Beloved Macon, Georgia Pastor, 44 Has Died From Covid19

The Macon community has lost an activist and a church is without its pastor after his death Wednesday.

Rev. Bryant Wardell Raines was the pastor at New Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church in Macon.

Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones says Raines died at a hospital in Gainesville, Florida, on Wednesday.

Earlier this month, a post on New Pilgrim’s Facebook page said Raines was battling COVID-19.

“As many families and lives have been affected by COVID-19, so too have ours,” the post said.

With great sorrow, we publish the sad tidings that the late husband of First Lady Ilashia Raines, the Senior Pastor of New Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church,and recently appointed President of the Sixth District of The General Missionary Baptist
Convention of Georgia, Inc.,

Reverend Bryant Wardell Raines

was promoted to Glory on the twenty-fourth of February
in the Year of our Lord, two thousand and twenty-one.

Your prayers and well wishes are requested by his widow, Sister Ilashia Raines along with their family, and the church congregation of New Pilgrim Baptist Church.

We ask that you respect the family and their privacy as they prepare for final arrangements.

A subsequent announcement regarding the obsequies will be forth coming.

During this of uncertainty, we request the continued prayers as well as acts of
emotional and spiritual support for the Raines family.

It is with great honor that The General Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia
will assist the Raines family during this most difficult time.

Yours because of Calvary,
Reverend Anthony Q. Corbett, Sr.
President, General Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia, Inc. See Less

According to New Pilgrim’s website, Raines was a 1995 graduate of Central High School and 1999 graduate of Clark Atlanta University.

He was installed as New Pilgrim’s second pastor in 2015 after his father,Rev. Curtis Raines, Sr., died in 2015. 

Last year, Pastor Bryant Wardell Raines founded the “Heal the Hood” initiative, working toward uniting the community to make Macon a safer place to live. It’s a grassroots program co-founded alongside Christopher Cabiness of New Hope Church and Belvin Ware of Macedonia Baptist Church.

Local religious leaders are taking to social media to extend their condolences to the Raines family and New Pilgrim community.

“My heart is incredibly heavy! I watched him grow up… I saw him playing baseball when he was a kid! He was a mentee of mine!,” Pastor E. Dewey Smith Jr. said in a Facebook post.

Smith is a pastor at the House of Hope Atlanta and Macon. In the post, Smith said he was “heartbroken” and asked that people keep the Raines family in their prayers.

“He was only 44-years-old. He was in good physical shape. I hate COVID-19!,” Smith said.

A Facebook post from the General Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia says Raines was recently appointed president of the organization. 

“During this of uncertainty, we request the continued prayers as well as acts of emotional and spiritual support for the Raines family,” Reverend Anthony Q. Corbett, Sr. said in the post. “It is with great honor that The General Missionary Baptist Convention of Georgia will assist the Raines family during this most difficult time.”

A social media post from New Pilgrim says Raines recently celebrated a birthday this month.

Jones says funeral services will be handled by Bentley and Son’s Funeral Home. They are incomplete at this time.