomination's name still carries the stigma of a 19th century split with northern Baptists over slavery. Others who fought hard to build the brand and its conservative theology and politics don't want to see it go.

So the idea to add the description of "Great Commission Baptists" to the name of the Southern Baptist Convention might be a compromise that excites almost none of the 16 million who make up the nation's largest Protestant denomination.

"It's not clear-cut. We can't fully criticize or fully celebrate," said Jonathan Merritt, a faith and culture writer and young minister at Cross Pointe Church near Atlanta. He wanted a new legal name.

"I serve in a big, multiethnic church here in Atlanta, and as late as last Sunday there was an African-American couple that said when they found out we were a Southern Baptist church, they almost didn't join," he said.

The "Great Commission" description endorsed by the SBC's executive committee on Tuesday would be strictly optional. It still must be voted on by delegates at the annual convention this summer. Southern Baptist churches are independent, and many of them don't have "Southern" in their names anyway.

Supporters of the "Great Commission" name argue it would offer an official identity for churches trying to spread the Gospel to diverse groups of people outside the South and worldwide.

Some conservative church members don't even want the option: Wiley Drake, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Buena Park, Calif., vowed to fight even an alternate name.

"There are certain things you ought not to compromise on," he said.

Others, like the Rev. Joseph Lyles, said the alternative name could help in reaching out to African-Americans in particular. He leads the Fort Foote Baptist Church in Fort Washington, Md., and is a former president of the SBC's African-American Fellowship.

"Sometimes among some other African-American pastors, they find out you're a Southern Baptist and they look at you like, 'You're selling us out,'" he said.

But he also worries that someone might join a church with the Great Commission Baptist name and then feel tricked when they found out it was a Southern Baptist Church.