The task force appointed to study the possibility of changing the Southern Baptist Convention’s name has reached a decision that they believe “will please the Father and greatly strengthen our ability to reach more people with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The 20-member group appointed by SBC President Bryant Wright gathered for its second meeting Dec. 7 in Atlanta.

“Every member was represented in this important meeting,” task force chairman Jimmy Draper said in a statement to Baptist Press following the meeting. “Again, I was impressed with the seriousness of the group as we discussed vital issues related to this issue and the openness to discuss every aspect of the assignment given to us. There was a unanimity both in the discussions and in the decisions we made.”

The task force, Draper said, has been asked by Wright to present recommendations “with full explanation and rationale” during the president’s report to the Executive Committee meeting Feb. 20 “so all Southern Baptists can understand how we arrived at our conclusions.”

“We are excited to make these recommendations believing that we have come to decisions that will please the Father and greatly strengthen our ability to reach more people with the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Draper said. “From the beginning we have desired only to discern God’s will in this matter.”

Draper, president emeritus of LifeWay Christian Resources, expressed gratitude for prayers on behalf of the task force during the process.

“We wrapped our meeting in prayer and could feel the prayers of Southern Baptists for us in this endeavor,” he said.

The task force meeting came on the same day a study was released by LifeWay Research saying the majority of Americans have a favorable impression of Southern Baptists but 40 percent of respondents had an unfavorable view of the denomination. More than a third strongly assumed an SBC church was not for them, and the negativity was higher among the unchurched, the study found.

In comments to Baptist Press Dec. 8, Draper said the task force had the study results in hand when they met in Atlanta.

“I had them send me a copy of it the night before, and we shared copies with the committee but we didn’t discuss it in detail,” Draper said. “It pretty well confirmed things that we expected, and I don’t think it was necessarily a surprise.

“When you’ve got a culture where 35 to 40 percent of the people have repeatedly said they would not even consider an evangelical church, it’s not surprising that 44 percent of the people said the Southern Baptist name would impact them negatively,” Draper said. “We’re not sure how significant that is, but it was good to know.”

The flip side, Draper said, was positive in that more than half of the people surveyed had a favorable impression of Southern Baptists.

“It was helpful to reinforce things that we had felt and that we had discussed,” Draper said, adding that LifeWay Research conducted the study at the request of the name change task force.

[Editor’s note: This article is incomplete. The source for this document was originally published on Baptist Press—however, the link (URL) to the original article is unavailable and has been removed.]