Mt. Zion Baptist celebrates new teen center, increased scholarships for students and HBCUs

With a major fundraising boost, Nashville’s Mt. Zion Baptist Church is exponentially increasing its college scholarships and creating a new youth center.

The Nashville megachurch celebrated yet another College Sunday this past weekend in which it awards scholarships to colleges and its students. But this year was different because of the sheer dollar amount involved and the new initiatives that are up and running.

Mt. Zion, a predominantly Black, four-campus congregation, launched its first-ever teen center at its Antioch campus. The center includes a cafe, game rooms, worship sanctuary, podcast studios and other collaborative spaces.

Costing $800,000 to build, the teen center is just part of Mt. Zion’s ability to expand its horizons due to a successful fundraising campaign that started last year.

“Where many of these schools that have been strapped financially, we’ve been able to help,” said Bishop Joseph Walker III, Mt. Zion’s senior pastor. “We can show the faith community can be an ally.”

For this year’s College Sunday, Mt. Zion distributed $550,000 in total funding for scholarships to individual students and colleges. It’s an exponential increase from previous years’ fundraising totals, which were $100,000 in 2022 and in 2021.

Before its fundraising campaign, Mt. Zion pulled almost exclusively from its budget for College Sunday scholarships. But the fundraising-infused cash positioned the church to think more creatively about how it helps.

This year, it provided each Fisk University and Tennessee State University with $100,000 for a grant to help students cover outstanding tuition expenses. Walker said these are cases in which students are paying for the current semester and can’t afford the cost to register for the next semester. These new donations help deal with that.

“The universities have grants to give students to help reconcile their balances so they can come back,” Walker said.

Mt. Zion’s scholarships to individual students serve a similar need. In those cases, the church writes checks directly to the colleges on behalf of the individual students. This year, 200 individual students received scholarships.

Mt. Zion has long operated a robust college ministry that provides transportation for students at nine colleges in Middle Tennessee and Kentucky to attend Sunday services.

Also, the individual scholarships and grants to Fisk and TSU, among other donations to other colleges, have deepened Mt. Zion’s partnerships with local historically Black colleges and universities.

“When we look at the history of the church, predominantly African American churches, you cannot deny the fact they had a great relationship with these schools,” Walker said. Mt. Zion has sought “to show what would happen if other faith communities invested in these HBCUs.”

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Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: New fundraising boosts Mt. Zion Baptist scholarships, new teen center