IRVING, Texas (BP)–The story of Southern Baptist missions would not be complete without acknowledging the tireless work of Baptist women, particularly through the efforts of the Woman’s Missionary Union.
For more than 150 years, Baptist women have helped define the Southern Baptist distinctive of carrying out the Great Commission task, shaping it into the cornerstone of the modern-day Southern Baptist Convention. Women like Mrs. W.B. Bagby, Miss Fannie Breedlove Davis and Mrs. T.P. Crawford stand beside B.H. Carroll and L.R. Scarborough as giants in the pages of Southern Baptist history.
Woman’s Missionary Union was founded at an 1888 meeting of 32 women in Richmond, Va., for the purposes of collecting funds for the Foreign Mission Board and the Home Mission Board and promoting a “missionary spirit” within the convention. Its impact on the SBC is seen in many ways, including a corporate means of tithing with the introduction of tithe envelopes in Baptist churches. WMU also is responsible for much of the convention’s missions education efforts through such programs as Mission Friends, Girls in Action, Acteens and Youth on Mission.
Despite a rich history in missions and missions education, WMU enrollment has experienced a slow drop in numbers, although a turnaround may be underway, with a 12 percent increase in enrollment posted during 2002.
In her book, “A Century to Celebrate, former WMU President Catherine Allen stated that WMU recorded peak enrollment of about 1.5 million members in 1964. In 2001, ACP reports indicate that WMU recorded 857,680 members nationwide; in 2002, 963,114.
Overall circulation for the primary WMU magazines and periodicals have dropped, with 27,101 subscriptions to Dimension magazine reported in 1995 to 13,910 reported in 2002. Missions Mosaic dropped from 227,365 in 1995 to 202,657 in 2002. And an even bigger loss can be seen in the circulation for Discovery, which dropped from 179,721 in 1995 to 73,943 in 2002.
Publications such as Nuestra Tarea and Missions MatchFile have seen an increase, however, as a part of an array of resources by which WMU seeks to educate, equip and challenge God’s people to be involved in missions.
WMU’s courtship with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, a breakaway organization from the SBC, coincided with a drop in membership and circulation in the 1990s.
In 1990, Larry Lewis of the Home Mission Board (now North American Mission Board) asked the WMU and other SBC entities to refrain “from giving support, approval, promotion of and encouragement to alternate funding plans,” such as the giving plan of the CBF in order to save Southern Baptists’ historic Cooperative Program giving method. James Hefley’s book, “The Conservative Resurgence,” records the response of the WMU board to the CBF’s founding. The board at the time issued a statement affirming the traditional giving method for missions through the Cooperative Program, yet also affirmed “the right of individuals, churches and state conventions to choose other plans for cooperative missions giving.” The action was endorsed by three former WMU presidents, Helen Fling, Christine Gregory and Dorothy Sample, and two former executive directors, Alma Hunt and Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler.
In an Oct. 6, 1992, article in the Indiana Baptist newsjournal, then-Executive Director Dellanna O’Brien recognized that supporting the CBF by providing tailored missions education materials to the CBF could alienate churches that relate to WMU. However, O’Brien emphasized that the WMU was committed to providing missions education support in every Southern Baptist church.
“Through the years we’ve been able to support missions in every Southern Baptist church the same way. Now we’re looking at how — and if — we can continue to serve all Southern Baptist churches,” said O’Brien at a missions festival at Southern Baptists’ Ridgecrest (N.C.) conference center in the summer of 1992.
Coping with losses in membership and readership, WMU launched a campaign to change its image, evidenced by its 1997 annual report, with a pair of cat-eye glasses on the cover of the report with the quote, “If this is how you still see WMU try looking a little closer.” Currently, the WMU does not print CBF materials; however, a link to the CBF website is posted on WMU’s website.
In December 2001, SBC critics and a number of former WMU leaders such as O’Brien helped found a new missions-sending organization called Global Women. The first annual meeting of the Mainstream Baptist Network in February 2002 functioned as the debut for the group in which it identified itself as pro-feminist and anti-SBC. Working with other missions organizations, the group currently supports one international missionary or “global associate.” According to the organization’s website, the group seeks “to unite women for action around common needs” such as “malnutrition, illiteracy and polluted drinking water.”
Catherine Allen, a former WMU staffer, serves as Global Women treasurer. Other WMU figures in attendance at the meeting were past WMU executive directors Hunt and Crumpler.
WMU’s current executive director, Wanda Lee, issued a statement in December 2001 to distance WMU from the anti-SBC Global Women and past WMU leadership:
“Global Women has no affiliation with Woman’s Missionary Union, Auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention. While many of our former leaders are involved in the new organization, their participation is a personal decision and not one connected to national WMU,” Lee said. “While I was informed of their plans to launch Global Women two weeks prior to their formal announcement, the current leadership of Woman’s Missionary Union has not been involved in the planning nor the incorporation of this agency.”
Lee also noted that WMU would not be distracted by Global Women in pursuing its ministries and facilitating mission education.
“While the formation of Global Women has generated questions and concerns for many of our constituents, WMU’s commitment is to remain true to our founding purpose,” she said. “Woman’s Missionary Union is looking ahead to a future filled with bright hope. Just as indicated by our Vision Statement, we will continue to challenge believers to understand and be radically involved in the mission of God.”
Although questions and speculation continue on how membership numbers and the introduction of Global Women will impact WMU, Lee reconfirmed WMU’s commitment to missions education and missions involvement during the national organization’s board meeting, Jan. 11-14.
“We are first and foremost a missions organization that seeks to equip preschoolers, children, youth and adults for personal involvement in the mission of God and the world,” Lee said. “We focus our attention on helping people understand what God is doing in the world and how they can be radically involved in his great plan for reaching a lost world.”
Since 1888, WMU has created new ministries such as Baptist Nursing Fellowship, a program that facilitates men and women in the healthcare field who desire to contribute to missions, and WorldCrafts, a nonprofit ministry that imports 180 different handmade items from 24 counties with funds from the sale of products going to indigent families.
In recent years, the WMU also has expanded its focus to ministries beyond international missions including Christian Women’s Job Corp, a program that “equips women for life and employment,” and Project HELP, in which WMU identifies a social and moral concern and ties in to various national projects over the course of two years. The purpose of the porjects is to share the Gospel by meeting both physical and spiritual needs, mobilizing WMU resources, and developing ministry models to meet needs. Past emphases have included hunger, AIDS, child advocacy, cultural diversity, violence and literacy. The current focus of Project HELP for 2002-2004 is restorative justice.
In 2002, WMU also reported 1,230 volunteers participated in mission projects through its Volunteer Connection and the development of four new international missions opportunities.
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Article courtesy of the Southern Baptist Texan newsjournal.
