America's largest Protestant denomination, rooted in the South and united around cooperative missions, biblical inerrancy, and evangelical outreach.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) was organized in Augusta, Georgia, in 1845, when Southern churches separated from their Northern counterparts over the question of whether slaveholders could serve as missionaries. That painful origin is part of the denomination's history, and the SBC formally apologized for its role in defending slavery and segregation in 1995. Today, the SBC is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, with approximately 47,000 churches and 13 million members, and it has grown increasingly diverse in its membership even as it remains theologically conservative.
Southern Baptist churches are bound together not by a governing hierarchy — each local church is fully autonomous — but by a shared commitment to cooperative missions. The Cooperative Program, established in 1925, channels a portion of each church's giving to fund domestic and international missionaries, seminaries, and church planting efforts. This cooperative model has made the SBC one of the most prolific missionary-sending bodies in the world. The denomination's two mission boards — the North American Mission Board and the International Mission Board — support thousands of missionaries across every continent.
In Fayetteville, Southern Baptist churches are among the most numerous and well-established congregations in the directory, with 31 confirmed SBC-affiliated churches. They range from large, multi-campus congregations to small neighborhood fellowships, and they reflect the full diversity of the city — including Korean-speaking, Vietnamese-American, and historically Black SBC congregations. What unites them is a shared commitment to the authority of Scripture, the necessity of personal conversion, believer's baptism by immersion, and the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations.
Southern Baptists are distinguished by their commitment to biblical inerrancy, their cooperative missions model, and their insistence on believer's baptism. Unlike many evangelical traditions, the SBC maintains formal theological education through six seminaries. Unlike Presbyterian or Episcopal traditions, there is no bishop or governing body above the local church — each congregation is fully autonomous while voluntarily cooperating with the larger convention.
Typically centers on expository preaching from Scripture, congregational singing (ranging from traditional hymns to contemporary worship), and periodic observance of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Services tend to be accessible and evangelistically oriented, with an invitation for response at the close of most sermons.
Augusta, Georgia, 1845. Rooted in the broader Baptist tradition dating to 17th-century England.
The Cooperative Program, the world's largest evangelical missionary enterprise, and producing influential pastors and theologians including Billy Graham, Adrian Rogers, and Charles Stanley.