Creating partnerships to strengthen black churches
BY JOHN W. COLEMAN
SPECIAL TO THE UMCONNECTION
More than 100 local, regional and churchwide leaders met March 5-6 in North Charleston, S.C., to learn more about new efforts to empower African-American churches for ministry.
Among these leaders at the Strengthening the Black Church conference was Bishop John Schol of the Baltimore-Washington Conference.
“The black Church has led our
denomination in making disciples, raising up spiritual leaders and working for justice,” he said. “The strength of the black church is essential to The United Methodist Church as a whole.”
Schol and others at the summit were pleased to learn that SBC-21 wants to strengthen its collaboration with annual conferences by engaging them as full partners in planning, hosting and promoting training events.
Such events are typically hosted by a few dozen black, successful teaching churches, known as Congregational Resource Centers (CRCs), where teams from selected partner churches come to learn lessons in creative worship, stewardship, evangelism, community outreach, church administration and other topics. But SBC-21 has begun taking its show on the road by bringing teams of
experts to training events hosted by conferences and jurisdictions, especially in areas where there are no CRCs.
“The Baltimore-Washington Conference has been a partner with SBC-21. With more than 120 African-American churches in the Baltimore-Washington Conference, we are committed to strengthening and growing our African-American congregations,” the bishop said.
“Several of our congregations have been resource centers and others have been modeling dynamic ministries for others to learn from. We also have strong African-American pastors who are dynamic leaders and who are creatively leading us to make disciples of new generations of believers.
“I was glad to sign a covenant with SBC-21 and I am looking forward to working with the leaders of the Baltimore-Washington Conference to strengthen our partnership with SBC-21 so that we can learn from others across the country as well as share the ministries and insights of our African-American congregations,” said the bishop.
According to Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe, who chairs SBC-21’s national coordinating committee, “The biggest challenge we face comes from congregations that want funding to continue doing what they have always done.”
“We will need to make some deep changes in the ways we go about doing church in the future,” he said. It will require a lot of patience, prayer and conversations with each other to get to the place where God is calling us to go.”
“We want to continue to learn how to reach new generations of disciples. The church in general has had difficulty in connecting with young people and with the unchurched, Bishop Schol concluded.
“We are hoping that we can learn
innovative strategies of others outside our conference and from those within the conference. Churches like Emory, A.P. Shaw, St. Mark and others are making a difference in reaching people for Christ. There are also innovative congregations across the United States, like Impact Church in Atlanta and St. Johns in Houston, that are reaching new generations of young people and the
unchurched. We can learn from one another.”
SPECIAL TO THE UMCONNECTION
More than 100 local, regional and churchwide leaders met March 5-6 in North Charleston, S.C., to learn more about new efforts to empower African-American churches for ministry.
Among these leaders at the Strengthening the Black Church conference was Bishop John Schol of the Baltimore-Washington Conference.
“The black Church has led our
denomination in making disciples, raising up spiritual leaders and working for justice,” he said. “The strength of the black church is essential to The United Methodist Church as a whole.”
Schol and others at the summit were pleased to learn that SBC-21 wants to strengthen its collaboration with annual conferences by engaging them as full partners in planning, hosting and promoting training events.
Such events are typically hosted by a few dozen black, successful teaching churches, known as Congregational Resource Centers (CRCs), where teams from selected partner churches come to learn lessons in creative worship, stewardship, evangelism, community outreach, church administration and other topics. But SBC-21 has begun taking its show on the road by bringing teams of
experts to training events hosted by conferences and jurisdictions, especially in areas where there are no CRCs.
“The Baltimore-Washington Conference has been a partner with SBC-21. With more than 120 African-American churches in the Baltimore-Washington Conference, we are committed to strengthening and growing our African-American congregations,” the bishop said.
“Several of our congregations have been resource centers and others have been modeling dynamic ministries for others to learn from. We also have strong African-American pastors who are dynamic leaders and who are creatively leading us to make disciples of new generations of believers.
“I was glad to sign a covenant with SBC-21 and I am looking forward to working with the leaders of the Baltimore-Washington Conference to strengthen our partnership with SBC-21 so that we can learn from others across the country as well as share the ministries and insights of our African-American congregations,” said the bishop.
According to Bishop W. Earl Bledsoe, who chairs SBC-21’s national coordinating committee, “The biggest challenge we face comes from congregations that want funding to continue doing what they have always done.”
“We will need to make some deep changes in the ways we go about doing church in the future,” he said. It will require a lot of patience, prayer and conversations with each other to get to the place where God is calling us to go.”
“We want to continue to learn how to reach new generations of disciples. The church in general has had difficulty in connecting with young people and with the unchurched, Bishop Schol concluded.
“We are hoping that we can learn
innovative strategies of others outside our conference and from those within the conference. Churches like Emory, A.P. Shaw, St. Mark and others are making a difference in reaching people for Christ. There are also innovative congregations across the United States, like Impact Church in Atlanta and St. Johns in Houston, that are reaching new generations of young people and the
unchurched. We can learn from one another.”
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