Americans least likely to reject nondenominational churches

We are church planters with Continental Baptist Missions. They require that we have “Baptist” in our church name. We have talked about what we would do if that requirement were not there. Our conclusion was that there is a benefit to branding and letting people know what we believe, so we would still use the baptist identifier. We chose to put the word “Baptist” a bit smaller on our sign. This allows people to know what we believe but not be in your face about it in case there is a slight negative impression of the word. I also understand that there may be a regional scandal or impression that may cause people to drop the name, but I am glad to hear that there is not as widespread of negative impressions about “baptist” as we are sometimes led to believe. Sometimes I wonder if baptists have a more negative impression of the term than others do or if Lutherans have a more negative view of their title than non-Lutherans would.

[JD Miller]

We have talked about what we would do if that requirement were not there. Our conclusion was that there is a benefit to branding and letting people know what we believe, so we would still use the baptist identifier.

That’s interesting information. In my area, when my church was relaunching/rebranding, we came to the conclusion that for our church, the opposite was true. We surveyed all the adult men in the church, especially including those 40 and younger, and the results came back that the “Baptist” label was more a negative than a positive. Those who saw differently were overwhelmingly older, but even including all of the men, it was >90% seen as more negative than positive. (One thing probably affecting the results, even though we didn’t ask, is that in our area, there are a couple of large, prominent Baptist churches that are liberal to the point of not being exclusive to straight marriage.) After the relaunch, we now use “Bible” rather than a denominational identifier. To this point, we have not found it a negative.

I’d still happily join a Baptist church if it comes down to moving and changing churches, but the decision would be based on the church itself, the positions held, etc., rather than from the name. Then again, I’m not really young any longer…

We surveyed all the adult men in the church

This tells you nothing about the people you are trying to reach. The people you surveyed don’t really care that “Baptist” is in the name or they would have already left. They were there even though “Baptist” was in the name. The bigger question is “What do the people you are trying to reach think?” Does it make any difference to the unbeliever that you are trying to reach with the gospel?

[Larry]

This tells you nothing about the people you are trying to reach. The people you surveyed don’t really care that “Baptist” is in the name or they would have already left. They were there even though “Baptist” was in the name. The bigger question is “What do the people you are trying to reach think?” Does it make any difference to the unbeliever that you are trying to reach with the gospel?

That’s a fair criticism. My main answer would be that in my experience the unsaved don’t really have much concept any longer of denominations either, at least among people younger than my generation, perhaps unlike what unsaved people from previous generations would know. Secondarily, though, many of the younger men did (and do) interact in the military, on college campuses, etc. Their positions were at least partically affected by what they have heard ministering in those contexts.

One time at my previous church, my wife and I had another unsaved couple over for dinner (younger than we were), and the topic of church came up, specifically where we went. We mentioned the name, and before we could say anything else, the husband ask “so you think the Baptists have it right?” Further discussion revealed that they didn’t know much about the doctrine of the various denominations, even though they certainly knew there were a lot of denominations out there. When they wondered how I would pick between them, my wife and I pointed out that neither of us came from a Baptist background and that we picked our church due to it following the Bible as close as we could determine.

Sure, that’s just an anecdote. But I have spoken to a number of “unchurched” people, and I hear all kinds of things like, e.g., them asking what about the abuse in the RC church (which they thought was not really significantly different from a Baptist church) and I have other experiences than the two I related. Unsaved people by and large don’t want what the Bible has to offer, but in the past few years, I have yet to have someone tell me they don’t want to hear what I have to say because I’m “not Baptist.”