WHAT'S IN A NAME?

In Scotland, depending which “side” you’re on, meeting someone named “Campbell” invites a great sense of camaraderie or an intense distrust. This goes back generations, and I’ll let you read up on the history.

Closer to home, how did you feel when you heard that the group from Idaho that was planning to take Haitian “orphans” to the Dominican Republic were Baptists? Did you feel a little embarrassed to be one? It’s one of our greatest blessings, yet sometimes feels like a curse, to entrust even other Baptists’ beliefs to the leadership of the Holy Spirit, when the actions that follow seem poorly conceived.

Some in our congregation who love our church have suggested that we drop “Baptist” from our church name, to be “Calvary Church” or “Calvary Downtown” or something completely different. A few members, upon inviting friends to church, find the friends won’t come when they learn it’s a Baptist church, due to our image of insensitivity and intolerance. It’s painful when our name seems to have been torn away from us, as if a long-term partner has had an affair and broken the trust. Do we, like a shocked, divorcing wife returning to her maiden name, change our name to something that better describes who we are now?

Would “a rose by any other name … smell as sweet”? What’s in a name? I think the best we can do in the present is make “Baptist” smell as sweet as possible. May the Holy Spirit lead us to care well for every person we encounter.