Reflecting the gospel’s light in Africa

The sand of the Sahara, shoved by a southward wind, had reached northern Nigeria. The dust of the desert scraped under Jim Black’s feet as he stepped off the airplane in Kano.

After going through immigration and customs, he traveled to a guest house devoid of indoor plumbing or electricity. Mosquitoes flew through holes in the window screens.

It was 1989 and Black and three other men traveled there to survey Nigerians’ spiritual life. Black wondered if doing ministry there with his wife and children made sense.

To clear his mind, Black took an early-morning stroll. The moon was bright enough to walk from his bedroom to the dining room. What Black glimpsed on the dining room wall whispered amid his wondering.

Jim’s flashlight illuminated the dining room wall so he could see better. There hung a cross-stitch pattern of John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

One man’s moment of light that morning has, over a few decades, shined the light of Jesus across much of Africa.

Can it be too much?

“I had a Jesus moment that morning,” Black said. “If God actually took on flesh and dwelled on this dirty, sin-ridden earth to convey the heart of the Father, can it be too much for God to ask me to leave North America and go to Africa with my family?”

Black and his family served in Nigeria from 1989 until 1992. Then, he pastored a Canadian church until God led him and his wife Lisa back to Nigeria in 1997. They stayed until 2003, when Jim became senior leader of worldwide outreach for the North American Baptist denomination.

Black family

In 2009, he left that senior role to pastor a North Dakota church. Then, in 2017, he started working for Converge as the International Leader for Africa. Since July 2017, Black’s been leading all Converge global workers on teams in five countries in West Africa.

He and Lisa started their ministry in Nigeria with her serving as a nurse, the role God called her to when she was 7 years old.

God also has a list of requests

The terminal illness of one of Jim’s sisters stirred Jim to consider who Christ was. As the liver disease slowly took his sister’s health, Jim began asking questions about Christ amid life’s pain and uncertainty.

After Jim became a Christian, he studied a Gideon’s Bible left at his home. He also started praying as his faith deepened.

“I just kind of gave God my want list,” Black said of his early prayers. “Then the idea struck me that maybe God has a list for me. That was pretty scary. But I went ahead and told God, ‘If you have a list for me, I want to hear it.”

Black didn’t have any family members who had served in global work or even spoke to him about it. But the same night he asked God about a list of divine priorities, a missionary spoke at Jim’s church.

“I was riveted to what this missionary said and challenged by what I heard,” Black said. “When I went home that evening, I sensed God saying ‘I want you to serve me.’”

He went to Prairie Bible Institute in Alberta, Canada, for four years of Bible college before enrolling at Sioux Falls Seminary.

His senior project supervisor at the seminary was a former missionary to Africa. With that oversight, Black studied and wrote about taking the gospel to urban centers in Africa. His studies fueled Black’s passion for developing indigenous leaders.

What challenges the gospel’s hope and power?

His partnership with those leaders did much to build the region’s churches. Together, in the power of God, they faced many challenges in spreading the gospel.

The Africans Jim and Lisa served often identified as Muslims, animists or a mix.

“In both animism and Islam, God is distant from the human experience,” Black explained. “So, you relate to God through spirits, good and evil. To dislodge yourself from that deeply entrenched view of the spirit realm is frightening at best and difficult. They’re afraid to change because all their life they’ve been busy appeasing the spirits.”

Moreover, Black said entrenched family identity is another barrier to the gospel within African cultures.

“Every person sees themselves as part of an extended family,” he said. “Decisions are made within a family context. So, the whole family needs to follow Jesus; otherwise, it’s difficult for one person to follow Jesus and leave the family.”

A vigorous pursuit of the least-reached

John Ames, who met Black in 2017, knows Black is committed in the face of such challenges. Ames is Converge’s Regional Impact Leader for five West African countries filled with least-reached peoples.

“Our Converge International Ministry vision is focused on the least reached,” Ames explained. “As I came to know Jim better, it became evident that he had experienced the challenge of family issues and ministry issues on the field, including danger, which showed me he was not afraid of the African challenge.”

Black said his strength and courage are rooted in a God doing great things. He sees whole groups of least-reached peoples looking toward Christ.

Group of men in Africa

“In Africa, too, they’re seeing the dark side and emptiness of other religions and they’re turning to Christ,” Black said. “You see this growing multiplication of disciples happening quickly. Families disciple other families. People groups make disciples who make disciples.”

How is this change happening?

When asked what’s behind such encouraging changes, Black affirmed relationships and influence with specific people in the tribal communities.

“We focused on the elder men and community leaders,” Black said. “We sought to introduce them to Christ and help them introduce their family groups to Christ. Rather than starting with youth or children, we focused on the elders. They are the change agents.”

To Ames, the entire ministry of Converge is more robust because God called the Blacks to serve among the least-reached people in Africa.

Black teaching group

“Jim’s willingness to pursue this vision of raising up gospel movements among the least reached and supervising missionaries on the continent is a tremendous asset to Converge,” Ames added.

The man who wandered in the darkness of a Nigerian morning has acted on God’s love for West Africa many times.

After decades of work, Jim Black is seeing the people respond. They believe in the Son of God, the one who loves them so that they might not perish but have eternal life.

Converge is asking God for a gospel movement among every least-reached people group – in our generation. Learn how we are playing a role in accomplishing the Great Commission and how you can be involved.