Michael E. Haynes was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts on May 9, 1927. He was the son of Barbadian immigrants, Gustavus and Edna Haynes. His brothers are Roy, Roscoe and the late Douglas and Vincent. He was educated in the Boston Public Schools, graduating from Boston English High School in 1944.
Through the civil-rights revolution and ever after, Michael Haynes has been a public servant often on call from City Hall to the White House. But the steady focus of Haynes’ energy had been preaching, teaching, social service and church building under the roof of the historic Twelfth Baptist.
Twelfth Baptist Church, under his leadership, became an active 7-day a week institution focusing on evangelism, social action, and education. The church maintains a pre-school, after school tutorial program, residential center, drop-in center recovery program, a thrift shop, food pantry, bookstore, audio-visual ministry, and affordable housing development. He led the church in purchasing properties, expanding from the sanctuary to the Second African Meeting House, Martin Luther King House - a home for seminarians, the adjoining playground, and the parking lots both across the street and next door. He expanded the missional outreach of the church, traveling and preaching in the Caribbean, North and South America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Haynes led bi-annual pilgrimages and study groups to Israel, Jordan, Greece, Italy, Belgium, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia and South Africa. The services at Twelfth Baptist were cross-cultural, representing the range of the pastor’s experiences and enthusiasms in all genres of sacred music. Michael Haynes more than met the Emersonian standard: “The true preacher,” as Emerson said, “can be known by this, that he deals out to the people his life – life passed through the fire of thought.”
Reverend Haynes preached the Holy Bible as the divinely revealed Word of God; the Kingdom of God, he said, was as cosmopolitan as the cities of the world; he was committed to living holy, in a loving relationship with his Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
On Saturday, May 9 2020 - which would have been Rev. Haynes' 93rd birthday - the Boston Praise Radio & TV replayed sermons and interviews honoring Rev. Haynes from 10 am to 12 midnight. Thank you, Pastor Bruce Wall.