Caribbean clergy association launches in NYC

NEW YORK — The Caribbean Diaspora Baptist Clergy Association (CDBCA) was officially launched in New York City March 30.

Held at Grace Baptist Chapel in the Bronx, home to a congregation of mainly Caribbean immigrants, the celebrative service was held to recognize an organization that has become a reality after a decade of discussion. According to Alfred Johnson, a former Jamaica Baptist Union (JBU) pastor who now lives and serves as a pastor in New Jersey, "Over the past 40 to 50 years, what started as a trickle has now become a steady stream of immigrants into this country. … We were indeed strangers in a foreign land, living in exile from our home in the Caribbean, away from our Baptist fellowship."

The idea to form the Caribbean Baptist group was first mooted in 1993 when then JBU president Roy Henry met with a group of Caribbean Baptists at Bronx Baptist Church, which was founded by Jamaican Samuel Simpson in the 1960s. After a missions conference in the Jamaican north coast town of Ocho Rios in 2003, the JBU Mission Agency stated its intention "to participate in missions to Caribbean people in general and to Jamaicans in particular who are in the Diaspora (e.g. United Kingdom, U.S. and Canada)."

CDBCA, which was incorporated in 2006, signed a partnership agreement with the JBU in April 2007 at Grace Baptist Chapel in the Bronx to aid in "facilitating missions in both regions of the world," meaning the Caribbean and North America.