Rev. Dr. Michael Friday

The Rev. Dr. Michael Friday is the fifth child of his parents, who raised him in a Baptist home and church, and in a multicultural and multiethnic village in southeast Trinidad, in the twin-island Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. He attended the same elementary school as his elder siblings – one run by the Trinidad Muslim League – as it was only two doors down from his home (while the other Christian families in his village sent their children to Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and Anglican schools two or three miles away. They all got there by walking). Although the school was run by Muslims, none of the Hindu or Christian or non-religious children were ever indoctrinated, though Michael learned in those early days a generosity of tolerance and welcome of others. Later, when he would attend the United Theological College of the West Indies – a multi-denominational seminary – these values would be strengthened.

Michael declared his commitment to follow Jesus just before he turned 11, and was baptized the summer after he left elementary school. Eight years later, he completed secondary school in Trinidad. During his teenage years, he joined the church choir (which was, in fact, a youth choir) learned to play piano, served as pianist and organist at his church, preached his first sermon at age 13, and became his church’s Sunday School Secretary at age 15. He had a sense of call to ministry during that time, and his church and denominational leaders, having affirmed that call, had him attending evening classes at a local seminary when he was still in grade 10, and preaching in various churches of the Baptist Union of Trinidad and Tobago while finishing high school.

In the same summer he graduated high school, Michael was off to the Barbados Baptist College on a theology track, and left there two years later for the University of the West Indies in Jamaica doing university and seminary courses concurrently. There in Jamaica, he met Vivienne Gordon, a nursing student at the University Hospital. They married on Saturday morning June 25, 1983, following Michael’s graduation from seminary, Monday evening of that same week! (Dr. Vivienne Friday is currently Dean of the School of Nursing and Health Professions of Goodwin University in Connecticut.)

Michael returned to Trinidad and Tobago with his bride, Vivienne, and began his ministry in the Baptist Union of Trinidad and Tobago, immediately as Director of the national Youth Department, and as Director of the lay training institute, both positions of which he held for seven years. He was also denominational vice-president of missions until he became national president at age 29 – the youngest in the Union’s history. He was also pastor of the Point Fortin Baptist Church for five years, during which time the small congregation increased threefold.

In June 1990, Michael and his family – three children by now (Davewin, Rhaema, Jeremy) moved to Jamaica where Michael accepted a call to the historic Phillippo Baptist Church and Circuit of Baptist Churches. There, for the next four years, Phillippo grew from 750 to 1175 members, nearly all by baptisms. The Phillippo and Sligoville (yoked) churches together spawned and planted four other congregations: Ebony Vale, Eltham-Angels, Waugh Hill, and Richard Hall Baptist churches.

In 1994 the Jamaica Baptist Union seconded Rev. Friday to the Jamaica Constabulary Force, as a police chaplain. He served that institution full-time for five years, before he returned to the pastorate, the St. Ann’s Bay Circuit of Baptist churches.

During his third year serving the St. Ann congregations, the Friday family made the difficult decision to emigrate to America, and landed here a few months before 9/11. He immediately engaged with the American Baptist Churches, USA, as pastor of the Asylum Avenue Baptist Church in Hartford, CT, followed by the New Life Baptist Church in Bellevue, Nebraska, also as pastor. Along the way, he completed his doctoral degree at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and followed with a Master’s degree in organizational leadership at Eastern University.

After his service in Nebraska, Dr. Friday served Transition Ministries of the ABCUSA, alongside Director, Rev. Dr. Patricia Mercer Hernandez, as an intentional interim pastor and organizational strategist and specialist. The multiplicity of ethnic, cultural, theological, and organizational varieties he encountered in assignments in Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and a few in Connecticut, were the finishing touches of preparation for his current calling as Executive Minister of the American Baptist Churches of Greater Indianapolis. Besides that multiple-church exposure, Dr. Friday brings experience from the following to his expertise in the ABCGI:

• Multiple assignments as a short-term missioner and training facilitator, both nationally and internationally – in the USA, Japan, the UK, Serbia, Bulgaria, Ghana, Liberia, Argentina and the Caribbean;
• Revival, evangelistic and Bible conference preaching in the Caribbean and USA;
• Adjunct teaching at the Caribbean Graduate School of Theology, Kingston, Jamaica;
• Consultative work with the Caribbean Baptist Fellowship, the Baptist Union of Trinidad and Tobago, and individual leaders within the Jamaica Baptist Union;
• Membership in the Academic and Theological Work Group (1985-1990) and the Transformational Leadership Commission (2020-2025) of the Baptist World Alliance.

Dr. Friday’s hope is to inspire and lead the ABCGI to first, assess the power of our diversity, to clarify what to do with it, to become a stronger witness to Jesus Christ, and to affect, for better, the turbulent world in which God has placed us at this time.

Dr. Friday is author of the book, And Lead Us Not Into Dysfunction: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, About Church Organizations and Their Leaders.