NASHVILLE (ABP) — As “a network of churches that circle the planet,” the Southern Baptist Convention must consider changing its name to “reflect who we are and what we are doing nationally and internationally,” SBC president Jack Graham told the convention's Executive Committee Feb. 16.
Southern Baptists are viewed in the nation and the world as leaders among conservative Christians, said Graham, pastor of the Dallas-area Prestonwood Baptist Church. “I have loved the Southern Baptist Convention and its name,” Graham said. “But this name that I love and you love speaks of our region and doesn't move us beyond to the great cities of the Northeast, to the West and the Midwest. It's time to consider a new name that reflects our future.”
Graham's call came a day before the Executive Committee is expected to vote to remove the SBC from the Baptist World Alliance, the worldwide network of Baptist bodies. Southern Baptist leaders say the BWA pullout will make way for a new international network of like-minded conservative Christians.
Graham said he will appoint a name-change study committee in the next few weeks that is “geographically and generationally” representative, reflecting “the heart and compassion and theology of the SBC around the world.”
“It is my prayer that the committee can bring a recommendation to the SBC in 2005,” he said. “Timing is everything,” said Graham, noting that “seven or eight” previous studies of a possible name change resulted in no change, including one initiated by W. A. Criswell in 1974. The last effort was in 1999.
“This is a significant, important decision,” Graham said, but “Southern Baptists are always willing to embrace significant change.
“We've seen amazing change in the Southern Baptist Convention since 1979,” he said. “We've been willing to grow, to develop, to do whatever it takes to get better at fulfilling the Great Commission.
“Why would we do this?” Graham asked. “Only one reason — to strengthen and lengthen our witness here in America and around the world — because we are determined to do whatever it takes to connect with our culture and our country and the continents of the earth.
“A name change will not change the hearts of people,” Graham said, “but it will speak to people in New York, in Los Angeles, in the Pacific Northwest, in Canada, and around the world that we are a global network of churches committed to proclaiming Jesus Christ throughout the world.”
Graham said he has floated the idea to many key SBC leaders who seem favorable to the change. “If it will help us connect with culture and communicate the gospel, let's do it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,” he said.
Graham's call for a name change came toward the end of a sermon on the theme of spiritual warfare.
Baptists face a cultural war, Graham said, illustrated by the halftime show at the Super Bowl, “which became the Toilet Bowl,” he said. The “crudeness and lewdness” of the program should serve as a wake-up call to parents who allow their children to spend hours watching MTV, he said.
There is also a political war at hand, Graham said. “There will be a very clear choice in the decision of 2004 as to what kind of leadership and values will represent our country,” Graham said, “conservative Christian values versus no values or liberal values.”
Graham did not specifically endorse President George W. Bush, but said, “I'm thankful that he is a man of faith.”
Graham said Southern Baptists should use their churches to promote voter registration and encourage political involvement. The effort is not to tell people how to vote but “to teach them to frame the election in terms of principle,” he said.
Graham said Christians also face an ecclesiastical war, illustrated by the Episcopal church's division over the election of a homosexual bishop, and a domestic war, as seen in the court order to allow gay marriage in Massachusetts.
To sustained applause, Graham said he favors a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as a committed relationship between a man and a woman, and “anything else is a perversion.”
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