Stories tagged with: diversity

• Black, Hispanic congregations dealing with COVID-19 health, economic disparities

  by Diana Chandler, posted Monday, May 18, 2020 (11 days ago)

  

  Screen capture from Facebook

  NEW ORLEANS (BP) -- The usher typically allows five people in the sanctuary at a time. One person approaches the casket. The others wait, at a safe distance, for their turn to view the body of a loved one who died of COVID-19.

  In the pandemic hotspot of New Orleans, Franklin Avenue Baptist Church Senior Pastor Fred Luter has instituted socially distanced wakes in advance of funerals, having lost seven church members to the coronavirus. Read More

• SBC race relations trailblazer Willie McPherson dies at age 80

  by Diana Chandler, posted Friday, May 15, 2020 (14 days ago)

  

  BP file photo

  WICHITA, Kan. (BP) -- Willie Thomas McPherson, recognized as a trailblazer in Southern Baptist race relations and diversity, died May 12 in Wichita at the age of 80.

  McPherson pastored a predominantly white church in the 1970s in California and afterwards was the first black divisional leader within the California Southern Baptist Convention. His leadership showed blacks they could minister across racial lines and that fulltime denominational work was actually possible, said Jay Wells, a retired LifeWay Christian Resources executive. Read More

• FIRST-PERSON: Diversity and Inerrancy in the SBC

  by Ronnie Floyd, posted Friday, November 15, 2019 (6 months ago)

  

  BP file photo

  Ronnie Floyd discusses Baptists' longstanding commitment to biblical inerrancy as well their commitment to "becoming a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual convention of churches. These two are not mutually exclusive, but go hand in hand." Read More

• Fla. church signals discipline over 'racial prejudices'

  by Diana Chandler, posted Friday, November 01, 2019 (7 months ago)

  

  Photo from Twitter

  NAPLES, Fla. (BP) -- A majority white Baptist church has apologized for 'racial prejudices' that leaders deemed partly responsible for a favored black candidate losing the Oct. 27 vote for pastor, and said it will discipline those guilty of the sin.

  The pastoral and lay leadership of First Baptist Church of Naples (FBCN) apologized to all Southern Baptists Thursday (Oct. 31) for "a sickness in what we characterize as a cancer within our fellowship" that led in part to 19 percent of the congregation voting against African American candidate Marcus Hayes. ... Read More

• EC to expand ethnic relations, mobilization

  by Amy Whitfield, posted Friday, November 01, 2019 (7 months ago)

  

  BP file photo

  NASHVILLE (BP) -- Southern Baptist Convention Executive Committee president and CEO Ronnie Floyd announced Friday (Nov. 1) the addition of three full-time EC staff positions focusing on increasing diverse engagement and mobilization.

  Building on the foundation laid by retiring vice president for Convention advancement Ken Weathersby, these positions will focus on relations and mobilization for African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans. The EC is already actively searching for the right leaders to fill the positions. Read More

• Hispanic pastors learning, connecting in Houston

  by Keila Diaz, posted Wednesday, October 23, 2019 (7 months ago)

  

  Screen capture from UBA video

  HOUSTON (BP) -- The Union Baptist Association (UBA) of Houston is investing in the lives of Hispanic pastors, their wives and church leaders through the training program "Lideres Transformadores," or Transformative Leaders.

  "This is not just another retreat," Victor Marte, UBA Hispanic church consultant, told Baptist Press. "This is a two-year process that includes four retreats once every six months, and each retreat (focuses) in one of four areas of transformation." Read More

• Church merger 'undivided example in divided world'

  by Diana Chandler, posted Tuesday, August 20, 2019 (9 months ago)

  

  Photo courtesy of Kelvin Oliver/Electric Eye

  PORTSMOUTH, Va. (BP) -- Longtime pastor Jack Stallings determined years ago to empathetically view life from the eyes of a black Christian, a feat he says he hasn't quite achieved, being he's white.

  "A person that has helped me tremendously with that, and has probably been the single greatest contributor to whatever ability I have to be able to do that, is Rev. Lee," Stallings said of Robert Lee, installed Sunday (Aug. 18) as the senior pastor of Collinswood Agape Baptist Church, a merger of Stallings' and Lee's previous Portsmouth, Va., pastorates. Read More

• NOBTS workshop focuses on minorities & academia

  by Gary D. Myers, posted Friday, May 10, 2019 (one year ago)

  

  Photo by Shaale Arencibia

  NEW ORLEANS (BP) -- When New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary Chancellor Chuck Kelley announced his "Different Voices Initiative" in 2018, a top priority involved encouraging students from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds as well as women to pursue a calling to academia.

  A May 6 workshop, "Faculty Hiring 101," marked a key step toward that goal, offering practical tips for those sensing a call to teach in a Baptist institution. Read More

• Churches looking 'more like their neighborhoods'

  by Aaron Earls, posted Thursday, June 28, 2018 (one year ago)

  

  iStock

  NASHVILLE (BP) -- More American churches are multiracial, but still less so than the neighborhoods surrounding them, a new study shows.

  A Baylor University study, released June 20, found the percentage of multiracial congregations in the United States nearly doubled.

  From 1998 to 2012, the most recent year for which data is available, multiracial churches grew from 6 percent to 12 percent of all U.S. congregations, according to the report. Multiracial congregations are places of worship in which less than 80 percent of the congregants are of the same race or ethnicity. Read More

• TRUSTEES: African American businessman voted SBTS officer

  by Aaron Cline Hanbury & Andrew J.W. Smith, posted Thursday, April 19, 2018 (2 years ago)

  

  Photo by Emil Handke/SBTS

  LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP) -- Southern Baptist Theological Seminary trustees elected their first African American officer in the school's 159-year history by a unanimous vote during their April 16 meeting.

  The election of Alan "Keith" Daniels, a businessman from Texas and member of MacArthur Boulevard Baptist Church (SBC) in Irving, as board secretary is "another necessary step in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention demonstrating at every level of denominational leadership the diversity to which we are called," said R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Seminary. Read More