By Hans Ngala
I need to start this article by making a few things very clear: I am a Baptist Christian and I love being a Baptist. I do not now, nor have I in the past, ever sought any office in the CBC, so I have no interest in gaining anything from the Convention. I do not have any relative in high office within the CBC either. I am just an ordinary Baptist Christian who wants the best for all Baptists. As a Baptist Christian, I must admit that the CBC needs to be restructured, because the Baptist approach bequeathed to us by the North American Baptist Conference did not take into account our local Cameroonian and West African realities. For example, the insistence on local church autonomy has underpinnings of American individualism clad all over it. North American Baptists come from a socio-cultural context where independence and autonomy are very much valued. Americans love their freedom, whether it be to own guns, to worship as they please or even just the semi-autonomy of their states, the message is clear: There is a clear disdain for any centralized system that takes away the autonomy of grassroots institutions.
However, after 70 years of existence, endless court cases, many break-away congregations and a fragmented convention with each department running its own affairs, finances, electing its own departmental leaders, running different communications units instead of one – it is very clear that this inherited Western-style model was not meant for Cameroon.
As I type this, the former Executive President is still appearing in court on an almost monthly basis after having been sued by other Baptist Christians who have since been excommunicated. My desire in this piece is not to pick sides on the court cases, but to comment on the fact that we as Christians are having court cases at all! Why are we washing our dirty linen in public? How did the CBC congregational model inherited from missionaries, perhaps contribute to the issues that led to the court cases?
There is no denying the fact that in America and Europe, individual Baptist congregations can pretty much survive under the loose Baptist conventional, unionized or federated systems. Economics play a crucial role in this. Rural American realities are starkly different from rural realities in Cameroon and the broader West Africa region. In rural America, local Baptist congregations can likely raise thousands of Dollars from offerings and tithes, but in Cameroon, people living in rural places like Babessi or Nwa, will have Baptist churches where a congregation of even 100 is unable to give combined offerings and tithes of up to 50,000 CFA ($100 USD). In America, a rural congregation of the same size in Tennessee is likely to have each congregant give $100 or more and once you sum it all up, the math is obviously very different.
Also, this individualized approach to church leadership which we copied and pasted in the CBC – serves the interests of bigger Baptist congregations where pastors in bigger and wealthier churches live in opulence, while their colleagues in smaller and poorer congregations are barely able to feed themselves.
What Can Be Done?
It is helpful to understand the socio-economic and socio-political differences between Cameroon and the US, Canada and Europe for example. Insisting on using a church polity from colonial times in an African state will not work because the dynamics are totally different. We should not cling too much to church structure and name. Our call should be to serve Christ and look at the best ways to do that in a way that unites us all and if we realize that the inherited church model from the West is not working, there is nothing wrong with amending it to work for us. This could mean centralizing the structure a bit more. Some practical ways to ensure greater uniformity and togetherness, in keeping with the CBC’s motto of “One Lord, One Faith and One Baptism”, would be to:
• Ensure that all pastors are paid by the Central Administration at the Baptist Center. This would mean putting all pastors on a category that factors in their longevity, level of education and location of their churches.
• Ensuring that voting of CBC Departmental leaders is done at the General Council level and not departmentally.
• Creating a central Communications Department that harmonizes all of the CBC’s public-facing communications so that the Printing Press, Health Services, Education Department and CBC radio stations are not haphazardly running their own individualized communications.
• Establish a centralized pastoral training and continuing education program. This would ensure all pastors—whether in urban or rural areas—receive equal theological, leadership, and administrative training, helping to bridge the gap in capacity between wealthier and poorer congregations.
• Introduce a resource-sharing mechanism where better-resourced congregations “twin” with struggling ones to provide financial, material, and human resource support. This will foster solidarity and reduce inequality between CBC churches.
The problems facing the Cameroon Baptist Convention are not spiritual, they are structural. While our faith, message, and mission remain rooted in the unchanging gospel of Christ, our systems must reflect the realities of the communities we serve. The Western-style Baptist model we inherited, admirable as it might be in its original North American context, has failed to account for Cameroon’s economic disparities, rural poverty, and socio-political landscape.
If after seventy years of existence as the first and oldest church in Cameroon, we Baptists find ourselves mired in court cases, fragmented leadership, and unequal pastoral conditions – it is not unfaithful to our Baptist heritage to reassess and adapt—it is wise stewardship. We must ask ourselves what are we doing wrong and what do we need to change? It is not a spiritual issue since we obviously pray and fast. It is clearly a systemic issue. Centralized salary structures for pastors, unified departmental elections, and a harmonized communications strategy are not threats to autonomy; they are tools for unity. Adding financial accountability, standardized pastoral training, and structured resource-sharing will ensure that no congregation or department becomes an isolated island in the CBC family.
The call to “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism” demands that we resist division and embrace the biblical principle that the body of Christ is one, with each part supporting the others. The goal is not to erase the individuality of local congregations, but to balance it with a shared responsibility and a common identity within the broader Cameroon Baptist Convention.
Restructuring the CBC is not about abandoning our Baptist roots—it is about pruning the tree so it bears more fruit in our Cameroonian soil. A church that adapts in love and unity will not only survive; it will thrive, serving as a beacon of hope, integrity, and Christ-centered service for generations of Cameroonian Baptists to come.
