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Who We Are
OUR VISION
A renewed transformed unified body of Christ on mission in the world.
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OUR MISSION
The mission of Black Methodists for Church Renewal is to raise up prophetic and spiritual leaders who will be advocate for the unique needs of Black people in the United Methodist church.
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OUR VALUES
The legacy of BMCR (history, persons, programs, events),
Our Wesleyan heritage of vital piety and social holiness,
Our commitment to develop spiritual and prophetic leaders,
Our relationships within the United Methodist connection; and
Our commitment to inclusiveness and justice.
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OUR PURPOSE
- To empower Black Methodists for effective witness and service among pastors, laity in local churches, conferences, schools, and the larger community
- To encourage and involve Black Methodists and others in the struggle for economic and social justice.
- To expose latent and overt forms of racism in all local, regional, and agencies and institutions of The United Methodist Church.
- To act as an agitating conscience on all boards and agencies of The United Methodist Church in order to keep them sensitive to the needs and expressions of a “genuinely”inclusive and relevant Church.
- To keep before the Church the crucial issues facing us by initiating action and supporting Church agencies which realistically deal with the needs of Black people; i.e., issues spelled out in “The Findings of Black Methodists for Church Renewal”and the other occasional documents adopted by BMCR.
- To initiate, develop, and implement strategies and instruments for the development, maintenance, and growth of strong Black local churches.
- To provide an instrument through which we can educate and cultivate the Black constituency of our Church toward a greater knowledge of missions within the U.S., Africa, and within the Caribbean.
We, the people called Black Methodists for Church Renewal, Inc., created in the image of God, confess our Faith in a living and just God. We call ourselves and the entire United Methodist Church to repentance, to rebuild God's Church as a community of faith, to declare the traditions and stories of the Bible and Black culture, to reclaim the black community and to liberate all people from racism and injustice everywhere.
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THE NEED
United States census data revealed an 11% increase in the Black population between 1980 and 1990. In spite of an increase in population, the most recent United Methodist quadrennial statistics (1992) indicate a 32% decrease in the number of Black UM Churches in the U.S. since 1974 and a 15% decline in Black membership during the same period.
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PLAN FOR ACTION
Vital congregations within the Black community will lead the way! Qualities of a vital congregation include prophetic engagement of all God's people, prophetic worship, prophetic pastoral care and prophetic evangelism. Learnings from the vital congregations and their resourcing of other congregations will be shared with the wider church with the hope that the whole church can be strengthened through this initiative.
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 Black Methodists to raise prophetic, spiritual leaders
By Denise Johnson Stovall*
DALLAS (UMNS)—African-American United Methodists converged in Dallas in a week of prayer, praise and preaching that resembled an old fashioned revival.
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Black Methodists Must Reclaim ‘Renewal’
By Gilbert H. Caldwell
It is always a challenge to attend a meeting of an organization/ movement with which you have a history of being one of the organizers and one of the former national chairpersons. We humans often fool ourselves into believing that merely changing structure and nomenclature mean that the institution has genuinely changed.
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