Wilcrest Baptist Church is a

Baptist Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only (believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compete ...

church in

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. It is affiliated with the

Southern Baptist Convention The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination, and the largest Protestant and second-largest Christian denomination in the United States. The wor ...

History

Wilcrest was founded in 1970 in what was then the primarily

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suburb of

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, later annexed as part of Houston. 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 White flight or white exodus is the sudden or gradual large-scale migration of white people from areas becoming more racially or ethnoculturally diverse. Starting in the 1950s and 1960s, the terms became popular in the United States. They refer ...

and had become primarily

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. In 1989, the New York Times profiled a wedding conducted in

Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...

, between two graduate students from China whose parents could not attend because of travel restrictions in the wake of the

Tiananmen Square Massacre The Tiananmen Square protests, known in Chinese as the June Fourth Incident (), were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square, Beijing during 1989. In what is known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, or in Chinese the June Fourth ...

By the early 21st Century the neighborhood around Wilcrest had not only multi-generational blacks, whites, and

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, but also new immigrants from

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, and

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. Former pastor Rodney Woo took over the church in 1992, by which time church membership was only 180 members and attendance was down to 200 per service. Himself

interracial Interracial topics include: * Interracial marriage, marriage between two people of different races ** Interracial marriage in the United States *** 2009 Louisiana interracial marriage incident * Interracial adoption, placing a child of one raci ...

(his mother is white; his father part

Chinese-American Chinese Americans are Americans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans along with their ancestors trace lineage from m ...

), Woo attended an all-black high school in

Port Arthur, Texas Port Arthur is a city in Jefferson County within the Beaumont–Port Arthur metropolitan area of the U.S. state of Texas. A small, uninhabited portion extends into Orange County; it is east of Houston. The largest oil refinery in the United Sta ...

. 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, and eventually built attendance up to about 500, including members from 47 nations. 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, a book that documents the story of Wilcrest Baptist Church and how other churches can learn to develop more multi-ethnic church congregations.David Tate, SONlight Foundation http://www.sonspots.org/interviews/the-color-of-church.html In June 2011 Jonathan Williams became the senior pastor of Wilcrest Baptist Church. Since August 2022 Dr. Timothy Melton now serves as the senior pastor at Wilcrest Baptist Church.

References

External links

http://www.wilcrestbaptist.org
- Official website

- Profile of Rodney Woo and Wilcrest Baptist Church

- Profile of Jonathan Williams {{coord, 29.6998, -95.5697, type:landmark_region:US-TX, display=title Southern Baptist Convention churches Churches in Houston Baptist churches in Texas Christian organizations established in 1970