BLACK CHURCHES in the United States are in crisis, and many have closed in the past 15 years, their leaders have warned.
At the third annual Diocesan Leaders for African Descent Ministries conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey, last week, some leaders said that there was scant interest among dioceses in investing in Black congregations until they were on the brink of closure, and that they were valued less than historically white congregations.
The Episcopal Church’s Missioner for African Descent Ministries, the Revd Ronald Byrd, told the Episcopal News Service after the conference: “The wider Church needs to understand the current state of the Black Church, that it’s in crisis. After George Floyd was murdered, many dioceses hired people on staff to do African descent or multicultural or inclusion ministries . . . but these folks had no road map for how to do their new ministry.”
The conference was for people who minister to Episcopal congregations of African descent and was attended by 20 diocesan leaders. The low attendance was put down to the fact that both the 81st General Convention and the triennial International Black Clergy Conference had met this year.
Conference participants told the ENS that there had been little investment by dioceses and the wider Church in Black congregations until they were on the brink of closure because of tiny congregations, crumbling infrastructure, and a shortage of clergy.
The Rector of the Church of the Atonement in Washington, D.C., the Revd Ricardo Sheppard, said that the Episcopal Church tended to “do nothing but sit back and wait until a Black church is already dying before coming in like some saving grace.
“It’s waiting until it’s too late versus respecting and valuing them as much as the predominantly white churches.
“Once we lose these Black churches, we also lose part of our history. We lose a part of our footprint in the communities, and I don’t think a lot of dioceses recognise it.”
The wider Church needed to listen and to act, church leaders said.
The Rector of St Mary the Virgin, Virgin Gorda, in the diocese of the Virgin Islands, the Revd Ellis Clifton, said: “Listen, give us what we need — whether it’s financial or another resource — and then let us do our thing so we can all be able to live into the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.”
Although leaders recognised that Bishop Michael Curry’s ministry, as the first Black Presiding Bishop, had been historic, they said that more needed to be done to increase representation at diocesan-bishop level.