Edgar Berryman

ATLANTA – Edgar Berryman, the new national coordinator for Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s African-American network, is committed to strengthening the African-American presence within the Fellowship.

"The network will be able to bring more African-Americans into the mainstream of CBF, and that’s really exciting to me," Berryman said.

CBF networking coordinator Bill Bruster selected Berryman after a two-year search for a network coordinator.

Berryman, of Carthage, Miss., was born in Holmes County, which he said is one of the poorest counties in America. "I joined CBF because they are willing to do ministry in these places where people would otherwise be forgotten," he said. The Fellowship’s rural poverty initiative, Partners in Hope, is a long-term commitment to 20 of the nation’s poorest counties, including Holmes County, Miss.

Berryman, who serves as a CBF-endorsed chaplain at Mississippi Baptist Hospital in Jackson, entered the ministry as a second career.

From 1977-1980, Berryman was in the U.S. Army stationed at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Ga. He then spent 10 years as an electronics technician. In 1993, he felt a call to ministry and six months later was pastor of Mount Olive Primitive Baptist Church in Carthage.

While serving as pastor, Berryman said he felt "a gradual pulling at my heart to become a hospital chaplain." He left Mount Olive after what he describes as "three meaningful and productive years of service." He completed four units of clinical pastoral education and pastoral care specialist training. "Being able to provide pastoral care across racial, ethnic and economic lines has been most rewarding," he said.

As network director, Berryman hopes to increase the Fellowship’s African-American presence, which will offer greater diversity that is integral "whether in worship or ministry or missions," he said. His dream is for more African-American Global Missions field personnel, for accredited seminary training to be made available to African-American bi-vocational ministers and for leadership training among African-American churches.

The network will also help African-American students in the Fellowship’s partner schools "make their transition from seminary to their life of ministry," Berryman said.

Berryman has a bachelor’s and master of ministry degree from Carolina University of Theology in Stanley, N.C. He will complete his master of divinity degree next year. Berryman and his wife, Dorothy, have three children.

Ethnic networks exist to help integrate different ethnicities into Fellowship life, Bruster explained. In addition to the African-American network, the Fellowship has an Asian network, coordinated by Yoo Jong Yoon of Dallas, Texas, and a Hispanic network, coordinated by Bernie Moraga of Albuquerque, N.M.

Berryman can be reached at (601) 421-0974 or eberryman@thefellowship.info. Yoon can be reached at (214) 343-2270 or glorychurch@gbronline.com. Moraga can be reached at (505) 247-4781 or b_moraga@yahoo.com.

CBF is a fellowship of Baptist Christians and churches who share a passion for the Great Commission and a commitment to Baptist principles of faith and practice. The Fellowship’s mission is to serve Christians and churches as they discover and fulfill their God-given mission.