Since March is Women’s History Month, it’s a good time to recall together that throughout the centuries, women have walked their faith out in service to others. The effect of their ministries are often long-reaching, resounding for generations. It’s worth remembering too that none of them set out to leave a legacy, only to be faithful to a God who had been faithful to them. 

Jump to AMANDA BERRY SMITH
Jump to HENRIETTA MEARS
Jump to IDA SCUDDER, MD

One of Amanda Berry Smith’s first encounters with faith and God’s provision was watching her family’s fight for freedom. Born into slavery in 1837, she witnessed her father work long days on the farm and long nights selling brooms and husk mats in the market to purchase her family’s freedom. Her father’s labor paid the price, but it was her grandmother’s faith and prayers for delivery that made it possible, Amanda wrote in her autobiography.

Amanda’s life was one of hardship. From the age of 13, she worked as a domestic and later took in laundry and ironing (eventually earning her the nickname “Washerwoman Evangelist”). Like so many before her, her own labor funded her mission work. By her early 30s, Amanda had outlived two husbands and lost 4 of her 5 children. Poverty and loneliness were constant and unwelcome companions.

But in her teen years, Amanda attended a revival meeting, where she made a proclamation of faith, and this would set her on a lifelong journey. She wrestled for years with her faith, experiencing a deep and abiding hunger for God that seemed to ask so much of her. As she gave over more and more of herself, willingly depending on God to meet her needs, she found him faithful.

Feeling led to evangelize and preach, Smith began a life of public ministry. A gifted singer, she traveled the country speaking and singing to black African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches. Her popularity grew and she began speaking to large crowds of both blacks and whites at holiness camp meetings. Her work to spread justice and promote women within the AME church led to many opportunities for women.

Smith’s popularity earned her an invitation to work overseas and she traveled throughout England, India, and Africa evangelizing and creating temperance societies. Even when she took ill in Africa, she kept working for God, resting in his strength to carry on.

Her illness brought her home to America and she returned to her roots of preaching and teaching. Eventually settling in Harvey, IL, she founded a home to care for black children who were orphaned or whose families were too destitute to care for them. 

Throughout her life, Smith sought God through prayer.  When in need of food or shelter (being a black woman she was often denied both) she prayed and saw God provide. Amanda’s close connection to God not only opened her eyes to the ways in which she needed him but also to how others needed him, and she often found herself praying for the people who crossed her path or sought her out.

Few people have had more influence and done more to shape American evangelism than Henrietta Mears. She introduced methods of teaching Sunday School that were revolutionary at the time and still relevant today, but it is her passion for reaching the world for Christ that had the greatest effect. She inspired a generation of leaders like Billy Graham and Bill Bright (Campus Crusade for Christ), who encouraged and raised up the next generation, who are even now raising up and handing off ministry to the next generation. 

From a very young age, Henrietta Mears had a love for education and learning. At 11 in 1891, she began teaching Sunday School. At 17, she committed herself to ministry, thinking she would be a missionary to China. God had plans closer to home. A childhood disease left her with poor eyesight, and doctors claimed if she attended university, she would lose her sight by graduation. She attended the University of Minnesota and studied chemistry, graduating with her degree and her sight. Even in college, she was teaching Bible classes to fellow students. 

Over the next decade, Henrietta taught chemistry while establishing Bible studies and discipleship groups for her students. She also served at her church, transforming the Sunday School program. Using methods from her work as a teacher, she grew her church’s Sunday School program to 3,000 within 10 years. Her success caught the attention of the pastor of a large church in Hollywood, CA, and he asked Henrietta to come work for him and revamp their Sunday School. 

Over the next 35 years, Henrietta held the position of Director of Christian Education at First Presbyterian Church. Her methods of individualistic teaching and using a small group method grew Hollywood FPC into one of the largest Presbyterian Sunday School programs in the world. It was a change that spread to other churches, creating a new movement in how to reach and disciple children from the cradle to adulthood.

During her tenure, she grew frustrated with the curriculum available to churches and began writing and creating her own. She took biblical stories and truth and made them practical and interesting for different ages. The popularity and demand for this new approach in curriculum grew and Gospel Light Publishing was founded. 

Henrietta was ambitious for God. She refused to think small when a whole world of souls was at stake, but she recognized her own sphere of influence could only be so big. So she threw herself into ministry where she was, and her faithful service to teaching and training up Christians who could disciple others has reached countless lives.

Daughter of the first American medical missionary to India, Dr. John Scudder, Ida Scudder didn’t expect to follow in her father’s (and seven brothers’) footsteps. In fact, she was determined not to. She planned to finish college, get married, and lead a domestic life. A visit to her parents in India changed that. In one night, 3 men applied to her for help as their wives were in childbirth. The couples refused to see a male doctor (for religious reasons), and there was no female doctor. Unable to help and turning each man away, Ida would later learn that all 3 women died that night. The need was so obvious. Ida surrendered to God. It seemed he wanted her in India as a doctor, so she would return.

Ida graduated from Cornell University, in the first medical class open to women, and returned to work in southern India. Before she left the U.S., a wealthy banker, Mr. Schell, granted her $10,000 for her work. She used that money to establish a medical center that treated women and eventually opened the Mary Taber Schell Hospital.

Ida soon realized that a hospital alone would never be enough to help those in need. She would need trained staff to care for patients. So she began training nurses and eventually started a nursing school, which would become the first graduate school for nursing in India. As Ida was the only surgeon at the hospital for 22 years, she was busy developing her skills, and yet still found time to form roadside medical dispensaries to service rural areas. 

The needs were always greater than the hands and supplies available to meet them. Ida dreamed up her biggest and most controversial idea yet. With the help of friend and fellow missionary, Gertrude Dodd, she opened a school to train female doctors. Many believed it would never succeed and she wouldn’t find enough women interested to attend. The first year it opened there were 51 applicants, and Ida had to turn students away!

Ida remained in India until her death in 1960. Her life was spent training up women (and eventually men as the school became co-educational in 1945) and caring for the sick. The Vellore Christian Medical Center that she founded still stands and is now one of the largest medical schools and centers in India.