In this two-part series, I hope to point out how the Southern Baptist Convention has changed during my lifetime. I’m 75 years old, and I’m a lifelong Southern Baptist. My father was a Southern Baptist pastor, so I’ve been attending SBC churches since before I was born. Now, I’m not suggesting that all the changes I’ll mention are negative. No, many of the changes were needed, and some were inevitable. Still, they are observable changes from 1955 until 2025. This first installment will discuss diversity in the SBC, and Part 2 will list other changes that I’ve observed.
My wife and I are members of Cross Church of North Fort Worth (Texas). It is an SBC church plant that is ten years old. North Richland Hills Baptist Church sponsored the church plant. We’re located in a rapidly growing area in far north Fort Worth, near the Alliance Airport. The pastor asked us to serve as counselors at the end of the service, so I stand at the front during the response time. As I looked over the congregation, I was struck by the diversity in our church. I spoke with the pastor about this, and we have members or regular attenders from these nations and territories:
Brazil Nigeria Puerto Rico
Mexico Kenya Cuba
Korea Ghana We also have a Texas A & M Aggie. (different planet)
Philippines Rwanda
According to our pastor, this was not an intentional strategy on the part of the church. It just happened. When we host a community event, we get lots of guests from South Asia and Latin America who live in the big housing development nearby. Now, I realize that a new church in a newly developed area of a major city will display more diversity than a rural church in southern Arkansas. Still, our church’s diversity reflects the fact that the USA is more ethnically diverse than earlier, and the SBC reflects that, also.
To discover the diversity of the Southern Baptist Convention, I consulted the SBC website—sbc.net. I found these revealing statistics:
Total Congregations: 49,842
Anglo (White): 38,530
African-American: 3,389
Hispanic: 3,317
Asian-American: 2,184
Native American: 416
Other Ethnic: 1,496
The chart included a note that the statistics were provided by the SBC Ethnic Research Network.
Well, how should we interpret these numbers? For sure, both the USA and the SBC are becoming more diverse. In 1955 the SBC was predominantly white and southern—southern in location and culture. Now, what growth we see in the SBC is mainly ethnic growth, not Anglo growth. The fertility rate of white (Anglo) women is now 1.6 children per woman. The replacement rate is 2.1 children. In other words, to maintain the status quo of a population the birth rate needs to be 2.1. Some nations—Korea, Japan, and Russia—have such low birth rates that their national populations are declining and aging. That is true for the Anglo population in the USA; it is declining and aging. The general population of the USA is not declining because of immigration. If the SBC is to avoid a drastic decline, we need to ramp up our outreach and church planting among ethnic groups, especially the Hispanic population, which is growing.
The Southern Baptist Convention today is more geographically diverse than in 1955. During my doctoral studies at Southwestern Baptist Seminary, I did some research in state Baptist newspapers in the 1950s. I found the phrase—“This is a South-wide campaign.”—over and over. In the 1950s the Southern Baptist Convention truly was “southern.” Of course, the majority of our churches are still in the South, but now you can find SBC congregations in all fifty states. Several years ago, the SBC in its annual meeting approved an alternate name—Great Commission Baptist Convention. I wish we could embrace that name. I believe it is time to move on from “Southern” and embrace our diversity. Before you throw verbal brickbats at me, just remember that I grew up in Arkansas, and I like biscuits with sausage gravy and cheese grits. If we insist on remaining “Southern” Baptists, we must reconcile ourselves to becoming “Smaller” Baptists.
