Story number 3 for 26 Apr 2000

Minorities and immigrants are among the growing segment in the Southern Baptist organization. Within the last 50 years they’ve begun including the black population of the deep south. Currently, over 2,000 congregations are made up of African-American groups and 43-hundred are non-English speaking. The Philadelphia area alone has 25 foreign-language congregations that continue to expand. The denomination is targeting two large cities a year as part of their “Strategic Focus Cities Initiative”.