One Who Changed the World: Part One

William Carey is a name known well in Baptist circles. He is often referred to as the first Baptist missionary, traveling to Burma to share the gospel in 1812. But he is actually not the first Baptist missionary because a much less well-known American named George Leile predated him by nineteen years! Leile began to preach in Jamaica in 1793. Before last Tuesday I had never heard the name of George Leile and had certainly not attached any importance to it. But then I read chapter six in Daniel Akin's 10 Who Changed the World and discovered "The Cross and Faithful Ministry As Seen in the Pastoral and Missionary Ministry of George Leile: First Baptist Missionary to the Nations."

George Leile "was born a slave on a plantation in Virginia around 1750," writes Daniel Akin. "These are humble beginnings to be sure, but it was not the fact that he came into this world a slave of men that fostered his humility but the fact he gladly saw himself as a slave of Jesus Christ." When he was twenty-three, in 1773, Leile was converted to Christ, largely through the influence of his godly father and a white minister, Matthew Moore. He was baptized by Matthew Moore right after his conversion, and when Leile's owner Henry Sharp, a kind Baptist deacon, saw the zeal and desire to share the gospel with others exuded in Leile's post-converted life, Sharp set his slave free to pursue kingdom work.

In 1775, Leile was ordained as a Baptist minister and became the first black Baptist minister in Georgia. He founded the African Baptist Church in North America, "a church," as Eric Hartman notes, "still in existence today." Akin adds: "One will look in vain for any pride or boastfulness for these or any other of [Leile's] many accomplishments. Bi-vocational all his life, Leile would, without complaint, support himself, his wife and his four children by whatever job he could find."

He preached for two years in slave plantations around Savannah and even traveled to South Carolina to continue ministry. When in 1778 Leile's ex-owner, Henry Sharp, was killed in the Revolutionary War, Sharp's heirs tried to re-enslave Leile. Caught and thrown in jail, it was only because Leile was able show his legal freedom papers that he was set free from prison. Seeing more trouble on the horizon, Leile borrowed $700 for passage on a ship as an indentured servant and moved his family to Jamaica. This was in 1782. Akin: "What men had meant for evil God had meant for good! The hand of providential sovereignty selected him to take the gospel to Jamaica as the first Baptist missionary in history. He would be faithful in this ministry assignment."

It was during this time in Jamaica, as Leile worked to pay off some debts, that he began to see the desperate need for the gospel of Christ in these people's lives. God had been preparing him to preach to these needy souls and would give him to the grace to be sustained through all that was to come.

*Note: This biographical sketch of George Leile was adapted from Chapter Six of 10 Who Changed the World.