PHOTO ESSAY: Pastor Herberto Becerra added a family touch to SBC meeting
NEW ORLEANS (BP)--The demographics of the Southern Baptist Convention are changing.
For many years, the vast majority of messengers to the SBC annual meeting were Anglo. However, the number of Hispanic messengers who attend the SBC is growing, as are the numbers blacks and other minorities.
Herberto Becerra, who attended this year's SBC annual meeting in New Orleans, is pastor of First Hispanic Baptist Church in Plantation, Fla., and president of Confratrnidad Nacional de Iglesias Hispana Bautistas de Sur [CNIHBS, the National Fellowship of Hispanic Baptist Churches].
Becerra left Cuba in 1980 where he had been a pastor 17 years; four years later, a congressman's appeal to Fidel Castro helped Becerra's family also leave the communist country. Before moving to Florida several years ago, Becerra had been pastor of First Hispanic Baptist Church in Manhattan.