Go Ye - Women And The Missionary Impulse Of The 1800s

Since the church began, there have always been missionaries. After the apostle Paul’s journeys, Christians kept taking the Good News of Jesus to other lands. In medieval times, Irish monks replanted Christian tradition on the European mainland. In the 1600s, men and women known as Quakers took their simple teachings to the New World. In the 1700s, a group of Moravians banded together in an evangelistic enterprise.

But the 1800s saw a new momentum for missions, especially among Christians in England and America. William Carey seemed to get the ball rolling in 1792 as he preached and wrote about missions, then left for India the next year. Many men and women would follow him into missionary service.

Actually, missions work opened up significant new opportunities for female believers. While women were still expected to attend to domestic duties, who could object if they got involved outside the home in activities supporting missions? In fact, a number of “women’s missionary societies” were formed in this era. If a husband was called to be a foreign missionary, of course that meant his wife would be one too—sometimes reluctantly (like Dorothy Carey), but often as a valued teammate (like Ann Judson). Once on the missions field, a woman might take on a number of leadership tasks that needed to be done, including teaching and even preaching. The importance of the missionary effort trumped any gender limitations. When souls need to be saved, does it matter whether it’s a man or woman delivering the message of salvation?

For many women who struggled with their self-worth, the missions movement was, well, a godsend. After meeting a seminarian who was eagerly headed into mission work, Sarah Joiner Lyman began to ask herself, “What am I doing? What are my plans, and what my prospect of usefulness? Who has been or who will be benefited by my existence? . . . O that a way might be opened whereby I may labour for the good of souls.” Soon afterward she found her calling as a missionary to Hawaii.

So what are you doing? Who is benefiting by your existence? God might be calling you to serve him in another land . . . or he might want you to shine for him where you are.

Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us?

Isaiah 6:8