Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, considers dropping Baptist from its name

The Rev. Benjamin Boswell, senior minister of Myers Park Baptist Church, described the difficulty his congregation faces in explaining itself to outsiders. In a podcast he co-hosted this spring, he said that telling people “we’re the real Baptists, and we do it the right way, is hard,” and that the church’s members must distinguish themselves from Southern Baptists and from “the different kind of Baptist.” He linked this to the church’s struggle to attract new members.

The discussion has been under way for some time at the 75-year-old congregation, which has long been one of Charlotte’s most prominent and most progressive churches. This summer, the church is preparing for what its leaders describe as the longest and hardest examination of its brand in recent memory. The stated aim is to convey how welcoming and inclusive the church is as clearly as possible. Among the options that members have considered, and that the church has weighed several times over the past few decades, is removing the word “Baptist” from its name.

Church leaders said the matter is at an early stage. Boswell’s four-episode June podcast series, titled “Identity Crisis,” is one of the ways members are being prepared for the discussion. Substantive debate on rebranding or sharpening the church’s identity is not scheduled to begin until January, and the church plans to spend 2020 holding discussions in various formats. Because the congregation governs the church, any major decision, including a name change, would require a vote. Church leaders told the Charlotte Observer that no vote on a name change would take place until 2021 at the earliest. Chaz Seale, chair of the church’s Identity Task Force, described the period as “a year of discernment.”

Founded in 1943, Myers Park Baptist has long emphasized social justice and has presented itself as progressive for even longer. Under its previous senior minister, the Rev. Stephen Shoemaker, the church was removed from the state Baptist Convention in 2007 after it opened its doors to gays and lesbians. The church is affiliated with the Alliance of Baptists and American Baptist Churches USA, not the Southern Baptist Convention. Boswell became the church’s youngest senior leader when he took over at age 35 in 2015. During his tenure, he has shown interest in racial injustice and gender equality and has sought to attract millennial members. His podcast “Awakening Shalom” borrows the Hebrew word for peace, and a later episode addressed queer theory and queer theology. This summer, the church also unveiled a new logo, which Boswell said includes the rainbow colors of the unity flag to convey the covenant phrase “We are open to all and closed to none.”

The church’s concerns about its brand grew out of a strategic plan drawn up about two and a half years ago. Boswell said that the branding did not communicate how welcoming and inclusive the church had long been. An Identity Task Force was formed, and it led the church to hire a consulting firm to evaluate its branding. The church also conducted a yearlong “brand audit” that included feedback from the entire congregation. The task force recently published the findings in the church’s newsletter.

According to the consulting firm’s poll of nearly 700 people within a 10-mile radius of the church, only 3 percent of respondents named Myers Park Baptist when asked to name all the churches in Charlotte they could. By comparison, 41 percent named Elevation Church. Respondents generally associated the word “Baptist” with terms such as “conservative,” “strict in terms of scriptural interpretation,” “possessing an obedience to God,” and “judgmental.” Boswell acknowledged that some members feel their personal spiritual identity is tied to the church’s name, and that others regard the name as historic and iconic, arguing that it should not be changed because of its history in the city, “regardless of how the word Baptist (is interpreted).”

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