meet our missionaries
Ray Fulmer
Ghana
Ray Fulmer
Ghana
Ray is a 2007 graduate of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and has spent the past 20 years living a diverse life in teaching, coaching, grant writing, government work, and business start-ups. His passion within the Church has always been religious education. For five years he lived in Kenya, running an animal feed business in the village of Kisian, next to Lake Victoria. During that time, he encountered the Orthodox Christian Mission Center’s work in Kenya and participated as the parish council president of the St. Moses the Black mission church in Kisumu, Kenya.
Returning to the United States in late 2019, Ray took a position in municipal government, focusing on grant writing and port facilities management in Osceola, Arkansas. During this time in the United States, he worked on developing a project for sustainable micro-enterprise development in Kenya, which was approved by OCMC in February of 2020, but was subsequently put on hold due to the outbreak of the COVID pandemic.
Beginning in 2024, Ray began to feel a call back to the mission field. This call was cemented by a 2025 invitation to visit the Orthodox Church of Ghana, where he met Archbishop Daniel and many of the senior clergy and participated as a teacher for young adults in the archdiocese summer camp. After this visit, Ray was offered a position teaching Catechism I and II in the new St. Cyril Lukaris online theology program that is being piloted by the Archdiocese of Accra under Bishop Daniel and Ionian University in Greece.
After completing his teaching assignment, Ray formulated a comprehensive vision for expanding the theology program into a residential Bachelor’s degree to better prepare the next generation of priests and catechists in the archdiocese. He is looking forward to returning to Ghana as a long-term missionary beginning in the Spring of 2027 to facilitate the theology program expansion and oversee the lay catechesis program in the diocese.
Ministries & Projects
Ray’s ministry in the Archdiocese of Accra in Ghana will be primarily focused on religious education at three levels. First, Ray will create and oversee the new residential Bachelor of Theology program for the archdiocese, which will be the first post-diploma program in Orthodox Theology in Western Africa. This program will train future priests and catechists for the Archdiocese of Accra, and there are ambitions for it to serve as the first offering of an accredited Orthodox college in Ghana. Second, Ray will be tasked with collaborating with local clergy and lay educators to create a parish-level catechism program that will be deployed for parish-level education. Finally, Ray is seeking grant assistance to renovate the St. Peter’s Orthodox High School to become financially sustainable and nationally accredited in Ghana. St. Peter’s Orthodox High School to become financially sustainable and nationally accredited in Ghana. He also hopes to use his background in business management and start-ups to help the Orthodox Church in Ghana and other parts of the African continent become more financially self-sustaining.