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Ethics Daily published published a shorter version of this.

I am the pastor of Eastside church of the Cross in Louisburg, Kansas. We were formerly named Louisburg Southern Baptist Church. In a recent article, Brand New Packaging, author Jeannie Babb Taylor ponders the motive behind name changes in the Southern Baptist Convention; she uses our church as her opening sample. Her article is well done and provides a good platform for dialog. I originally presented a 24-point list to our church regarding a name change. Now I would like to give nine additional insights that augment or address Taylor’s nicely articulated argument.

1) Our church identity is rooted with Christ (first and foremost).
We are a colony of Heaven (Phil 3:20), not an outpost of the Southern Baptist Convention. Our new name better reflects that. Our old name gave the impression that we were first and foremost to be identified with the Southern Baptist Convention.

2) Our primary identity of union with Christ does not erase other points of identity.
For example, we live in Louisburg, Kansas. That partly identifies who we are, but it is a circumstantial characteristic of who we are. Our essential characteristic is that we are Christians in fellowship with Jesus. The Cross of Christ is a chief emblem of that union. The name change is not a denial of other facts about us, such that we live in Louisburg, we worship on Sundays at 10:30am, we are Southern Baptist…, but it is a fresh communication of our core identity regarding the Cross of Christ. Let me advance Taylor’s argument by suggesting that churches with names which say nothing substantial are not leveraging their name very well. Every church is a community, so calling ourselves Louisburg Community Church would not help to say much about our identity. Churches that take a name that moves them into amorphous land of no definition and no edges, may desire growth more than they desire to be rightly identified. There is an error in picking growth-oriented names. Taylor is right about that (profoundly right). However, picking a name that better reflects the nature of the Church (as per the New Testament) avoids that kind of marketing ploy.

3) The church name is no place for bait-and-switch tactics.
Our name should say who we are and what we are about. I agree with Taylor in being displeased with bait-and-switch church names. For us, going from Lousiburg Southern Baptist Church to Eastside Church of the Cross was not so that we would reach new consumers without them knowing what they were getting, instead it was a desire to say up-front (in the name), “If you come here, the Cross of Christ is central.” Eastside Church of the Cross is a far more logical name than Louisburg Southern Baptist Church because it says what we are about. Our sermons are about Jesus, not about being Baptists. There is such a thing as bait-and-switch, and if we were trying to get people in so we could trick them into sharing our politics of America, or our denominational convictions, we would be disingenuous. Southern Baptist Churches claim to preach Christ. We do preach Christ and him crucified. Hence our name.

4) Being Southern Baptist is not a focal point of our identity.
Like living in America, it is a circumstantial element of who we are, but not an essential element. We are first and foremost Kingdom of God oriented, and that is not to be confused with any single denomination. That also means that our Sunday sermon is about Jesus, not America and American politics. Jesus defines us. Churches that are best known for being American-first should re-evaluate why they exist. Taylor has suggested, and rightly so, that some congregations (even congregations in the Southern Baptist Convention) are known for their affiliation with political positions. This is true across all denominations. Within the United Methodists or the Presbyterian Church USA (the PCUSA, not to be confused with the PCA), many congregations are practically defined by positions taken in the last national election. It is a problem that crosses denominations.

5) There must not be a confusion between the Kingdom of God and denominational affiliation, even as we do not deny either reality.
We are a church that worships the Triune God. At the same time, we are a group that finds it useful to pool our resources for the funding of seminaries we endorse. These two ideas (worshiping Jesus and supporting seminaries) are not competing realities; they are not necessarily to be pitted against each other. We are Eastside Church of the Cross first, and then we are a people who desire to see other pastors trained at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. These ideas coordinate, they don’t compete. We believe in the ministries of professors who serve in the seminaries we support. We cannot possibly support or know about every great seminary on the planet, so we focus on a group of seminaries we can investigate and care about –in this case, the seminaries of the Southern Baptist Convention.

6) A name change does not necessarily mean a stealth maneuver, and in our case, it definitely does not. I say “necessarily” because Taylor is correct, a name change can flag or indicate some impure motive. Where there are two possible reasons for a thing, we must avoid being overly cynical. So, in our case, the name change means better alignment with our core purpose. The church name, of all things, should be most closely aligned with what chiefly defines us. The Southern Baptist Convention is not our core identity, so we took it out of our name (but our circumstantial features include the fact that we are still Southern Baptist — clearly stated on our web site). Being Southern Baptist is not a part of our vision statement or mission statement. Therefore, our new name better reflects those essential values.

7) Being ashamed is not the only reason for a new name.
If I paint my house blue, it is not because I was ashamed that it was off-white. A change does not equal repudiation of the old. This does not undermine Taylor’s observation that some churches go through a name change in order to mask their shame. A church that is ashamed of its denomination may ultimately need to remove itself if it wants to keep its self-respect. If a church changes its name because it is ashamed, it may be time to disassociate from the main group. Shame is not an honorable excuse for a name change. A name change should be principled. Taylor is right, some name changes are not principled, but are done out of shame. Our name change was highly-principled.

8.) We are in a gray area where black-and-white solutions are not always available.
There are tensions from being in a denomination. We are not satisfied with the very reality of denominationalism (let alone all the funny or odd things our own denomination does). Yet, we are not ashamed of our denomination. Instead, we have found that the Southern Baptist Convention provides a wonderful place for Bible-believing congregations to cooperate around seminaries, ordination vows, local associations, general cooperation, … etc. The SBC as a Convention is not confused about the distinctions between Kingdom of God and being a denomination. Each church knows that the Kingdom of God comes first. Within that, we understand that the SBC is a useful structure. There is a tension here. There are gray areas. Our loyalties are to Christ, but we share money with the SBC. At the same time, we are secure enough in who we are, that we can boldly declare:

The Kingdom of God does not hinge on the Southern Baptist Convention (praise God!).

Southern Baptist Churches tend to share this understanding — they generally place their affections upon Jesus first, and only then do they find common ground to cooperate regarding missionaries, seminaries and the like.

I believe that the Presbyterian Church of America is like the Southern Baptist Convention in this respect. Here you have two Christ-honoring denominations that first and foremost want to preach Christ. We are not organized around any other central idea. The Trinity is our focal-point. God has revealed himself in the Bible, and that attracts us to one another. Our attraction is not the attraction of being with one another, our attraction is to Jesus. In these two denominations, people have a pretty good grasp of the relative low importance of denominations. In fact, we tend to bemoan the reality of denominations. That the Church splits and creates so many sub-groups is not a cherished notion, but is the occasion for wanting better realities. Therefore, in our name, we can take the opportunity to say that denominationalism is a sad fact, and it is not to be memorialized. And for Eastside Church of the Cross, that meant taking the denominational name out.

9) Our name change should encourage our own denomination.
When we took our denomination’s name out of our name, we were taking out more than our denomination’s name. We were removing the fact of denomination from the privileged position we had given it (enthroned, as it was, in our name). We were saying that we bemoan the unfortunate state of the Church such that there are denominations. Denominationalism is regrettable. We wish that authentic Christian people were not divided by the boundaries of secondary matters. We know we can’t fix denominationalism, but that does not mean we should celebrate it in our name!

A bit of clarity is needed at this point: Knowing we can’t fix the idea of denomination does not lead to the conclusion that we should leave our denomination. That is not the answer. If we left the SBC, we would just belong to the denomination of non-denominational churches. We would be denominated by something and we would still belong to some sector in Protestantism.

Far from going incognito with our name change, we were taking a bold stand — even in our denomination. We signaled to our own peers that we believe there is a better path. It was a small signal, but it was principled. Our name change was published in the associational news, our ideas were heard. Our convictions were communicated to those who know us. We are working within the system, not abandoning it (as if being non-denominational is somehow superior). We are trying to encourage brothers and sisters to consider the name of the church as another place to glorify Jesus.

I hope this helps, and I certainly appreciate the chance to respond to Taylor’s article. I am not discouraged by her words, and must confess it was fun to stumble across her article and find our church as the starting point. Her arguments have a lot of validity, but the sample church she pulled from (Eastside Church of the Cross), I hope is an anomaly. In fairness to her, she could not know we are an anomaly. She is right, name changes are often stealthy, disengenuious and less than noble. Her thesis is good, and I don’t even mind that we may have been mistakenly used to make her case; still, I thought this reply might help the conversation.

Steve Rives
Eastside Church of the Cross

Related Articles on Name Changes

Collection of articles about Churches Dropping Baptist from their Name
Changing the Name of the Southern Baptist Convention

Taylor’s Article (Reprints or Responses):

First released at Ethics Daily
Variation printed here: CatWalkChatt
A reply by James Evans