TORONTO, ON-After being known for close to 20 years as the Canadian Convention of Southern Baptists (CCSB), messengers-or delegates elected by member-churches-to the annual meeting in Toronto last month voted to take the first tentative step toward finding a new name.

By a show of hands, roughly two-thirds supported a motion instructing the national leadership board to name a committee that would study "the possibility of a name change…that will better reflect our mission in our nation and our world." It would present its recommendation at next year's annual meeting in Calgary.

Ian Buntain, who introduced the motion, says having "Southern" in the title has proven counterproductive.

"When Canadians think 'south,' they think 'America.' And so we're called 'the American denomination.' That's not helping us reach Canadians," says Buntain, who teaches church planting and evangelism at the Canadian Southern Baptist Seminary in Cochrane, Alberta.

"Our name needs to represent what we are about, instead of where we came from. We need to celebrate where we came from, we need not be ashamed of where we came from, but we need to look to the future."

It is not a new issue for the board, which last considered it two years ago. And as CCSB president Rob Blackaby acknowledges, "this is an emotional issue."

"At that time," says past president Scott Plavnick, "there was enough discussion about it that we could see both sides. We weren't sure that we needed to jump into the middle of it with both feet and make a recommendation for a change."

Ben Marshall, executive director of the CCSB Foundation, cautioned that a name change involves "more than a new letterhead." He said it would mean meeting a number of legal and governmental requirements before a newly-adopted name ever became official.

But Buntain points out that other Canadian Baptist denominations have opted for new names, and for the same reason.

"Most people would not know, for instance, that North American Baptists are actually German Baptists. But they had the sense to know that Germans are in Germany, and so they changed their name," he says.

Southern Baptists have had a presence in Canada since 1953, when a Regular Baptist church in British Columbia became the first to affiliate with the Southern Baptist Convention. In 1985, the CCSB was formed as an autonomous entity.

Yet it seems that the Southern Baptist "brand" has not slowed the growth in the number of affiliated churches across Canada.

Last year, the denomination recorded 37 new church plants, which national church planting consultant Paul Johnson says "was a record for us." That brought the total number of CCSB churches from B.C. to Nova Scotia to 220 by the end of 2003.

As of May, 32 more churches had already been started, with another 17 or 18 in the planning stages. "So it's possible we can see 50 church plants this year," says Johnson. "Many of these have little or no [CCSB] funding."

Johnson believes a new culture is emerging "where church planting is a preferred activity of individuals and churches.

"That's a mindset that 20 years ago we maybe didn't think about. We said, 'How can we find a building? How can we find a property?' Now it's: 'How can I, where I am, start a church?' We're seeing that happen."