Portrait of James Edwin Wilkins. IMB Photo
James Edwin Wilkins, an International Mission Board missionary emeritus who shared the gospel in West Africa, died Dec. 17, 2025, in Anna, Illinois. He was 94.
Jim was born May 13, 1931, in South Bend, Indiana, to the late James Richard and Lorell Wilkins. He graduated from Ullin High School in Illinois and attended Louisiana Baptist College, Pineville, and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri.
Jim enlisted in the Army in January 1951 and was ordained to preach in May 1951, just prior to being sent to Korea. He served there for one year as a heavy equipment operator and then a construction machine supervisor on air strips, building runways and roads.
In 1953, while stationed in Louisiana, Jim returned to Ullin and married Sue on July 18. After being discharged, he enrolled in college in the fall of 1954. While attending school, he supply preached over much of Louisiana and then became pastor of Zion Hill Baptist in Williana. In 1960, their family moved to the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church of Bucklin, Missouri. While there, Jim attended seminary.
In March of 1966, he became pastor of First Baptist Church in Pleasant Hill, Missouri. In 1975, the church gave him a year’s leave of absence to be maintenance engineer at the Baptist Medical Centre in Nalerigu, Ghana, with the Foreign Mission Board (now International Mission Board). Jim also served on the executive board of the Missouri Baptist Convention and as a member of the missions development committee.
While seeking missionary appointment he wrote, “I have studied missions, taught missions, given to missions, spent a year in Ghana, and feel led to go to West Africa as a missionary associate. The goals I have had for the church I presently pastor have been accomplished. I feel it is time for God’s next step in my life.”
In 1980, the International Mission Board appointed Jim and Sue missionaries to Liberia. During their time with the IMB, they served several countries in West Africa, including Ghana, Mali, Togo, Burkina Faso and Nigeria. His family remembered his work as a builder and evangelist. He led in various types of construction, including a dental clinic, publication house, warehouses, guest houses, and a residential compound of houses for missionaries. In every country where they lived, Jim pastored an English-speaking congregation.
Jim is survived by his wife of 72 years, Sue Wilkins; his sons, Dirk Wilkins (Ginger) of Lawrence, Kansas, and Scott Wilkins of Anna, Illinois; six grandchildren and nine great grandchildren.
A funeral service was held Dec. 23 at Mound City (Illinois) National Cemetery, with burial following.
Donations in his memory may be made to the Lottie Moon Offering, IMB, 3806 Monument Avenue, Richmond, VA 23230, or online at Generosity Resource Center – IMB Generosity.
Read an obituary here.