Wilcrest Baptist Church

Wilcrest Baptist Church is a church in Houston Texas. It is known for a degree of racial diversity that is unusually high as compared with other churches in the United States. It operates under the mission statement:

"Wilcrest Baptist Church is God's multi-ethnic bridge that draws all people to Jesus Christ, who transforms them from unbelievers to missionaries."[1]

Wilcrest was founded in 1970 in what was then the primarily Caucasian suburb of Alief, Texas, later annexed as part of Houston.[2] The congregation matched the racial make-up of the community. However, during the 1980s the neighborhood had changed due to a phenomenon sometimes called white flight[3] and had become primarily African-American.

In 1989, the New York Times profiled a wedding conducted in Mandarin, between two graduate students from China whose parents could not attend because of travel restrictions in the wake of the Tiananmen Square Massacre [4] By the early 21st Century the neighborhood around Wilcrest had not only multi-generational blacks, whites, and Latinos, but also new immigrants from Mexico, Nigeria, Cuba, Haiti, and Vietnam.[2]

Former pastor Rodney Woo took over the church in 1992, by which time church membership was only 180 members[1] and attendance was down to 200 per service.[5] Himself interracial (his mother is white; his father part Chinese-American), Woo attended an all-black high school in Port Arthur, Texas.[3] Although there were some calls from members to keep the church segregated, Woo quickly convinced the church to reach out to Christians from many backgrounds,[1] and eventually built attendance up to about 500,[3] including members from 47 nations.[1][5] Dr. Woo left the church in 2010 to become pastor of International Baptist Church in Singapore.

In 2009, Dr. Rodney Woo wrote, The Color of Church: A Biblical and Practical Paradigm for Multiracial Churches,[6] a book that documents the story of Wilcrest Baptist Church and how other churches can learn to develop more multi-ethnic church congregations.[7]

In June 2011 Jonathan Williams became the senior pastor of Wilcrest Baptist Church.

References
  1. George Henson (2005-04-29). "Prayer, vision smooth church transition to multiculturalism". the Baptist Standard.
  2. Michael O. Emerson, Rodney M. Woo (2006). People Of The Dream: Multiracial Congregations In The United States. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-12451-5.
  3. "Why many Americans prefer their Sundays segregated". CNN. 2008-08-04.
  4. Lisa Belkin (1989-12-25). "Wedding Binds Students But Separates Families". New York Times.
  5. Sam Hodges (2019-06-07). "Making diverse worship a reality is hard work". Dallas Morning News.
  6. Rodney M. Woo (2009). The Color of Church: A Biblical and Practical Paradigm for Multiracial Churches. Nashville: Broadman and Holman. ISBN 0-8054-4839-X.
  7. David Tate, SONlight Foundation http://www.sonspots.org/interviews/the-color-of-church.html

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