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The so-called golden era of missions began in the early 1800s, and one could safely say that women drove it. They had the benefit of neither theological training nor even higher education, but female pioneers created a groundswell of missions energy that galvanized the modern missionary movement in its first hundred years."Early nineteenth-century women. … wrote letters and kept journals that reveal a rich thought world and set of assumptions about women's roles in the missionary task," writes Boston University professor Dana Robert in her American Women in Mission (Mercer University Press, 1997). "The activities of missionary wives were not random: they were part of a mission strategy that gave women a particular role in the advancement of God's kingdom."Whether by nature or by default, women's work focused on the tangible and relational aspects of the gospel message, what Robert calls the "social and charitable side of mission." Women met physical needs, emphasized education, and innovated—taking on everything from medical ministries and Bible teaching to orphan relief, language studies, and literacy training. Women's "close involvement in the daily lives of people" had two positive effects, says Robert. First, it "soften[ed] the effects of cultural imperialism" that tarnished much of the early missionary movement. Second, it created a model for gender-based missions (i.e., women ministering to women) for subsequent generations.By the late 19th century, more women than men filled the missionary ranks. Women began to develop an informal network that came to be known as the "women's missionary movement." This network helped develop over 45 women's mission agencies (both independent and denominational) that promoted women's missions, raised funds, and mobilized women to minister overseas to other women and their children. "Thousands of women were sent out from the women's missionary movement," says Calvin Seminary missiologist Ruth Tucker, "while millions on the home front supported that."Reaching women stood at the center of the mandate. The women's missionary movement was "a gender-separatist movement that was concerned about women and children and analyzed how to reach them," says Robert. It followed the model of the Woman's Union Missionary Society, a multidenominational organization established in 1861 that appointed single women to go to "heathen lands" and specialize in outreach to women.From all this arose a score of heroic figures who have remained missions icons. Amy Carmichael heard the words "Go ye—to those dying in the dark—50,000 of them every day." She left her native England in 1890 at the age of 23. She made her way to India, where she rescued girls from temple prostitution and established a home and school for them called Dohnavur Fellowship. She dreaded a life of singleness and was afraid of growing old alone. She once asked the Lord, "What can I do? How can I go on to the end?"The Lord comforted her: "None of them that trust in me shall be desolate." She lived in singleness, serving in India for 50 years.Women also pioneered in missions in ways that did not necessarily involve ministry to women. Mary Slessor, inspired by the British explorer David Livingston, was a Scottish Presbyterian mill worker when she heard the call to serve in Africa. At the age of 27, in 1876, she entered Africa and made it to the interior of Calabar (present-day Nigeria), where her male predecessors had been unable to gain a foothold. She served for 38 years as a circuit preacher, winning over both men and women among indigenous peoples.Dwight L. Moody was a key advocate for women's frontline ministry in newly developing city missions, which shaped women's roles in his many ministries for decades after his death in 1899. "Moody and other evangelists experienced a chronic shortage of qualified Christian workers with a Bible education to assist in the inquiry room connected with revivals," writes Janette Hassey in her book No Time for Silence (Zondervan/Academie, 1986). Moody recruited men and women to meet the intense demands of urban ministry, and invited Frances Willard, founder and president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, to assist him in his evangelistic work in Boston.She hesitated, fearing a female presence in a leadership role "might hinder the work among the conservatives." Moody responded that it was just what they needed.Catherine Booth, Frances Nasmith, and Fanny Crosby (to name a few) also had a huge impact on city missions.Helen Sunday, the wife of the itinerant evangelist Billy Sunday, took her husband's mantle after his death. Her story is told in Women Who Changed the Heart of the City (Kregel, 1997) by Delores T. Burger. After Sunday died in 1935, by his wife Helen's account, "I went and knelt down in front of the bed; I put my head on Billy's forearm as he lay there dead, and I said, 'Lord, if there's anything left in the world for me to do. … I promise you I'll try to do the best I know how.'"After Billy was buried next to their three sons and daughter, his bereaved widow began a speaking ministry and served in rescue missions. "I love them because that's where my Billy was saved," she said. From 1935 to 1957, notes Burger, Helen Sunday became a "mother" to "thousands of rescue-mission workers and converts."

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August 7 2000, Vol. 44, No. 9