A Tennessee pastor who was kidnapped at gunpoint from his church in South Africa just before Easter is speaking out about his experience — and the miracle that saved his life.
Joshua Sullivan, a 34-year-old Fellowship Baptist Church pastor and missionary working in Motherwell, was kidnapped by several armed, masked men who broke into his church in the Eastern Cape Province on the evening of April 10, took cellphones from parishioners and drove away with Sullivan in his own truck.
“We do our prayer time before service, and… I got up to preach, and about one minute into the sermon, four masked gunmen entered the building. We originally thought, you know, South Africa is not the safest place. We’ve been robbed before. So, we originally thought they were just going to come in and take some phones. I preached from an iPad. I thought they were going to take it, but once he hit me over the head with his gun and then grabbed my wife, I knew something was different about this,” Joshua said in an interview with Fox News’ Madison Scrapino.
The pastor recalled doing “whatever they wanted” him to do when they broke into his church, fearing they might kidnap his wife Meagan, too.
“They got me up, and they took me into my own vehicle. They got the keys from my vehicle, put me in it. All four of those men and me were inside of that vehicle. He immediately started to tell me, ‘So I know who you are. I know you’re American. I know you have money, and we’re going to kidnap you, and we’re going to get,’ he said, ‘5 million Rand,’ which is about $260,000,” Joshua said. “That’s what they were wanting. And he asked if my car had a tracker device. I said yes. They were prepared for that.”
The kidnappers drove about a quarter mile down the road before transferring the pastor into a different vehicle. Then, they left that vehicle and got into a third one before driving about 20 minutes to another location. They forced him to put up his hood and keep his head down.
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The suspects took the pastor into the “very back bedroom” of a house, put him on a bed, tied his hands and kept him there for six days, Joshua said.
There were three other men in the house with him, who soon realized they were “just babysitters” who didn’t know who he was.
“Two of the men were there the entire time, and one of them was evil to me, would say evil things to me,” he recalled. “The other one was like the chef. I guess he would come in and ask me… what I wanted to eat, what I wanted to drink. You know, they kidnap me, they take me to the room, they tied me up. Twenty minutes later, he comes in and says, ‘What you want for supper?’ Like I don’t want anything for supper. I didn’t eat for the first two days.”
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Initially, the men thought Joshua was from the U.K., and he explained that he was an American pastor.
“And I was able to tell them about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ… giving them the gospel. They had never heard that message before,” he said. “And so the one individual was very interested. He had never heard that Jesus loved him or cared for him, and he was very interested in it, listened to everything I had to say. The second individual just listened to me, just to hear what I had to say and didn’t really mind too much, but… at least I had the opportunity to do that.”
Meagan Sullivan described the six days her husband was gone as “torture.”
The couple and their six children, two of whom they adopted in South Africa, have lived in South Africa for seven years. They had both been robbed before and heard about kidnappings in the area where they live.
“There’s not a lot that they can do,” Meagan said of the local police. “So, they were very nonchalant about the whole thing. And I was just so broken, and over the, the next few days, I just remember the Lord telling me to wait.”
Meagan said she had to focus on surrendering to God and comforting her children, adding later that the “worst part” of her experience was not hearing anything from police.
“They were sobbing. They were terrified,” she said of their kids, “but we prayed together. We gave it to the Lord and told him that we trust him.”
The kidnappers contacted Meagan via WhatsApp for several days, demanding their ransom for his release.
“I just crumbled to the ground when I was talking to them because… they said, ‘5 million ransom and you’ll get your husband back.’ … And they said cash. And I said, ‘I don’t have 5 million cash. Can you work with me?’ And they said, ‘You are not in any position to be making demands,’” she said. “And I said, ‘OK, I’ll get you your 5 million Rand, but it might take me a minute.’ And so I was just really trying to figure out how I was going to make that happen.”
Six days into his kidnapping, Joshua experienced what he described as a “miracle.” On April 16, the kidnappers moved Joshua into a vehicle. He didn’t know where they were taking him but got the feeling they “had to get rid of” him.
As they were taking him from the back bedroom of the house into a garage with his head covered, Joshua tripped on a step and fell down. He stood after a minute and then tripped on another step as the suspects tried to rush him out of the house and into a vehicle. Joshua could not see anything but sensed when they drove the vehicle out of the garage and sat in the driveway.
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“While we’re sitting in the driveway, the guys just jumped out of the car and began firing their weapons,” he said. “Of course, I don’t know what’s going on. And then… [for] about five to seven minutes, I hear a gun battle. Nothing hits the car, nothing around the car. But I just hear guns going off, and I’m just laying back there praying. I didn’t know what I should do. Should I run? Should I get out? I didn’t know, so I just laid back there and prayed. Then I hear the battle is ended.”
He heard footsteps come toward the car and someone open one of the doors, and a man asked if he was “the American pastor,” to which Joshua responded, ‘Yes.”
“He takes my hood off my hood, and I see the police uniform, and he says, ‘OK, we’re the police.’ And I just lost it. I just began crying and just, that’s when the shock began. I just got thrown into shock. I just got on my hands and knees and praised the Lord. But the police were so surprised. They were in shock that I was in there,” he said.
Joshua later discovered that the police received a tip about a suspicious vehicle earlier that day. They went to chase down the lead to a different location, took a wrong turn and ended up in the driveway of the house where the pastor was being held captive to turn their vehicle around. It was then that the kidnapping suspects got out of the vehicle and began firing at the police.
Three suspects died in the shootout with police.
Joshua said the turn of events that led to his recovery was “undoubtedly a miracle.”
“Whether you’re a believer or a nonbeliever, I know that doesn’t matter. What happened to us, what happened to me, it was a miracle from God,” he said. “The sovereign hand of God was on it because as we were speaking before the interview, things like this happen all the time… and in this case… what else could you say besides God performed a miracle in our lives? … I think he did it to show the world.”
Meagan said it was “horrifying” to watch their children “scream and cry and for their daddy,” but they “got to see that faith isn’t just something that mom and dad talk about.”
“They got to experience it because they saw God work a miracle in their own lives,” she said. “They prayed, and God answered their prayer.”
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The Sullivans said they both feel more strongly about their mission to teach Christianity in South Africa after Joshua’s kidnapping.
The Institute for Security Studies (ISS) Africa said in a December 2024 report that the South African Police Service’s (SAPS) annual crime statistics show kidnappings increased by 264% from 4,692 in 2014 and 2015 to 17,061 in 2023 and 2024.
Most kidnapping incidents over the 2023-2024 time period “were perpetrated during aggravated robberies, such as car or truck hijackings or armed robberies at businesses, homes, or in public spaces,” the ISS Africa report reads.
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