An American pastor who was kidnapped at gunpoint in South Africa last week is “an exceptional father, husband, and son, embodying kindness, strength and generosity,” his mother told NBC News on Tuesday.
Josh Sullivan’s “humor and wit are a blessing,” Tonya Morton Rinker said in a statement, adding that he was “always ready with a joke, and forever seeking to make people laugh.”
Sullivan, 35, has been living in South Africa with his wife, Meagan, and their children since 2018, The Associated Press reported, citing the Fellowship Baptist Church blog.
Thursday evening, a group of armed men raided his small congregation, a branch of Fellowship Baptist Church in the southern town of Motherwell, as he was leading a prayer service, South African local police told the AP.
A police spokesperson, Capt. Andre Beetge, said Sullivan was taken captive and forced into his own truck, with the vehicle later found abandoned nearby. Beetge did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
Hawks, the branch of the South African Police Service that investigates organized crime, confirmed to NBC News in a statement Tuesday that it was investigating Sullivan’s abduction.
It said it wanted to assure the public that its “top priority at this stage is safe return of the victim” and asked anyone with information about the case to come forward.
The State Department said Friday in a statement that it was aware of reports of the kidnapping of a U.S. citizen in South Africa.
As of Tuesday, Sullivan’s whereabouts remained unknown, with his family calling for prayers for his safe return.
Rinker, who has asked people to pray for him and his family on her Facebook page, said in the statement that her son “has a servants heart, a kind compassionate spirit and is filled with selflessness.”
“He’s an exceptional father, husband, and son, embodying kindness, strength and generosity,” she added.
In a statement posted to Facebook on Thursday, Fellowship Baptist Church, which is based in Tennessee, urged its followers to “please pray for Josh Sullivan,” saying he had been “kidnapped at gunpoint” by a group of men.
The church said in a separate post Saturday that the days since his kidnapping, it had faced growing questions, including what it described as “malicious and hateful” messages, about why it deploys missionaries. “It is this — because God did and He told us to,” the church said.
The Associated Press, Janhvi Bhojwani and Cheyenne Darcy Amaya contributed.
