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Global ranks growing as economics, education improve

Monday, March 17, 2003

By Ervin Dyer, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Every September, the world would show up at young Nancy Lee's doorstep.

Over the years, global missionaries brought back the colorful fabrics of India, the spicy stews of South America and the drums of Africa.

It all flourished around Labor Day, when Homewood's Bethany Baptist Church held its annual missionary conference.

Lee lived with her Uncle Thomas, a Bethany Baptist deacon who hosted the missionaries. Because they stayed with the family, Lee got an intimate knowledge of the joys and challenges of serving God overseas.

"They came from South America, Spain and Africa. They sat around the dinner table, laughing and talking and sharing. It was wonderful," she said.

As she grew into a high school student, the visits kindled a dream: She, too, would one day go the distance to spread the gospel of Christ.

It took more than four decades, but today, Lee is in a small town in the plateau region of central Nigeria.

She is also in the center of a budding groundswell which suggests that more black people are packing their bags, saying their prayers and dusting off their passports for mission work.

The numbers aren't huge -- it has been estimated black Americans make up only 300, or less than 1 percent, of the 35,000 people who go abroad for long-term assignments. But the numbers are growing, said officials with the National Baptist Convention USA, which claims it has 500 black missionaries in America and abroad. About 20 serve long-term assignments in southern African and Central America.

And just last summer, more than 200 black college evangelicals, working with Campus Crusade for Christ, held short missions in eastern and southern Africa.

The short-term duty, anything from a week to six months, steadily draws more than 5,000 blacks to foreign mission work, said T.P. Perrin, a Florida minister who heads Great Commission Global Ministries, a group that educates and promotes missions development.

What's behind the momentum?

Shifting economics is a big factor. For decades, blacks, stifled by segregation, put their focus on surviving at home. Who could afford to finance a ministry in Africa when people down the street were hungry?

Since the 1980s, however, as more have entered the professional class, many feel freer to support international church missions.

Mostly white-run Bible schools, which provide the bulk of the training for missionaries, are no longer closed to black students as they were 40 years ago. In the schools, which focus on awareness, cultural sensitivity and other matters, construction workers, doctors, accountants and computer specialists get tuned in to how to succeed as a missionary. It's not true that only clergy can be missionaries.

Also, as nations in Africa have become independent, black missionaries are no longer denied visas by colonial powers who feared free American blacks would fan rebellion in their colonies.

And, strong independent and parachurch leaders and mission-sending agencies increasingly are wooing black Christians for global mission projects.

One of them is the Reconciliation Network Ministries in Chattanooga, Tenn., led by the Rev. Jim Sutherland.

By many indicators, he said, blacks are some of the most spiritual people in the world. "Studies show they pray more and read the Bible more," he said.

Sutherland advocates that black Americans take that spiritual passion to foreign missions, especially to Africa.

"When they go," said Sutherland, "I liken them to the Marines. They hit the beach and don't let anything stop them."

Blacks were, in fact, among the first American missionaries to live and work in Africa. One of the most recognized was the Rev. Lott Carey. Born a slave near Richmond, Va., he is credited with being the first black Baptist missionary. In 1815, Carey helped form the Richmond African Missionary Society and raised enough money to sail for Sierra Leone in West Africa in 1820. He established missions there and in neighboring Liberia.

In the 1870s, the back-to-Africa and African missions movement peaked for black Americans who were disenchanted with the pace of post-Civil War Reconstruction.

More than a century later, some people with Pittsburgh connections are part of the resurgence in black missionaries.

Perrin, who graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in 1975 and was ordained at Monumental Baptist Church, Hill District, spends much of his time on the road arming people with information to be career missionaries.

"Black people are already missionaries. Most just don't know it," he said. "Even if they are serving inner-cities, they can make a difference." But, he added, participating in a short-term global mission "opens the door" to support an international commitment.

Even for missionaries who can't travel abroad, Perrin advocates that churches "embrace" Third World villages by supporting education, medicine, business and other needs of small communities.

Perrin, based in West Palm Beach, Fla., runs several conferences a year in which he reaches out to college students, retirees and families to boost the ranks of global black missionaries.

One key is winning over black ministers, said Perrin. Their influence from the pulpit sets the tone and agenda for the church. They have to be onboard to assist with fund raising because it is challenging to fund a missionary. Housing, food, health insurance and transportation, in some cases, can cost $50,000 and more annually.

Lee, now 64, took the long road to missionary work.

After graduating from Westinghouse High School in 1957 and attending Duff's Business Institute, she went to New Jersey, then California. She worked as a secretary for various corporations and then became a travel agent with the American Automobile Association.

Eleven years before she went to the mission fields herself, she helped her church in Fremont, Calif., do the administrative work that sent others abroad.

In the early 1980s, a sermon from a visiting black missionary who worked in Africa moved her to tears and she rededicated herself to her dream. In 1992, she landed in Nigeria.

Like most missionaries, she was asked to raise the money she would need herself and to seek proper counseling and training before heading overseas. She gets assistance from friends and family, Homewood's Bethany Baptist and her church in California.

In 2004, Lee's commitment will end. She plans to return to Homewood and spend time with her family.

In Nigeria, where she lives in a one-bedroom flat, her mission assignment involves coordinating travel visas for other missionaries and church visitors. She also teaches Bible lessons to young children and provides literacy assistance.

"We have to minister not only spiritually, but emotionally," she said.