Who We Are

An Historical African-American Evangelical Association

The National Black Evangelical Association (NBEA), is about biblical and cultural integrity. We have consecrated the Bible as the Word of God—all the Bible. We promote African-descended consciousness and culture. We are Black believers who accepted ourselves as created, loved, and redeemed by God. 

Since its beginnings in 1963, NBEA has always been about reaching our community—and our world—for Christ. And we believe in prayer, for our God hears and answers prayer. In this journey, White believers and others have joined with NBEA. The organization is cross-denominational, and we respect both women and men and their gifts for ministry. 

Identity

“Black evangelicals at the core of their collective are a group or gathering of impassioned African-descended ‘Good News messengers’ of Jesus Christ, whose intentionally Biblical beliefs and culturally black way of life both center and share in His holistic redemptive cross-bearing experience and mission.”

–Rev. Dr. Walter Arthur McCray

Mission

To be an umbrella association that identifies, calls together, unites in prayer, fellowship, and evangelism, and empowers leaders for Jesus Christ who desire Biblical and cultural integrity.

Vision

We see Black Evangelicals in Koinonia (fellowship) to the Glory of God.

“We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins.”

Statement of Faith

  • We believe in the verbal, plenary inspiration by God of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, and that they are inerrant in the original writings, and such Scriptures are supreme and final authority in all matters of life and faith.
  • We believe in one God eternally existing in three equal persons, they are Father, Son, and  Holy Spirit.
  • We believe that God the Son became incarnate in the person of JesusChrist, who was begotten by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary, and is true God and true man.
  • We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ died for our sins according to  the Scriptures as a substitutionary sacrifice; and that all who believe in Him are justified on the grounds of His shed blood.
  • We believe in the resurrection of the crucified body of our Lord, in His ascension into Heaven, and in His present life there for us, as High Priest, Intercessor and Advocate.
  • We believe in the personal, bodily, visible advent of our Lord Jesus Christ in the glory of His Father to set up in the earth a kingdom in which He shall reign in righteousness and peace.
  • We believe that the Holy Spirit is a person possessed of all the  distinctively divine attributes. He is God. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment. He regenerates, seals, and sets apart the believer to a holy life. At regeneration He baptizes the believer into the body of Christ and comes to indwell him permanently.
  • We believe that man was created in the image of God, that he sinned in Adam and thereby incurred not only physical death, but that spiritual death which is separation from God; and that all human beings are born with a Sin Nature, and in the case of those who reach moral responsibility become sinners in thoughts, words and deeds.
  • We believe that whosoever by faith, apart from works of any kind, receives Jesus Christ as his Savior is “born from above,” and thereby becomes a child of God, “created in Christ Jesus unto good works.”
  • We believe that all born-again believers still possess the fallen Adamic nature in this life, but that God has made full provision whereby His children may be more than conquerors over sin, this Sin Nature, and Satan through the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, who indwells each believer.
  • We believe in the reality and personality of Satan as a living Angelic Being in unending enmity with God.
  • We believe in the Church and the local Church.
  • We believe that the Church in its invisible form is universal, the true body and bride of Christ, and that all who are born again are members regardless of organizational affiliation.
  • We believe the Church is a band of believers in Christ, involved and committed to maintain and remain in a covenant relationship as the visible body of Christ.
  • We believe that the local church is an organism of the Body of Christ and that the entire Body, comprised of all in heaven and earth who submit themselves in faith obedience to Christ, and the carrying out of God’s purposes in Christ comprise the kingdom of God.
  • We believe the Church in every age must be a visible demonstration of Christ in the world, standing in holiness as the pillar and foundation of truth, championing Christ’s call of social righteousness and justice for both persons and groups, especially for the downtrodden, dispossessed masses of the poor and needy, according to Gospel values and practices.
  • We believe the Church is an open, inclusive, reconciled fellowship of believers in Christ, mutually committed to standing with and supporting one another, notwithstanding tribe, kindred, and ethnic group. Reconciliation consequently is God’s purpose in Christ reuniting humanity and God, and all humanity with itself.