Since 1901, the heart of our church has been—and will always be—to reach people for Jesus. For most of our rich history, we called ourselves the First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach. However, the changing landscape of our culture motivated us to consider a name change.
We now call ourselves Family Church for several reasons. First, we believe the name Family Church builds a bridge and tears down an artificial barrier. Like it or not, the name “Baptist” carries negative connotations for many people in South Florida. Baptists have not been known for being multi-cultural or inviting. Why keep a name that builds a barrier? Changing our name did not change who we are, but it definitely changed our tone. It made our church feel more inviting to guests, energized our attendees to invite their friends and generally made us more appealing to people in our community. Every month at our new member’s class we have people say, “Oh this is a BAPTIST church. I probably wouldn’t have come if I’d known that.” But they came and they heard and now they are ready to join the mission.
We also use the name Family Church because it travels better. Our goal is to plant 100 neighborhood churches all over South Florida. So far, we have gone from 1 location in 1 language to 7 locations in 2 languages. We can attach the name of the community in which we plant to Family Church and remain unique. For example, if we plant a church in the town of Jupiter, it makes a lot more sense to call it “Family Church Jupiter” rather than “The First Baptist Church of West Palm Beach in Jupiter.”
At Family Church, we haven’t abandoned our Baptist beliefs. We still adhere to the Baptist Faith and Message and voluntarily network with Baptist conventions, boards and seminaries. Again, we haven’t changed who we are or what we believe; we have just changed the packaging a bit.
Finally, we call ourselves Family Church because we want to help families discover and pursue God’s design – regardless of what the family looks like. There are traditional and non-traditional families pursuing God at Family Church. I don’t know any people who are irreligious or unchurched that are looking to be more “Baptist,” but I know plenty that want to build their families. We are a multi-campus, multi-cultural and multi-generational church. We want all kinds of people to come and feel like they belong. We want to be a family on mission to bring the gospel to the millions of South Floridians who have yet to repent and believe in Jesus. We haven’t changed our message or our mission; we’ve just changed our name.