As the number of ethnic churches in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) continues to grow, Alabama Baptists are training leaders to minister to under-reached people groups around the state.
Across the SBC, the number of churches identifying themselves by an ethnicity other than Anglo has increased from 6,044 congregations in 1998 to 10,049 congregations in 2011, according to the Annual Church Profile (ACP) compiled by LifeWay Christian Resources.
The largest jump in non-Anglo SBC congregations from 1998 to 2011 has predominantly come from an 82.7 percent increase in the number of African-American congregations. Hispanic congregations have also seen a significant increase over the same span — nearly 63 percent. The number of Asian congregations affiliated with the SBC has grown by 55 percent.
“It’s clear that Southern Baptists have been multi-ethnic and are becoming an even more multi-ethnic convention of churches,” said Joseph Lee, senior pastor of Connexion Church, Lawrenceville, Ga., a mostly Korean Southern Baptist congregation.
These same groups are the focus of efforts in Alabama as well. According to Kristy Kennedy, state literacy missions coordinator for the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM), North American Mission Board (NAMB) church planters are active in several areas of the state, including Birmingham, Dothan, Florence and Mobile.
Working in conjunction with the SBOM, these church planters focus primarily on establishing congregations in under-reached African-American, Hispanic and Asian communities, though church plants around the state include outreach to Arab, Creek Indian and Messianic Jewish communities as well.
Rick Barnhart, who recently took over as director of the office of church planting and associational missions for SBOM, said Alabama efforts to establish ethnic church plants are concentrated on training leaders for these churches.
“We are getting these (church planters) equipped with core values and basic administrative skills so they can develop a strategy for how to reach their community for Christ,” he said.
Before coming to the SBOM in August 2012, Barnhart served in associational missions for Baldwin Baptist Association. It was there, he said, that he began to realize the need for ethnic congregations in the state as well as for additional resources to establish such ministries. In Mobile, for example, the International Ministry Center, a ministry of Mobile Baptist Association, serves as a centralized location that can both minister to the many international seamen who enter the Port of Mobile and provide resources to ethnic churches in the area, which include Cambodian, Laotian, Vietnamese and Korean congregations.
Barnhart said it is essential to have individuals who speak the language to help families in these ethnic communities. He noted growth in ethnic congregations in Alabama’s largest cities, as well as the growth of Hispanic ministries around the state.
“It’s phenomenal the kinds of things we’re seeing happen,” Barnhart said.
Because of the nature of ACP statistics, it’s impossible to know the diversity of individuals within the SBC — only the diversity of SBC congregations, said Richie Stanley, the director of the Center for Missional Research at NAMB.
“We are only able to categorize congregations by ethnicities — not members — because the ACP only asks the predominant ethnicity of congregations, not individuals,” Stanley said.
However, Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, believes not much has changed in terms of diversity in the local church. In a blog post in June 2012, Stetzer noted that the new gains in ethnic congregations in the SBC are “coming from churches which are of one race.” He added that Southern Baptists “must continue to work toward reaching all members of our local communities for Christ, not just the ones who look like us.”
Some Alabama Baptist churches are doing just that. Cross Roads Baptist Church, Wellington, in Calhoun Baptist Association is an example of a church where the mission goes beyond race and ethnicity, said Pastor Jake Brown.
Brown said the church began four years ago as a church plant supported by Calhoun Baptists and the SBOM. Today the church averages 50 people each Sunday, and though the membership is predominantly white, the church has many African-American members and some Hispanic members, too.
“Cross Roads has never said we want to focus on this community or that community,” Brown said. “Our mission is to reach Wellington for Jesus.”
Cross Roads deacon Tony Haver, who has been at the church since its beginning, said that as members of different ethnic backgrounds began to come to the church, he and others realized that the vision statement of the church, “to reach the community … with the message of the hope of Christ,” was being accomplished.
“Our vision statement doesn’t say the affluent or the white. It says the community and we do our best to do that,” Haver said.
Ken Weathersby, NAMB’s presidential ambassador for ethnic church relations, said he is grateful to God for the growing diversity in the SBC.
“[These numbers are] saying that the Southern Baptist Convention is no longer monolithic. The Southern Baptist Convention is very diversified. It is open to all peoples — regardless of ethnicity and race.”
(NAMB contributed)
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