April 2026 | 13
Creating Pipelines for Sending Ohio African American Pastors to Mission Fields By Reginald Hayes, director of Community Relations
traveling to the Motherland to teach makes them feel so special. Dr. Jeremy Westbrook, SCBO executive director, said, “What a joy it is to partner with the IMB in helping cre- ate pipelines to help prepare and send future missionar- ies from our own mission field right here in the Buckeye State.” One of the biggest highlights of the mission trip was see- ing a husband whose small, two-room home, inside of a barn, is his payment for taking care of the farm animals. This man rejected the gospel for a very long time. After two other men and I ministered to him, in front of his wife and two children, he accepted Jesus Christ. The SCBO is committed to sending teams of Ohio Af- rican American pastors to mission fields over the next five years. The hope is that Ohio will help increase the number of African Americans who become missionaries.
Reginald Hayes with an Ethiopian family.
Of the approximately 3,600 IMB Missionaries on the mis- sion field worldwide, only 30 are African American. I was invited to partner with the International Mission Board (IMB) to travel to Ethiopia earlier this year on a vision trip with pastors from across the country. In Ethiopia, cities were assessed, from Addis Ababa, with 5.9 million people, to villages with a few hundred people. Due to missionary safety, some locations cannot be shared. In some parts of Ethiopia, along the Somali and Yemen borders, many locations are 98% Muslim. IMB missionaries are making huge strides in bringing the gospel of Jesus Christ to Muslims. Using specific skills learned in an area outside of ministry, opportunities of- ten arise to present the gospel. Muslims are hearing the gospel and accepting Jesus Christ. On each of my mission trips to Africa over the past 6 months, I’ve heard Africans say they love the brothers and sisters who come from America to bring the gos- pel. Yet the epiphany was hearing how excited they are to see people who look like them presenting the gos- pel. One person said, seeing black brothers and sisters
During the IMB Vision Trip, Ethiopian cities, both large and small, were assessed.
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