Source: God Reports, January 30, 2023
George Liele, a former black slave, sailed for Jamaica to reach the lost in 1782, 11 years ahead of heralded British missionary William Carey and long before American Adoniram Judson sailed to India (and later Burma) in 1812.
Liele was a slave in Georgia who received Jesus into his heart in 1773 under the coaxing of his master, Henry Sharp, at the local Baptist church. He was ordained on May 20, 1775, becoming the first officially recognized black preacher in the Colonies. Seeing the anointing on Liele’s life, his master freed him from slavery.
Pastor Liele migrated to Jamaica with the help of British colonel Moses Kirkland. Landing at Kingston, Liele and his wife, Hannah, planted a church there by preaching among the slaves of Jamaica.
He served for 10 fruitful years but also faced severe opposition from the slave owners, who cynically viewed his preaching as agitating the slaves, and even was thrown in jail for a time.
Liele didn’t limit his outreach to people of color. As a result of his ministry, people from all sorts of ethnicities became believers in Jamaica. By 1838, Jamaica had 20,000 believing Baptists.
These days it isn’t hard to find information about George Liele and other once-obscure pioneering missionaries. A somewhat longer biography with references points out that like many other slaves, Liele had sided with the British during the American Revolution. That (and not just missionary zeal) led to his decision to become an indentured servant to pay for his family’s passage to Jamaica (Boston University).