Women Preachers: Women of the Work

The Purpose of the Missionary Department of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ reads like a vision statement, enumerating several objectives for women's missionary work:

Section 1. This department was created for the purpose of aiding this church as an organism, to perpetuate the doings of the saints in the beginning of the church; that is, to make an opportunity for the missionary women to be helpers together with our ministers and pastors in bringing souls to Christ, and comfort to those in need: To visit the widows, orphans and sick, give godly council [sic] in the fear of God, and teach the younger women to be chaste keepers at home ...

Additionally, our purpose is to labor together with the brethren in establishing churches and spreading this truth as those women in the churches of old... (Discipline, p. 70)

When women used domestic, social, and economic skills to the church, they were ministering to the "church as an organism." Metaphorically, the church is a living entity, one that needs to be clothed, fed, schooled, nurtured, and properly socialized, whether referring to the souls that make up the ecclesia or to the church as a viable corporate body. Preaching alone does not a church home make. Thus, the organized efforts of women to see to the well-being of their fellow congregants and to the maintenance of their houses of worship (as well as, one dares add, bringing a feminine touch to the work) were integral to the development of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately, the equally important work of women in establishing and maintaining churches spiritually have not been as widely discussed. This may be due in part to internecine conflicts in the late 1980s, the 1990s, and the early 2000s concerning women in the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ who were sympathetic to the women's liberation movement. That subject is better discussed at another time, though it is important to realized that this controversy has had a chilling effect on the fairly robust spiritual activities of women.

It is also important to consider that missionaries are licensed, which reveals that Bishop Lawson understood that, even short of preaching, a woman's vocation may take her into unfamiliar territory. One of the common spiritual activities of missionary women was (and is) prayer and Bible study in the homes of saints and potential converts. The Discipline Book speaks of missionaries "holding meetings out from their own church" and, like male ministers, missionaries were liable to be "sent where needed best" (p. 72). Thus, women on the field also needed credentials to support their missionary activities, whether traveling or evangelizing locally.

Conveniently at hand is the 2003 Beacon, published by the International Missionary Department; it contains several biographies of missionary women who were inducted into the Apostolic Gallery of Excellent Services (AGES), from which one may draw examples. One such biography is that of Mother Catherine Seely, who

made numerous trips visiting relatives in 1931. She began to conduct prayer meetings in various homes ... Approximately nine years after Mother Seely's arrival in Mamaroneck, and with much prayer, the foundation for what was to become the Strait Gate Church began in what was no more than a "chicken coop" donated by a chicken farmer, Elder Brooks.

It may not have been until 1944 (the biography is unclear) that the small group was supplied with a regular minister. (In a previous article, it is mentioned that other women also contributed to the founding of Strait Gate, as per Mother Wheatley's interview with Bishop W.L. Bonner in My Father in the Gospel. Strait Gate is no longer a part of the COOLJC.) Mother Seely also served as a foreign missionary in Africa.

The internet also inures greatly to the benefit of the researcher in supplying information relative to the histories of local congregations. At Zion Temple COOLJC, Mmes Mozell Miller and Elvira Smith sent an inquiry to Bishop Lawson about starting a church in Pratt City, outside of Birmingham, Ala. An elder was sent to follow up the inquiry, and he introduced them to Bp. Perry Thomas, who received them into the organization and under his oversight. No minister was immediately sent to pastor the two women, who met regularly in Mrs. Miller's home, but

[a] missionary from New York, Sister Clark, came down saying the Lord had sent her to Birmingham to help them. Sister Clark began to tell them about the Holy Ghost and being baptized in Jesus’ name. Through her teachings, four more souls were added to the church: Sister Annie Adams, Sister Lucille Johnson, Sister Prentice, and Sister Eliza Hunter. This brought the church roster to six. Bishop Lawson named them the “Six Sisters.”

Obviously, Bishop Lawson approved of and encouraged missionary women doing as much as they could for the furtherance of the work of God (despite the history's cautious phrasing, "saying the Lord had sent her"). In any event, there was no evidence that either Mother Seely or Sis. Clark were assuming authority over men.

But what of women's missions that occured beyond the confines of church or home? Included in the aforementioned issue of The Beacon, Mother Doreather Kirkwood's biography describes how she came into the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ in 1958, near the end of Bishop Lawson's life. Apparently upon sharing her call to ministry with the bishop, he "told her to go out and do a great work for the Lord. She held many street meetings, prayed for souls to be saved and healed. Mother Kirkwood became a licensed missionary in 1964" (p. 22). She continued her missionary evangelism in the Bronx, "conducting services" at two area hospitals.

Mother Madeline Thompson of Charleston, S.C., also carried out a large part of her vocation outdoors. According to her obituary and personal testimony, when she explained her calling to Bishop Lawson, he laid hands on her and commissioned her to "[t]each; don't preach." She went on to hold missonary revivals throughout South Carolina and as far away as Florida; coordinated outreach services, including procuring capable male evangelists and passing out tracts during street services; and assisted pastors by teaching and training women in churches throughout her state as a senior missionary.

Other missionaries, like the legendary Mothery Delphia Perry of Harlem, were also known to take to the streets with testimonies of salvation and healing, as well as to the foreign fields. Mother Lillian Dunlap of Flint, Mich., is described in The Beacon as having also conducted prayer revivals and seminars, and has her own radio program, an extension of her husband's broadcast ministry (p. 19). With no one to replace her late husband as pastor of their church in Eden, N.C., Mother Esther Broadnax Meadows taught Sunday School and brought the morning message for three years until her bishop could find a suitable replacement (Beacon, p. 20).

It has probably occured to the reader by now that Bishop Lawson's position against women preachers was not a total indictment against women who acknowledged some sort of ministerial vocation. Because Bishop Lawson was spiritual, he could recognize the genuine burden for the lost that many of his female followers felt; because Lawson was practical, he could see how women profited their local congregations when allowed to exercise themselves spiritually, even in the absence of male leadership.

Some of the examples test the limits of traditional church polity, including Lawson's own fundamentally biblicist administrative scruples. Let us follow this article with an examination of Lawson's direct teachings on the subject of women preachers.

Women Preachers: Missionary Work

We, the women of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, knowing that God has called us into holiness and sobriety, and charity, to rescue the fallen and administer any and all help, as we have opportunity, whether spiritual or material to the glory of God and to the honor and majesty of His great Name, now take our place in the ranks of the workers of our Lord to do our part in harvesting souls for Jesus Christ, as our Lord is coming soon to gather the precious fruits of the early and latter rain.

So begins the Preamble to the "Constitution of the Department of Women's Missionary Work of [the] Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ," organized in September of 1923. In the organization's Discipline Book, just above the preamble, are three scriptural references: Romans 16:1 (or 16:1-2, a reference to Phoebe, a female collaborator of Paul); Philippians 4:2 (sic, should be 4:3, where Paul enjoins the saints to help the women that worked with him, Clement, and others); and Titus 2:3-6 (sic, should be 2:3-5, which describes the teaching duties of older women; vs. 6 concerns young men). Taken together, these scriptures give a fairly modest, but conveniently flexible, framework for the missionary work of called women. While male ministers were to give themselves primarily to pastoral duties and evangelism, women were to augment the men's preaching ministry by whatever means they could (short of preaching), and were also to teach and set an example for younger women, especially as wives and mothers.

Missionary work, of course, did not have its beginning in the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is likely that Bishop Lawson was influenced by Bishop C.H. Mason, the influential founder of the Church of God in Christ. Though they differed in doctrine (Mason was, at least nominally, a trinitarian), the two were friends. Mason was very ecumenical in his fellowship, and as the founder of the first incorporated Pentecostal church, he had given credentials to ministers throughout the Pentecostal movement. Lawson, fairly broadminded and ecumenical, had great respect for Mason's administration of the church. They both agreed that the scriptures gave women a place in ministry, but that teaching, not preaching, was the appropriate focus of women's speaking abilities.

Mason further established a women's department under Mother Lizzie Woods Roberson (or 'Robinson'), based on Titus 2:3-5 (women, not men, are best suited to teach other women). Lawson's missionaries were not self-governed, but were under the authority of their local pastor or state overseer, who was more or less answerable to Lawson himself, during his administration. In both the Church of God in Christ and the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, women were organized in high-functioning missionary bands whose operations are likely traceable to the women's missionary societies of the Baptist church, to whom both men had ties.

Again and again in research, one encounters the confession that women who became missionaries in the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ had expressed some sort of calling to mission work. The most common work that one finds in reading biographies in COOLJC's The Contender for the Faith, in the International Missionary Department's Beacon, or in special publications (e.g., the IMD's Outstanding Women series), is work that characterizes what women do in general. Women sewed baptismal garments; cooked for the community; conducted prayer services; assisted with communion and church maintenance; taught life skills to girls and young women; counseled younger congregants and new converts; and helped the church meet its financial obligations. Examples include the late Mother Marie Robbins Dunlap, who zealously passed her baking skills on to the young women in her circle; Mother Clarissa Brown, who with her local missionaries supplied and maintained window treatments and altar cloths for their church; and of course, the late Mother Carrie Lawson, the consummate mother, homemaker, spiritual advisor, hostess, prayer warrior, cook, and first lady, who raised and trained the late Mother Grace Spellman beside her own four sons.

Here and there, however, there would appear women of unusual spiritual depth and gifting. Mother Lawson we have already discussed; yet there were many like her, women that chose to complement rather than compete, to supplement rather than supplant, and to transform Pauline limitations on female ministers into scriptural grounding for an expressly feminine brand of apostolic mission work. Let's examine the lives of a few such women.