Cross-Racial Louisville Baptist Community Thrives Since 1914 Partnership
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In 1914 Louisville, when Black and White residents lived in communities segregated by a city ordinance signed May 11 of that year, Black and White Baptists formed a community partnership that survives to this day.
Only five decades since the Civil War and 46 years after the passage of the 14th Amendment, the partnership was born amid exacerbated racial disparities.
“It was kind of unheard of when you think about it,” partnership leader Matthew Smyzer Jr. told Baptist Press, “when Black folk and White folk in 1914 — when I’m sure racial tensions were so much higher than they are right now — were able to set those aside for the cause of Christ, to offer holistic ministry from a mission perspective.
“The mere fact that that happened like that, that cooperation,” Smyzer said, “really demonstrates that we can come together, that the cause of Christ is greater than whatever my racial difference might be.”
The partnership, originally launched by the General Association of Baptists in Kentucky (GABKY) and the Kentucky Baptist Convention (at that time racially segregated), lives today in the Baptist Fellowship Center (BFC), owned by the Central District Baptist Association of Kentucky (CDBA-KY) and the Louisville Regional Baptist Association (LRBA).
Based on Jesus’ wholistic ministry model of meeting people at thier point of need, the center strengthens underserved community members while sharing the Gospel and connecting them with local Baptist churches.
Smyzer, CDBA-KY superintendent of missions, is the BFC’s executive director and senior pastor of Beargrass Missionary Baptist Church of Louisville, which cooperates dually with the LRBA and the CDBA-KY.
Neither Smyzer nor Todd Robertson, LRBA associational mission strategist, has all of the details of the partnership’s founding, other than that original leaders felt the partnership could best be served by the local groups. At that time, the LRBA was known as the Long Run Baptist Association, a 221-year-old group which changed its name in 2017.
“Because it was a partnership between a historically White association,” Robertson said, “the theme of racial reconciliation has been a part of what the center is about, being a place of ministry, a place under the banner of Christ that has Black and White Christians locking arms and serving the community together.”
Robertson said he and Smyzer have both contemplated the center’s survival through the nation’s turbulent racial past.
“When you think about what’s gone on in our country over the past 110 years,” Robertson said, “and to think through all of that, a predominantly White Baptist association and a predominantly Black Baptist association have continued to hold together to try to do ministry together, and keep a ministry like this going, it’s pretty remarkable. I mean, it’s a bit of a headscratcher, right.”
The only way the partnership has survived, Robertson believes, is a shared loved for Jesus and a commitment to the Gospel.
“I would like to think what has held us together,” he said, “is the Kingdom of God is bigger and more important than the things that are differences for us. It has not always been easy, and I don’t even know some of the things that went on during some of the most difficult political seasons and social seasons in our community.”
In his 25 years of LRBA service, he has witnessed tough times on both sides.
“The commitment and interest to the work has waned (at times),” he said, “and it’s been just by the sheer grit of leadership at the center that they’ve kept going, and staff (that) believed so much in what they were doing, they just weren’t going to let go.”
Challenges, such as the BFC’s severe damage when a tornado struck the community July 4, have perhaps engendered the partnership, Robertson said. The building is closed while Smyzer awaits details from insurers regarding damages and repairs. As details become available, Smyzer will approach area churches for use of their facilities to host various programs, he said, until repairs are complete.
The center has served as a model for cross-cultural cooperation in Kentucky, Smyzer said, because of its success as an early example.
The BFC’s 18-member board of directors is evenly composed of nine members each from CDBA-KY churches and LRBA churches, with both Smyzer and Robertson serving as board members. The center’s property is jointly owned by both groups – two/thirds by LRBA and one/third by the CDBA-KY.
In its current location since the mid-1960s, the center unites Black and White churches from the CDBA-KY and the LRBA in community outreach programs and cross-cultural initiatives aimed at empowering communities and breaking detrimental cycles.
“We can take people who are poverty level or less and help them become a homeowner,” Smyzer said. “All of that comes to that person by the grace of God. We unapologetically (represent) Jesus Christ; we don’t back down from that.”
The center connects church members as mentors with elementary school students; engages, empowers and equips parents to be positive influences within their families and communities to break cycles of violence; and mentors young men ages 10-17 to succeed. A day care and summer youth program are also among the center’s offerings, with clothing and food distributions among its benevolent outreaches.
Concurrently, the center builds cross-cultural relationships between Black and White Baptists and allows White members to see firsthand the lives of Black members outside of those portrayed in media, which Smyzer cites as valuable.
At its best, the partnership goes far beyond pastor-pulpit swapping that occurs several times a year among LRBA and CDBA-KY churches, with Black pastors preaching in predominantly White churches, and vice versa.
“The partnership at its best is when the congregations of those two churches come together, working together, on a common mission cause and project,” Smyzer said, “and getting to know one another.
“Because what we’ve seen happen is when they come together and work on one (project), they will continue to come together and work on other projects. That’s the best. Because the reality is this. If the only time you see a person is in church on Sunday morning, you really don’t know them.”
Such collaborations allow individuals to personally learn one another, rather than relying on secondhand accounts or media reports that tend to favor tragedy and crime, Smyzer said.
“No one actually hears about the 85 percent of people in the Black community that get up every day, love their family, go to work, work hard, bring their money home, love the Lord,” Smyzer said, “but because of the areas that have been redlined or the areas that have been highlighted by the media, if I don’t know you, then I’m going to think what I read in the paper and what I see in the news is you.”
This story has been republished with permission from Baptist Press.
Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.