Changing the Church Name January 22, 2006
1 Corinthians 9:19-23
Last week I let you know that we are going to enter a process of changing the church name. Today I’m going to speak about why change the church name, and today after the pot-luck we will have a time for question and answer and prayer. At the annual meeting, we will vote on the concept of changing the name. If we have a positive vote, we will begin taking submissions for possibilities of a new name. Once we feel like they are all in, we’ll have a straw vote to narrow the choices down to three and then we will vote on a new name.
Over the last few years, many churches that we are connected to have changed their names.
I think that the first was Don Boyd’s church which changed its name from The Church of the Crusaders to Bloor-Landsdowne Christian Fellowship. The reason for the change might be obvious to many of you. The crusades of the Holy Land by European Christians was likely one of the darkest days of the Church, and although evangelicals successfully renewed the word “crusade to mean an evangelistic campaign rather than a military campaign, the rest of the culture has reverted back to crusade’s original meaning. In a multicultural neighbourhood, you aren’t going to make any friends by having your name refer to a time when Christians were killing Moslems, Jews and Orthodox Christians.
Halleluiah Filipino Baptist Church changed their name to Halleluiah Fellowship Baptist Church to reflect their desire to reach the neighbourhood and not just Filipinos.
Danforth Gospel Temple is in the midst of changing their name to Danforth Community Church. They realized that the people in the community that they were trying to reach didn’t relate their name to a Christian church – the name may have spoke to Christians in the Pentecostal tradition, but to no one else.
Keele Street Church of Christ changed their name to Keele Street Christian Church because of confusion with the Toronto church of Christ which is an extremely contoling cult group that targets U of T students.
Mississauga Gospel Temple has change their name twice recently; first to MGT Family Church and now to Portico with the tag line, A Community Church
So why change the name of Runnymede Baptist Church? Is it peer pressure? Well, no, I’d like us to change the name even if no one else ever did.
What a name does – it identifies who we are to ourselves, it identifies who we are to those around us.
The hurdle of the word “Baptist”
One of our main reasons for wanting to change the name is that the word “Baptist” is either meaningless to unchurched people , it has negative connotations for those who are not Baptist.
I found an article in the Dallas Morning News that speaks to this:
“Baptists’ ad highlights social efforts
Leading Baptist group, often known for what it opposes, runs a TV ad showing what it does
10:50 AM CST on Saturday, January 7, 2006
By JEFFREY WEISS / The Dallas Morning News
Some fans watching this week’s bowl games caught an unexpected message between the touchdowns and the beer ads: 30 seconds about the kinder, gentler side of the Southern Baptist Convention.
Officials at the nation’s largest Protestant denomination have publicly worried for years about their image. Southern Baptists, they fret, are best known for what they’re against: abortion, homosexuality, women pastors, dancing and Disney.
The new ad is an attempt to shift attention to what Baptists are for – without disavowing those controversial positions, Baptist officials say.”
When I hear the word Baptist in the news, I often wince because I know it is going to be something Jerry Falwell said…
If people have any image of what a Baptist is, it is often negative – thus the Baptist jokes.
A man gets on a bus and sits down beside a woman, she says “Oh, you must be a Baptist minister!” He says, “No Ma’am, I’m just in a bad mood.”
Culturally, Baptists are more known for what they are against than what we are for. When I was a teen we used to say, “Don’t drink, don’t dance, don’t smoke, don’t chew, don’t go with girls who do.”
Baptist are also known for divisiveness…
You get three Baptists in a room and you’ll have five opinions
We joke that our main way to start new churches is to split old ones.
Baptist on a desert island?
Now there is much that is good to be said about Baptists. There are some admirable personalities who are Baptists – Jimmy Carter, Billy Graham.
When it comes to the Baptist distinctive, I am Baptist through and through – strong belief in the Word, believer’s baptism, congregational leadership, and autonomy of the local church…
That said, much of what we are trying to be as a church goes against the image that many people have of Baptists.
The Image that people have is a cultural image, not a theological or governance image. We want to be a welcoming community, not a judgmental one; we want to be a free, celebratory community, not as stern, angry one; we want to emphasis a Spirit filled, holy relationship with God, not a list of rules.
I have heard many people who have started coming to our church say that the word “Baptist” in our name was a hurdle to get over before they came.
It’s our vision to be an accessible church, to remove as many barriers to God’s saving power, and to relationship with His people as we can. I believe that the word Baptist acts as a very high barrier for many people in our community.
False Advertising
I remember one service a few years ago, my parents were visiting. This family walked in as far as the door, they were dressed in their Sunday best: suits, ties, dresses. The service hadn’t started yet, but they say the way that we were dressed, how everyone was milling around, talking and drinking coffee, and the heard the music playing on the system, they saw the instruments on the stage. They immediately turned around and exited. They had expected a Baptist church, and in their mind, we did not look like a Baptist church.
Although the face of Baptists is changing, most traditional Baptists are just that: traditional. They dress up for Sunday service, the worship service is a hymn sandwich – An opening hymn, the announcements and offering, another hymn or special music by the choir, the sermon and a closing hymn, all of the music is led by a piano or organ. In a traditional Baptist church there is not a great deal of raising of hands, children waving flags, drums, electric guitars, pastors without jackets…
I like good signage: I don’t want to walk into a restaurant called “Joe’s Good Eats” and discover that I need to be wearing a tie and jacket.
It would be good if new people could have some idea of what they are getting on the inside by what the sign says on the outside.
Self Identification
Often times when people from the neighbourhood ask me what kind of church I minister in, I answer “Baptist, but we function more as a community church: we have people from all sorts of faith backgrounds attending, and many who had no faith background before they came.”
When we were looking at the statistics from the neighbourhood I asked for a show of hands of people who would, if asked by census Canada, self identify as either a Christian, a Baptist, another denomination, or as another or no religion.
I was surprised that about half of you said that you would identify as Baptist, but another half said they would rather be identified as a Christian or another denomination. If there was anyone who follows “another,” or “no religion” here, they weren’t brave enough to raise their hand.
Break down of importance of denomination for Christians looking for a church
It used to be that if you moved into a neighbourhood, you would look for the closest church of your denomination and begin attending there. These days, most people search for a church not based on denominational loyalty, but whether they feel that they can fit in to the community of that church.
You can’t say “We’ve never done that before.” We’ve changed our name twice before: first from Swansea Baptist Church to Runnymede Road Baptist Church when we moved locations, and then during Gordon Brown’s time we dropped the “road” from the name.
Name changes in Scripture
Abram - Abraham
Jacob – Israel
Simon – Peter (And there’s more!)
A rose by any other name…
Are we still “Baptist” if we remove the word from the name?
The simple answer is yes – we still function with the Baptist theological, polity and practice. We still see the Bible as our authority through the power of the Holy Spirit, we still practice believer’s baptism, and we still have congregational governance… In many ways we do not stop being who we are, we are actually looking for a name that expresses better who we are.
Back to the scripture – Paul says that he has “become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.” Paul was happy to put on, or take off the trappings of various cultures in order for the people of those cultures to hear the Word of God
When I was a pastor at Humber Blvd. I always wore a jacket and tie to preach – the people of the neighbourhood were used to it, and if I dressed casually, they would spend all their time thinking about how I was dressed and not hear the Gospel. When we came here, Pam had just bought me two new suits, (She likes it when I dress in a suit). I explained that, for the very same reason, I couldn’t wear them here – people would be thinking, “what’s up with him?” instead of listening to the Word.
I think names are just like clothes – if people can’t see past my clothes to hear the Gospel, I’ll change my clothes. If people can’t see past our name to hear the Gospel, we should change our name.
