Desmond Hoffmeister, American Baptist pastor and former South African Baptist leader, dies at 56

Desmond Hoffmeister, an American Baptist pastor and denominational leader who advocated for justice and reconciliation in his native South Africa during the waning years of apartheid, died Aug. 20. He was 56 and had served as senior pastor of Granada Hills Baptist Church in Granada Hills, Calif. Before assuming that pulpit in 2010, he spent five years as executive minister for American Baptist Churches of the Rocky Mountains.

A native of Cape Town, Hoffmeister served from 1994 to 1999 as general secretary of the Baptist Convention of South Africa. The convention was started in 1927 by the Baptist Union of Southern Africa for black members and broke away from the union during a period of apartheid reform in the 1980s. Tensions between the two groups continued into the following decade and erupted at the Baptist World Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1995.

A Baptist World Alliance delegation later traveled to Johannesburg to encourage the groups to discuss a possible merger, but those conversations did not last long. In 1996, Hoffmeister told Ecumenical News International: “Both sides must be regarded as equal, but we feel the white church is not ready to accept us as partners.” He also said the white church wanted to retain power and was disguising its unwillingness to reconcile by citing so-called theological differences. Hoffmeister argued that the answer was not simply merger but true healing and reconciliation, saying: “Not revision, but new vision.”

Earlier in his ministry, Hoffmeister served at Ennerdale Baptist Church, located in a township near Johannesburg that was home to Black residents, where he worked 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 held in a military barracks of the South African Defense Force. He said that by failing to address blatant racism in the country, Baptists were part of the problem. The following year he joined the Baptist Convention of South Africa and took part in an “Awareness Campaign” among Black Baptists, which led to a workshop in Barkly West in 1990 that began what participants called “the long road of self-discovery, awareness and empowerment.”

Hoffmeister moved to the United States in 1999. In 2000, National Ministries, now called American Baptist Home Mission Societies, appointed him to work with clergy and laity on the church’s role in bringing healing in the context of diversity, multiculturalism and alienation. He earned a master of divinity degree from American Baptist Seminary of the West, where he founded the Global Prophetic Network, an interfaith ministry intended to encourage future prophetic leaders, and he served as a scholar in residence at the school in Berkeley, Calif. His biography on the Granada Hills Baptist Church website described his ministry as an effort to lead the congregation to become a “Neighborhood Church in a Global Village.”

C. Jeff Woods, associate general secretary for regional ministries for American Baptist Churches USA, told American Baptist News Service: “Dr. Hoffmeister was a bridge-builder wherever he went. 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 scheduled for 10 a.m. Friday, Sept. 2, at First Presbyterian Church of Granada Hills, Calif. Additional details are available on the Granada Hills Baptist Church website.

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