Brister Baptist Church in Compton was Southern Baptist three years ago, but only nominally. While the congregation gave through the Cooperative Program, they weren’t personally involved in Southern Baptist life. Then they called Jawane Hilton as pastor, and things changed.
Hilton wasn’t Southern Baptist before arriving at Brister. But he got involved with the National African American Fellowship (NAAF) of the SBC, and fellow Black Southern Baptist pastors began introducing him to Southern Baptist missions and ministries. Hilton used church revitalization resources from the North American Mission Board (NAMB), and last year Brister Baptist baptized 101 new believers.
Now, the church is sold on SBC ministries.
“NAAF definitely played a role of pulling me into Southern Baptist life,” Hilton said. “They gave me access to be in rooms that I possibly wouldn’t get into.”
Brister’s story is one repeated time and again in the SBC. More than 25 ethnic fellowships help ethnic churches cooperate within the broader Southern Baptist family and contextualize SBC resources for their communities.
Both the SBC’s victories and challenges related to ethnic diversity are well known. Late church growth expert C. Peter Wagner called the SBC the most diverse religious denomination in America. Currently, 23 percent of the convention’s nearly 50,000 congregations are non-Anglo. That amounts to more than 11,300 predominantly ethnic churches.
On the other hand, the total percentage of Southern Baptists who are non-Anglo is far from the Revelation 7:9 vision of a “multitude from every nation, tribe, people, and language.” Eighty-five percent of Southern Baptist church members are white, according to the Pew Research Center, with just 6 percent Black and 3 percent Hispanic. Some have wondered if the SBC is up to the task of meeting Scripture’s standards of multiethnicity.
It is, says Charles Grant of the SBC Executive Committee, and ethnic fellowships can help.
“Just as the SBC’s strength is cooperation in missional giving to the Cooperative Program, our ethnic fellowships cooperate with the convention for the same purpose,” said Grant, EC associate vice president for convention advancement and relations. “They also promote and reinforce the importance of the Cooperative Program’s value within their fellowships.”
Ethnic fellowships give churches of various stripes “a place to connect culturally” that “strengthens involvement in the SBC,” Grant said. Another benefit of ethnic fellowships is that they “help churches to contextualize educational resources, trainings and worship experiences.”
The SBC’s family of ethnic fellowships extends from Hispanics and African Americans to Asians of multiple varieties, Brazilians, Messianic Jews, and others. Most fellowships are voluntary collectives of churches that self-identify as both Southern Baptist and the particular ethnic group represented by the fellowship.
Ethnic fellowships offer training and networking opportunities and assist member churches in connecting with SBC entities. Fellowship leaders typically are elected from among the member churches. Some fellowships hold meetings each year in conjunction with the SBC Annual Meeting in the same city.
NAAF President Gregory Perkins said the African American fellowship helps its more than 4,000 member churches dialogue with fellow Southern Baptists over issues that can cause tension between ethnic groups.
For Black Baptists, those issues include election-year politics and the SBC’s discussion of female pastors. NAAF churches are complementarians, Perkins said, but some have women in “staff pastor” roles. That led to “consternation” as Southern Baptists discussed the Law Amendment, which would have changed the SBC Constitution to define cooperating churches as those with only men possessing the title or role of pastor. The amendment failed to garner the requisite two-thirds vote at the SBC Annual Meeting in Indianapolis last month.
NAAF strives “to bring awareness and understanding through conversation and dialogue,” said Perkins, pastor of The View Church in Menifee. Ethnic fellowships “have an important and meaningful role in helping our SBC family live out the principles of loving our neighbor as ourselves. While there might be moments of tension and discomfort, in the end I believe God uses it to conform us into the image of His Son.”
Another ministry of NAAF is collaborating with SBC entities to advance cooperation. That includes connecting Black churches with GuideStone Financial Resources, SBC seminaries, NAMB church planting opportunities, and International Mission Board (IMB) short- and long-term missions.
International missions has been an emphasis of NAAF in an effort to increase the number of Black Southern Baptist missionaries. At the end of 2023, just 20 (0.6%) of the IMB’s 3,521 international missionaries were African American, according to the IMB’s 2024 Ministry Report. To encourage more NAAF churches to raise up missionaries, the IMB celebrates George Liele Church Planting, Evangelism, and Missions Day each February in honor of the Black man credited as the first Baptist missionary. The IMB also published a month-long series of articles on African American missionaries.
The National Hispanic Baptist Network likewise “fits into the broader SBC family by improving communication and collaboration between Hispanic pastors and leaders and the entities of the SBC,” said Bruno Molina, the network’s executive director.
“It’s not about just reaching our ethnic group for Christ,” said Molina, language and interfaith evangelism associate with the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, “but reaching the world through our ethnic group. We benefit Hispanic churches by realizing our vision to connect on mission, contribute resources and celebrate what God is doing among us.”
Several SBC ethnic fellowships are led by Californians. Among them are Perkins with NAAF and Bogdan Kipko, pastor of Forward Church in Irvine, who leads an emerging Slavic network.
Kipko, who was born in the former Soviet Union, hosted a Slavic pastors and leaders dinner during the 2024 SBC Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, with more than 30 people in attendance. He has been traveling across North America to help revitalize and plant Slavic churches, a growing need due to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, which has caused many from the Eastern Bloc to emigrate to the United States.
“This movement is picking up, and God is really blessing it,” Kipko said. “Now we have many Slavic pastors all across the United States. They’re planting brand new churches, and in addition to that, I’m introducing more and more Slavic churches here in California to [CSBC executive director] Pete Ramirez. He is visiting those churches and making connections so that they too can join the SBC in California.”
This year’s gathering of Slavic leaders in Indianapolis is the first of its kind in the recorded history of the National Southern Baptist Convention and a testament to the passion Southern Baptists have for embracing diversity within the broader Convention family as well as reaching the lost around the world.
Ramirez wholeheartedly agrees. “This inaugural Slavic fellowship says Southern Baptists are still focused on the Great Commission. As the Lord continues to bring the nations to the States, we still need to engage with the different ethnic groups to better facilitate the work we do to the outermost parts of the earth.” Reflecting on Migrant Migrant work in California’s Central Valley, “We see this often when we share the Gospel in the migrant camps. Those people then go back to their homelands as new believers, on fire for the Lord.”
Victor Chayasirisobhon, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Anaheim, serves as interim director for the SBC Asian Collective.
SBC Asian fellowships have been particularly successful in mobilizing their members for missions. At the end of 2023, 286 Asians served as IMB missionaries, the largest missionary representation of any non-Anglo group. Many hope that is a harbinger of greater ethnic participation to come in the SBC.
Back at Brister, Hilton is among those hopeful about the future of SBC ethnic ministries.
“I’m optimistic about it,” Hilton said. “In the SBC, once we begin to learn each other’s culture, I believe we will embrace each other more.”
