George Lisle (1750 - 1820)
First Baptist foreign missionary from America
George Lisle (sometimes spelled Leile), an African-American, was the first known Baptist foreign missionary from America, and perhaps, the first Baptist minister to carry the Gospel to any foreign country. Lisle was born as a slave about 1750 in Virginia. He was set free by his owner, a Baptist deacon named Henry Sharpe, for the purpose of preaching the Gospel. Lisle was baptized in,1775 and ordained to become the first black Baptist minister in America. He established a Baptist church in Savannah, Georgia in 1777, which merged with another Baptist group to became the African Baptist Church of Savannah, Georgia.
When Deacon Sharp died, Lisle went to Jamaica, at least in part to escape re-enslavement by Sharpe's heirs. He served as an indentured servant to repay money he borrowed for the journey to Jamaica in 1782. Two years after arriving, he established the first Baptist Church on the island and eventually baptized over 400 free and enslaved Blacks. He also sent urgent appeals to the British Baptists to send missionaries to Jamaica.The emancipation of the slaves in Jamaica on July 31, 1833, was another result of this missionary work.
In 1792 Lisle joined the heroic Exodus to the 'Province of Freedom' in Freetown, Sierra Leone and helped plant the Baptist faith on the West Coast of Africa. One of the remarkable aspects of Lisle’s ministry is that he, along with many other African Americans did not wait for the Emancipation Proclamation before taking the gospel to the world. George Lisle is believed to be the very first black American, foreign missionary. Years before English Baptists sent their first missionaries to Jamaica and at least a decade before William Carey traveled to India. Thirty years before Adoniram Judson left for Burma, Lisle was preaching the gospel in Kingston, Jamaica.
In that period African American life revolved around the Black Church, which was not only the center of worship, but the focal point of all community activities — social, business, political, and even educational. It had become the pivotal survival institution. The origins of the Black Church and its growth and development in the Revolutionary Era were tied into the new quest for freedom by the ex-slaves. The church provided the vehicle for individual leadership, institution-building and community organization. A look at its roots reveals why it was held onto by the Black pioneers and refugees and transplanted initially in Canada, and later in Africa. Insights into the church as a communal organization help to explain why it has remained at the center of African American Communities in the United State.
Lisle's success in ministering the gospel to slaves and freedman in Kingston led to the organization of Baptist churches, which consequently gave birth to the Baptist Movement on the Island. The Jamaica Baptist Union was later to bring together this vibrant and ever increasing group of believers in the mid 1800's.
"Through many dangers toils and snares I have already come." These words of the Hymn "Amazing Grace" epitomize the persecutions and struggles of the early Jamaican Baptist Christians who were predominantly slaves. Therefore an invitation was sent by another ex-slave and pastor, Moses Baker (who was a convert of Lisle's), to the Baptist Missionary Society in London to help with this work of God in Jamaica. Baptist missionaries came from England from the early nineteenth century and began establishing churches and schools throughout the island. They did an outstanding work, especially in being foremost in persuading the British Parliament to abolish slavery. The early fervour, however, did not continue and by the beginning of the twentieth century the 'higher criticism movement' began breathing its cold breath over theological colleges. Spiritual life weakened in the churches, and as run down soil succumbs to the growth of weeds so a great build up of cults took over.
Until his death in 1820 Lisle pioneered cross cultural missions and although he may not be as well known or celebrated in church history Rev. George Lisle, without the benefit of a formal theological education and having to overcome the injustice of slavery, blazed a path that would shape American foreign and cross-cultural missions, church planting, and the contextualizing of the gospel for decades to come.