An American Baptist pastor and denominational leader who early in his ministry advocated for justice and reconciliation in his native South Africa in the waning years of apartheid died Aug. 20.
Desmond Hoffmeister
Desmond Hoffmeister, 56, senior pastor at Granada Hills Baptist Church in Granada Hills, Calif., died early Saturday. Before assuming the pulpit in 2010, he served five years as executive minister for American Baptist Churches of the Rocky Mountains.
A native of Capetown, Hoffmeister served from 1994 to 1999 as general secretary of the Baptist Convention of South Africa, a group started by the Baptist Union of Southern Africa for black members in 1927. It broke away from the union during a tumultuous era of apartheid reform in the 1980s. Acrimony between the groups lingered into the next decade, erupting at the Baptist World Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1995.
A BWA delegation traveled to Johannesburg to get the groups talking about possible merger, but the conversations didn’t last long. “Both sides must be regarded as equal, but we feel the white church is not ready to accept us as partners,” Hoffmeister told Ecumenical News International in 1996. “They want to retain power, although they disguise their unwillingness to reconciliation by citing so-called theological difference.”
Hoffmeister said the solution was not mere merger but true healing and reconciliation: “Not revision, but new vision.”
Hoffmeister moved to the United States in 1999 and in 2000 was appointed by National Ministries — now called American Baptist Home Mission Societies — to work with clergy and laity exploring the church’s role in bringing healing in the context of diversity, multiculturalism and alienation.
Hoffmeister began his ministry at Ennerdale Baptist Church, located in a typical “township” for blacks near Johannesburg, where he worked in the community to establish programs to help the poor. In 1989 he led a walkout at the annual assembly of the Baptist Union of South Africa, which was being held in a military barracks of the South African Defense Force, saying by failing to address blatant racism in the country Baptists were part of the problem.
The next year he joined the black convention and took part in a new “Awareness Campaign” among black Baptists that led to the Barkly West Awareness Workshop convened in 1990 to begin “the long road of self-discovery, awareness and empowerment.”
Hoffmeister earned a master of divinity degree from American Baptist Seminary of the West, where he founded the Global Prophetic Network, an interfaith ministry designed to encourage the growth of future prophetic leaders. He also served as a scholar in residence at the school in Berkeley, Calif.
His bio page on the Granada Hills Baptist Church website described his ministry as trying to lead the congregation to become a “Neighborhood Church in a Global Village.”
“Dr. Hoffmeister was a bridge-builder wherever he went,” C. Jeff Woods, associate general secretary for regional ministries for American Baptist Churches USA, told American Baptist News Service. “He helped bring groups together both in the region as well as in the American Baptist family.”
Hoffmeister is survived by his wife, Beverly, whom he married in 1982; three children; and two grandchildren. A celebration of life service is set for 10 a.m. Friday, Sept. 2, at First Presbyterian Church of Granada Hills, Calif. Additional details may be found at Granada Hills Baptist Church’s website.
— With reporting by American Baptist News Service