Dominant ethnic composition, in percentages, below for churches:
Anglo 81.9
African American 7.0
Hispanic 4.7
Korean 1.6
Native American 0.8
Haitian 0.8
Chinese 0.4
Filipino 0.3
Multi-ethnic 0.4
20+ other ethnic and languages groups 2.0
I’ve never seen any figure that breaks out dually affiliated churches. Nothing in the Annual Church Profile asks for that. I suppose LifeWay or NAMB could do a study that came up with a figure but I don’t believe they have.
I’ve never seen any figures that report giving to the Cooperative Program or designated missions broken down by dominant ethnicity of the church.
The future of the SBC in regard to statistical growth of churches and baptisms probably depends on the 20 or so percent of non-anglo churches.
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From SBC Life, that slick, printed item that the SBC Executive Committee still prints a few times each year. There’s something about holding an actual paper in one’s hands that makes it more authentic, sayeth this SBCer as he begins his eighth decade. I figure Jonathan Howe would like to know that at least one person gets this in the regular mail and reads it.
…this brought to Voices readers while we wait for Dave Miller to return from Africa and start cranking out articles.
Any idea how they define multi-ethnic? O.4% sounds woefully low to me.
My understanding of multi-ethnic would be at least 20% of 3 differing ethnicities.
Our church is 50% Anglo, 50% African-American. Not sure where we figure then.
We’re close to that David. We’re considered bi-cultural, predominantly 2 different ethnic groups
As a percentage of the total, I’m not sure about that. The SBC emphasis when it comes to ethnic congregations has been pretty homogenous. There really aren’t a whole lot of SBC congregations in cities where there is a lot of diversity. I lived in Houston for 22 years, most of the time we attended a multi-ethnic church by definition but that was rare to find. Most of the inner city churches are either congregations of older Caucasians that are dwindling in attendance or they are single-ethnic churches, mostly Latino congregations with a few African American churches. There are far… Read more »
Why would this matter to the average SBC member? Does this include mission churches?
No, doesn’t include missions. If it did the Anglo percentage would be slightly under 80%
Obviously, you were interested. Maybe that puts you above average.
Williiam T. Lol as the young say, I strive hard to be average and aspire to be in the middle class. The problem is everyone has a different definition of average and middle class and no one thinks they are average. Most Americans id themselves as middle class. My present church encourages and welcomes anyone however there are not too many minorities that show up any more than most white SBC would show up to worship at a predominately black or whatever church.
I ran into some nice folks at a black church back in August when I was volunteering at a cricket match with Summit. I decided I would love to visit and worship with them some time and still think about it from time to time and the only thing that’s stopped me is that I would miss my Sunday school class and my church. I do imagine I’ll swing by at some point though, they were really interesting people and I’d love to know them.
I think that this should matter immensely to the average SBC member. It lets us know we are not united by preference, culture, or comfort, but by mission. Also America’s demographics are drastically changing. If we think we will reach our neighborhoods without a diversity of churches, we are doomed.
It also should inform who is in the conversation at the leadership level. I just returned from the Florida Baptist Convention and was blessed by the amount of inclusiveness in my state.
I would have guessed 90%
How many mission churches are there in the SBC?
Anglo number?
African?
Hispanic?
Other erhnics?
I am guessing that the “mother church” whatever that means get to decide on when it “actually becomes a Church”?
Come on William T.!! ?
Add another 4,374 “church type missions” to the total. The percentage of anglo drops to 77.8. The percentages of the various ethnic congregations doesn’t change appreciably except for Hispanic which rises from 4.7% of churches to 6.8% of churches + church type missions. I’d give you a link but can’t find it. The “church type missions” may depend on subjective criteria. NAMB, however, is more strict about the numbers it reports. I don’t see any big issue in the data for ethnic churches vs total congregations (churches plus church type missions). One could make some point about Hispanic church type… Read more »
social engineering efforts have not been a success in public education……