An American pastor is missing after allegedly being abducted at gunpoint during a church service he led in South Africa this week.
Tennessee-based Fellowship Baptist Church requested prayers on Thursday when announcing that Josh Sullivan, a missionary serving in South Africa since 2018, had been “kidnapped at gunpoint by six men during their church service this evening.”
Local authorities told the BBC that “four armed and masked male suspects entered” Fellowship Baptist Church in the Eastern Cape township of Gqeberha, stealing two phones and fleeing in Sullivan’s Toyota.
The pastor was reportedly holding a prayer meeting with around 30 people, including his wife and six kids, when the kidnappers stormed the church.
“They knew his name,” Rev. Jeremy Hall, a spokesperson for Sullivan’s family, told the South African outlet Times Live, adding the men forced Sullivan into his car and sped away from the scene. The abandoned Toyota was later located about a mile from the church.
Hall, a fellow pastor based in Gqeberha, told the AFP that the incident was likely “financially related,” but that no ransom demands had yet been made, according to CBS News.
A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department told the outlet the agency is aware of a citizen’s abduction in South Africa, but did not provide additional information.
South Africa’s elite police unit, dubbed the Hawks, is reportedly running point on the case.
“I just want to say thank you for the outpouring of love and prayers,” Sullivan’s wife, Megan, said in a statement on Saturday. “We beg you to continue storming the throne room until Josh is safe at home.”
Sullivan’s alleged abduction comes just days after that of a Chinese national, also in Gqeberha. The number of kidnappings in South African has dramatically risen in recent years, with the South African Police Service reporting a 264% increase from 2015 to 2024.
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