On the tiny Japanese island of Okinawa, off the southern coast of mainland Japan, James Whitaker quietly wonders why there aren't more missionaries of color in Asia.

Veterans of more than 25 years on the mission field, Whitaker and his wife were the only black couple selected from a pool of 430 candidates when they were sent to Japan in the 1980s. "There are less black missionaries today in Japan and the Pacific than ever before," said the North Carolina native, who was born into a sharecropper's family. "And there [aren't many] voices crying out in the church to recruit blacks, including mission organizations."

According to Mission Frontiers, a publication of the U.S. Center for World Mission, of the 45,000 U.S. missionaries sent around the world in 1999, fewer than 250 were African-Americans and most were dispatched to Africa.

But race has not deterred the senior pastor of Zion Christian Fellowship, located off Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa. Through the years Whitaker has managed not only to grow the church but also plant more than a dozen other churches in the neighboring Philippines.

"Whichever country I visit as a missionary in Asia, I've never been rejected because of my color," he said. "I'd like to see more people of color being sent to Asia. There are plenty of opportunities."

Whitaker was one of 11 children born and raised in Rocky Mountain, N.C., during the tumultuous 1950s and 1960s—an era that witnessed the slow death of the Jim Crow laws, which defined social and educational boundaries for many Southern blacks.

Under his mother's spiritual tutelage, he learned how to hear the voice of God while roaming the woods as a child.

Instead of pursuing college as his father desired, he joined the U.S. Air Force.While stationed in Okinawa during the 1970s he dedicated his life to Christ and eventually came to understand his calling as a missionary to the Japanese and the U.S. military. After his discharge he married his high school sweetheart, Gloria, and the couple attended a missionary training school in Long Beach, Calif.

The couple set out for Okinawa in 1981. With little financial help, Whitaker pastored a small Caucasian congregation of military personnel. Today, Zion Christian Fellowship (gozionmission.org) is home to 300-400 members.

The couple also founded Zion Christian Academy, a school that educates family members of military personnel. Much of the ministry's $1 million annual budget supports a church staff of seven families and missions work in other countries.

Because the number of churches and pastors connecting with Whitaker in Southeast Asia was growing, he launched an annual conference in the Philippines that now includes 176 churches and more than 1,000 delegates, who come seeking a fresh touch from God and encouragement.

In March 2006, after 26 years of service in Okinawa and the Philippines, Whitaker was ordained a bishop by Church of God in Christ Bishop Carl D. Hodges, who oversees the denomination's Japan jurisdiction, in conjunction with California-based Zoe Association, All Japan Revival Mission in Tokyo and the Zion Pastors Association in the Philippines.

Whitaker recently launched Global Outreach Ministries, which was developed to encourage people of color in the body of Christ to carry the torch for missions. "For too long, missions has been the stepchild of the church," Whitaker said. "But there is about to be a change in the heavenlies where the church will realize that missions is our only mission."