Teamwork - Lucy Peabody + Helen Barrett Montgomery

1861–1949 1861–1934

The New Testament describes the church as a body, with different members doing different tasks. Throughout history, we’ve seen this played out in many ways. Some people are on the front lines of ministry; others do whatever they can to support those people. Lucy Peabody was on the front lines for a while as a missionary, but then she seemed to find her true calling in a support role as a mission executive. She teamed with Helen Barrett Montgomery, a gifted writer, to promote an explosion of Baptist missions.

Lucy first went to India as part of a missionary couple, but her husband soon died, and she returned to the United States with her two young children. After she began speaking to church groups about foreign missions, she got a job with the Women’s Baptist Foreign Missionary Society. Soon she was leading that group.

In that role, Lucy employed the writing talents of Helen Montgomery, commissioning several books that helped to raise millions for missions efforts. Lucy and Helen were a great team, traveling the world to see missionaries in action and reporting back to US churches what was going on. Helen went on to become president of the Northern Baptist Convention, the first woman to lead a major denomination. Using her classical language training, she also produced a modern translation of the New Testament, published in 1924 as the Centenary Translation.

These women helped to lead American missions into the twentieth century, upholding the work of women missionaries and promoting a wide range of missions work. In a time when men were bickering over the “social gospel,” with some fearing that doing good deeds was growing more important than preaching, Lucy and Helen (like many other women) understood that our biblical calling involves both. In a disarming response to the controversy, Lucy wrote that women in general “did not bother themselves with sophisticated arguments about the social gospel vs. preaching. . . . They simply responded to what were obvious needs and that response was their witness.”

Who do you want on your team? Start looking around for people whose abilities complement yours, people who help you do your best, even as you help them.

We are many parts of one body, and we all belong to each other.

Romans 12:5