From Slave To Servant Of God

From Slave To Servant Of God

His life spanned two continents.

LOTT CAREY didn’t know the year of his birth because they didn’t keep birth records for slaves. But it was around 1780 on a Virginia plantation near Richmond. An only child, Carey was brought up in an undivided slave family. While his parents worked, his grandmother, a devout Baptist, cared for him. She taught him the history of his people: the suffering of slaves brought to America and the need for those remaining in Africa to hear about Jesus.

As a young man working as a slave laborer in Richmond, Carey lived a godless life and showed no signs of espousing his family’s faith. Then in 1807 Carey was in the gallery of the First Baptist Church in Richmond and heard a sermon about Jesus telling Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, that he must be born again. Carey was profoundly moved by the sermon, and he put his trust in Jesus Christ for his salvation. After he was baptized, he determined to read the Bible himself. He taught himself to read and write and then continued his education in a night school started by William Crane, a white Baptist.

Carey earned repeated promotions at the Shockoe tobacco warehouse where he worked. Around age thirty-three he purchased freedom for himself and his two children for $850—much more than his annual salary. His first wife had died, and he later remarried.

Carey began preaching to gatherings of African Americans, eventually forming and becoming the pastor of a black church. Meanwhile, in his night classes with William Crane, he became interested in missions to Africa. In 1815 he worked with Crane to organize the Richmond African Missionary Society.

His church grew to over eight hundred members while he remained respected and secure in his position at the tobacco warehouse. Yet his burden for missions to Africa increased, and finally he determined to go to Africa himself.

In a final sermon to his congregation in Richmond, Carey said, “I am about to leave you and expect to see your faces no more. I long to preach to the poor Africans the way of life and salvation. I don’t know what may befall me, whether I may find a grave in the ocean, or among the savage men, or more savage wild beasts on the coast of Africa; nor am I anxious what may become of me. I feel it my duty to go.”

On January 23, 1821, Carey sailed with his family and several coworkers to Liberia. He was the first black missionary to Africa. The missionaries had the support of their home churches and the American Colonization Society, a group that worked to return freed slaves to Africa.

Carey’s distinguished service in Liberia was varied. He founded and served as pastor of Providence Baptist Church. He helped to establish schools for both settlers and native children, and served as the first president of the Monrovia Baptist Missionary Society. When the white governor of the colony was forced to return home because of illness, he appointed Carey as provisional governor. In this role Carey defended the colony against attacks by hostile natives.

In 1829, as Carey was preparing a rescue mission to retrieve some of his men who had been imprisoned while negotiating with a native tribe, he and seven coworkers died in an explosion of gunpowder apparently set off by an overturned candle. It had been eight years since Carey had set sail for Africa, and about forty-nine years since he had been born a slave in America.

Reflection

God had vastly different plans for Lott Carey than did his slave master. Have you ever had lower expectations for a person because of his or her appearance or position? It is important that we see those around us from God’s perspective.

Suppose someone comes into your meeting dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewelry, and another comes in who is poor and dressed in shabby clothes. If you give special attention and a good seat to the rich person, but you say to the poor one, “You can stand over there, or else sit on the floor”—well, doesn’t this discrimination show that you are guided by wrong motives?

James 2:2-4