African American Southern Baptist pastors and leaders joining Wilson, Anderson and Canty on the trip were George Blount, senior pastor, The Rock Community Baptist Church, Lansdowne, Pa.; Ross Cullins, senior pastor, Solid Rock Missionary Baptist Church, Houston; Byron Day, pastor of Emmanuel Baptist Church in Laurel, Md.; Hal Hopkins, pastor of Lighthouse Baptist Church of the Lehigh Valley in Breinigsville, Pa.; Brian King, senior pastor of Ezekiel Baptist Church, Philadelphia; Victor Kirk Sr., pastor of Sharon Bible Fellowship Church in Lanham, Md.; Leonard Leach, pastor of Mt. Hebron Missionary Baptist Church in Garland, Texas; Stan Williams, BRN director of Next Collegiate Ministry; and Keith Watkins, senior pastor, New City Church Downtown, Macon, Ga.
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The Liele scholarship is primarily funded through the approximately 4,000 congregations comprising NAAF, Coleman said, with additional funding from IMB and other contributors.
“The hope is that as awareness of the scholarship increases, funding from IMB, NAAF, other SBC churches, and other contributors will increase as well,” Coleman said. “We would love to get matching funds, an individual, group, entity, or church that would match the dollars that are contributed each year so that we can increasingly achieve the scholarship’s goal of reflecting the diversity of the Southern Baptist Convention by mobilizing and sending African American missionaries around the globe to reach a diversity of people groups with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
This article originally appeared at Baptist Press.
