Editor’s Note: Pamela Graham is a pastor’s wife from South Carolina. I recently wrote about the need for more ladies and laypeople to write here at SBC Voices. Pamela answered that call, and provides an important perspective with this article on the WMU and its impact in her life.
I am a millennial who believes that WMU is still relevant in the 21st century. WMU was founded in 1888 with the purpose of financially supporting missions and educating Southern Baptists about the need for missions. Both of these are still important today.
As a child I was involved in both GAs and Acteens. By being involved with these organizations I was introduced at an early age to missions. We were taught that we needed to support missionaries with our financial resources, and we needed to encourage missionaries by sending letters and cards of appreciation. One of my most vivid memories from childhood is looking at a map that was provided by the national WMU to be posted in classrooms. The map was a world map, and it showed all of the countries that Southern Baptists had missionaries in. I would study the map, and think about what these people were sacrificing so they could do what they were called to do. Also, I would think about the few countries that had no Southern Baptist Missionaries, and wonder who was going to tell those people about Jesus.
Missions education is just as important today as it was when I was a child. If we are not teaching about missionaries, children are not going to understand why we even need missionaries. The curriculum used in WMU age groups, is designed to also get children involved in missions. Children are taught at a young age how they can be involved in missions at a local level, and they are taught that if they put their resources together with many other people they can reach many people groups all over the world.
Another reason why WMU is still relevant is to promoting missions giving. A large part of the financial resources for the North American Mission Board and the International Mission Board come from the Annie Armstrone Easter Offering and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. Both of these offerings are heavily promoted by both the national and state WMU offices. Many Southern Baptist Churches rely on their WMU groups to promote and organize these offerings. Also, in South Carolina where I live, the state WMU office promotes an additional offering for state missions. Because many Southern Baptist leaders want CP giving to be split 50/50 between state and national, offerings like these can help make up the difference.
Until Jesus returns, we will have a need for missionaries. And if we have a need for missionaries, we need a way to teach about missionaries. We also need a way to fund missionaries. This is why WMU is still relevant today.
Well, hallelujah for a female poster with a good subject.
I agree with you. One of my biggest mistakes as pastor was to be reserved about my support of the WMU at times. We may have gained some things by importing other children’s programs and generic women’s ministries but we lost a lot as well. I’m not sure we can regain the missions support we had with strong WMUs.
Amen! Yes, yes!!!
Pamela- Such a great article! I grew up in GA’s and Acteens, and later taught Mission Friends for a while, but it seems like a lot of churches have discontinued those things as well as WMU. It would be great to see WMU make a comeback :0)
WMU, GAs, Acteens, CP? I’m sure it makes perfect sense to those who have grown up in a Southern Baptist environment. Not so much to interested “outsiders”, though!
It’s up to the church and pastor to make it make sense.
Love this post! The WMU will be relevant at any point in history. That organization has done such good work, and any increase would be a breath of fresh air.
Such wonderful words to hear concerning our Baptist Mission Groups. I was in GA’s growing up and later became a GA leader. Now I am so proud of my Granddaughter being in GA’s at Franklinton Baptist Church in Franklinton NC. I like to see our girls and boys grow up in a mission grow!
The girl that became my wife used to teach a GA class when she was about 20-21 years old. I guess her group ranged in ages from about 14 to 16. That was a great type of class because it (a) not only taught girls scripture, but (b) it taught about the cooperative program and it showcased Lottie and Annie and supported missions. Specifically, SBC-Centric missions.
The GAs and RAs put on a skit that lasted about 20 minutes during one Sunday Evening service regarding Lottie Moon. It was a biographical depiction of her life.
There is nothing wrong with programs, such as Awana, which focus on scripture memorization and study. However, with RAs and GAs you had the same thing with the added bonus of promoting the SBC missionary “brand”. I think the SBC is suffering from a loss of institutional loyalty and identity. Could one reason for this be because we have generic youth programs rather than SBC specific programs?
Let me put this in more concrete terms. I think inflation adjusted CP giving per member is down quite a bit since the 1950s. There are probably ton of various demographic factors and social changes that have caused this. But at least one of them must be that at least half the people in the pews have no idea what the IMB even is. They have no clue what the Lottie Moon offering is. How are you motivated to support something if you know next to nothing about it. You would have to be a CIA operative in many churches today to even know that there was such a thing as the IMB or the NAMB.
Churches free lance and do their own “hands on” missionary work by going on junkets to foreign destinations. This is definitely the NT model. But much of that “brand loyalty” does not seem to transfer to another local church when people move to a new town as a result of an employment change. If you stay in the SBC fold, and if churches across the USA stay in-sync with a common missionary / Bible teaching format then you show up at your new church years or decades later with a predisposition to support missions. There is synergy.
Alternatively, SBC churches using “custom programs” that marginalize the IMB and NAMB may be moving two steps forward while, in aggregate, the whole SBC is moving three steps backward. There is too much stovepiping.
My wife’s niece [now in her late 60’s] still remembers when she was the GA Queen and she had to learn I Cor 13. This stuff sticks with you for a lifetime. With a portfolio of stuff they learned as kids as GAs or RAs [ or Sunbeams / Acteens], adults show up at your church doorstep pre-wired to support missions. This grid sweeps across 40,000 churches from coast to coast. Podunk Baptist in California profits from the results of GA, RA, and similar denomination wide activities that were taught ten years ago at Swamp Creek Baptist in Georgia.
As an emeritus IMB missionary, I want to thank you Pamela for words that or near and dear to my heart. My mother was a strong WMU leader so I felt like I was raised in the WMU. I was an RA and my wife was a GA and GA leader. Every missionary knew that the WMU was a part of SBC life that we could trust and that trusted us. We were always welcome in WMU meetings. In fact, I will be speaking to a WMU group next week.
I do not know why so many churches do not have strong WMU organizations now. I do know that when my mother was a WMU leader many women did not work outside the home and had time for weekly circle meetings. It may be more difficult today for women to find the time for another organization if they are active in their church and community and raising children. Many churches have women’s ministry programs that are not related to missions.
Another problem may be pastors and other church leaders. It seems that some have difficulty supporting an organization they do not control and cannot appoint the leaders. This last year at our state convention, I submitted a resolution thanking the WMU for their support for missions and missions’ education. Leaders in our state convention begged me to withdraw it for fear that some pastors would speak out against the WMU and cause a problem. I could not believe that would happen but I told them I would submit the resolution but if the committee did not accept it, I would not object. They rejected my resolution. I regret now not submitting it from the floor. I do not understand why a pastor would feel so strongly against the WMU that they would speak against them from the floor of a state convention.
Roger, I agree with your post completely. Reformanda, maybe it would help if when you see the words WMU, GAs, Acteens and CP you would just substitute missions, mission’s education and the Great Commission. You could also ask you pastor to explain their meaning. If you pastor doesn’t know, find an older lady who has been a Southern Baptist for many years and ask her. If she doesn’t know, make sure you are in a Southern Baptist Church.
Ron West:
I don’t want to hog the dialog here but I just have to comment on your comment.
Back in the 1968-1970 time frame we were members of a Southern Baptist Church is Silicon Valley. My wife had been a GA teacher at our previous church [the one we were married in] in the Los Angeles area. The pastor of that church in San Jose said in no uncertain terms that no way would he tolerate a WMU in “his” church. That pastor who put the nix on the WMU later went on to be the Exec Director of a Southern Baptist Association in Northern California.
So I ask pastors who read this blog. What is the angst between what is evidently a sizable number of pastors and the WMU?
I can’t believe that the leadership of a state convention would be complicit in trying to suppress even the mention of the WMU. Churches are autonomous and can decide for themselves what programs they want. What’s with a “top down” fiat that would not even allow some discussion regarding the WMU from the floor of the convention? The choice to have or not have a WMU should be decided on its merits by each church. I thought the SBC type of governance was held by the people in the pew — not some type of ecclesiastical magisterium.
I guess there must be a ton of negative “war stories” that have circulated for decades between pastors regarding the poising effect of the WMU.
If Wiley Drake can make all those motions from the floor of the SBC then why can’t Ron West make some type of motion about the WMU? Is this crazy or what?
Roger OKC
should read “poisoning effect” . . . . .
Roger, don’t worry about hogging the dialog. You are doing a much better job of asking questions than me.
Most pastors can name a situation where a WMU member criticized a pastor for not supporting missions or their WMU group the way they should or being pushy about their agenda. I believe that is the exception rather than the norm. They use this to paint the entire organization. Pastors also have similar stories about deacons that are repeated at almost every pastor’s conference I have ever attended.
For a few, not the majority, the issue is still control. They feel that WMU is autonomous and on the national level is an auxiliary and they are not able to control who is put in place of leadership. For some reason this threatens them.
I hate to get too far from Pamela’s original post. WMU is just as needed today as it ever was. Missions education and missions support is hurting in the SBC today partly because of the lack of influence of WMU in the way it was in previous days.
I’m going to probably step on some toes, but here goes:
1. At one point in time the WMU hosted some of the portions of the raising of issues that led to the CR. They also insisted on independence from the SBC largely because they viewed themselves not as an entity but as an independent, supporting organization. Neither of those two things translated well into the post-CR time period regardless of how essentially Baptistic the behavior was/is. We intentionally walk around topics like this to not hurt feelings. But sometimes we need to have the discussion.
2. I’m a child of the 60s/70s RAs (Brotherhood-era) and they were often poorly run “knockoffs” of scouting with very poor discipleship and not wonderful missions training. AWANA also has some scouting-like elements but generally is better executed. There is little doubt that if we invest in missions training for our youngsters and roll in acculturation to SBC programs WITH discipleship that an SBC-specific program can be very effective. And I appreciate the positivity of the responders in noting that, too. But without sufficient training, none of these programs will work well. The temptation for the local church is to wing programs without investing in training and consistency. That would be like running a Chick-Fil-A without committing to doing it the Chick-Fil-A way. You get a knockoff instead of the real thing.
3. I would add that a children’s education program needs to integrate all of the children’s programs together whether SS, evening activities, VBS, and/or summer camp and should include opportunities to meet with other children in potentially evangelistic opportunity settings and hear the Gospel presented clearly and frequently. Doing this the old Southern Baptist way isn’t different than doing it the new Southern Baptist way if we commit to doing it in a way that pleases the King for whom we are royal ambassadors. But it might be refreshed from a cultural “handle” point of view as we try to relate to a current population that deals with life differently than in my day (to use a specific example.) The church needs to be lifted up as a center in the community of excellence in everything we do. This post affirms that vision of the choices a congregation makes in how it engages its own children and the community around it. If we’re going to do things like this, we need to commit to doing them very, very well. The WMU often was the backbone of the portion of the church that took on service assignments and surrounded them in prayer and enthusiasm. We need that kind of WMU in all of our churches always.