From Unincorporated Convention to NBCA International

For most of the twentieth century the National Baptist Convention of America continued as Richard Boyd's allies had organized it in 1915, an unincorporated fellowship of autonomous Baptist congregations bound by voluntary affiliation rather than corporate structure, closely tied to the Boyd family's Publishing Board in Nashville. In the twenty-first century, a further internal dispute over incorporation and control of the convention's name and assets produced a reorganization under the fuller name National Baptist Convention of America International, Incorporated, the form under which the convention operates today.

Like other historic Black Baptist conventions, the NBCA International is a voluntary association of self-governing congregations rather than a hierarchical denomination; individual churches call their own pastors and set their own positions on questions such as the ordination of women, on which the convention itself takes no binding stance. Its national headquarters are located on the campus of Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville, a historically Black college with which the convention maintains close ties. Its own materials describe a membership in the millions, though, as with most Baptist conventions, no independently audited count is published; third-party religion-census compilations have recorded far smaller figures, reflecting how differently conventions and outside researchers count affiliated churches.