Southern Baptists look to minorities to jumpstart growth

(RNS) Southern Baptists meeting in Phoenix adopted a plan Tuesday (June
14) to try to boost minorities in their top leadership posts as they
face continuing reports of stagnant baptism rates and declining
membership.

Members of the nation's largest Protestant denomination backed the
recommendation for intentionally including minorities as nominees for
positions, speakers at the annual meeting, and staff recruited for its
seminaries and mission boards.

Before the vote, Executive Committee President and CEO Frank Page
acknowledged the need for "measurable information" to help Southern
Baptists evaluate their progress on ethnic relations.

"I believe we are living in a day and time where there will be
increased ethnic involvement and increased sensitivity to ethnic
diversity within our convention," Page pledged to the more than 4,000
Baptists at the Phoenix Convention Center.

"In the principle of honesty, I tell you we have not done as we
ought."

The move toward greater diversity comes as the predominantly white
denomination grapples with a 2010 baptism rate that was down 5 percent
from 2009 and a 0.15 percent drop in membership -- the fourth
consecutive year of decline.

The recommendation was the result of two years of study after a
Korean pastor from Boston requested an examination of how ethnic
churches and their leaders could be more actively involved.

On the convention floor, delegates (known as messengers) defeated a
move to change the language of the statement to appoint convention
leaders "who are the most gospel-minded regardless of their ethnic
background."

"If we keep the gospel as the center, everything else will follow
and take place," said Channing Kilgore, the Tennessee delegate who
offered the amendment.

Others countered that the intentional language was necessary.

"We cannot any longer be a convention that is basically a white
convention that anybody can come to," said Pastor Jim Goforth, who leads
a multicultural church in Florissant, Mo. "We must intentionally be a
convention that reaches out to everyone, and until the stage looks like
we want the pew to look like, it won't be that way. It doesn't happen by
accident."

SBC President Bryant Wright noted after the vote that the
denomination was founded for two reasons -- "one was bad, one was great"
-- the defense of slavery and sharing the gospel.

"It took us 150 years to come to our senses ... and seek the
forgiveness of God and to apologize with our African-American friends
and to ask their forgiveness for the strain of racism all through our
history," he said. "But there's a noble reason for which we were
founded, and that is for the propagation of the gospel of Jesus Christ."

In recent decades, the convention has passed 11 resolutions seeking
"greater ethnic participation" -- including a 1995 resolution
apologizing for past defense of slavery -- but church leaders deemed
them insufficient.

"In spite of the Convention's frequent affirmations expressing its
desire to see greater ethnic involvement and participation in SBC life,
the Convention has not adopted a consistent means by which it can
ascertain participation of ethnic churches and church leaders in
Convention life," reads the report that led to the recommendation.

Dwight McKissic, a black Texas pastor who has called for the
denomination to be more proactive on inclusiveness, said he stayed home
this year because he got tired of the dearth of minorities on the
platform at the annual meeting.

McKissic, who pastors a predominantly black congregation, recently
helped launch a new Southern Baptist church with a multicultural
congregation.

McKissic and other Southern Baptist leaders hope the moves toward
diversity will include the election of New Orleans pastor Fred Luter, an
African-American, as first vice president. But even if Luter is elected
president next year, as many are speculating, McKissic said there will
still be more to do.

"The SBC (will have) really dealt seriously with their racial issues
and past when they put a minority person in charge" of a mission board
or seminary, he said.

The Rev. David Lema Jr., a Cuba native and associate director of
theological education for Florida Baptists, said the Executive
Committee's support for greater inclusiveness means the issue is no
longer a matter of a "voice crying in the wilderness" but a more
authoritative stance.

"I believe that the Southern Baptist Convention is turning a corner
and it's turning a corner not just of awareness but it's a corner now of
reality, of action," he said.

Southern Baptist leaders say half the churches started in the last
decade were predominantly African-American or ethnic, and the number of
churches with mostly minority membership increased from 13 percent to
18.5 percent between 1998 and 2008.

Ken Weathersby of the denomination's North American Mission Board
said he encourages the more than two dozen ethnic groups affiliated with
his agency to evangelize beyond their particular community.//
"We are not commanded just to plant among people that look like us,"
he said. "We are commanded to plant churches and commanded to make
disciples among all ethnics."