Who She Was: A follower of Jesus, Mary Magdalene was with Jesus at the crucifixion. She was the first person Jesus appeared to after resurrection and she was told to spread the good news to others.
Why She Matters:
As Grady writes, “She was the pioneer of pioneers and the forerunner of all forerunners.” Mary Magdalene was the first person to be commissioned to preach the gospel, a sign that God can use women in ministry.
2. Jarena Lee (1783-1855)
Who She Was: Lee was best known for being a preacher for the African Methodist Episcopal Church, travelling hundreds of miles to teach others about Jesus.
Why She Matters: She was an adamant supporter of women’s right to preach. When challenged about the matter, Lee would say, "If the man may preach, because the Savior died for him, why not the woman, seeing He died for her also?"
3. Sojourner Truth (1797-1883)
Who She Was: A slave-turned abolitionist, Truth became a Methodist and was called to ministry.
Why She Matters: Truth delivered a speech entitled “Ain’t I a Woman?” in 1851 that demanded equality for women and African Americans. As a preacher, she said that Jesus overcame her hatred of white people. Her faithgave her the ability to love everyone.
4. Phoebe Palmer (1807-1874)
Who She Was: Palmer was a Methodist revivalist, contributing to the holiness movement of the mid-1880s and the Pentecostal revival.
Why She Matters: She preached alongside her husband, but was more popular because female preachers were unusual for the time period. She spoke in support of women in ministry and founded a mission for alcoholics in New York City.
5. Fanny Crosby (1820-1915)
Who She Was: A hymn composer, Crosby did not let her blindness stop her from writing 8,000 Christian hymns including “Blessed Assurance,” “Rescue the Perishing,” and “Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior.”
Why She Matters: Crosby’s incentive for writing hymns was to bring others to Christ. She was criticized for “feminizing” church music, but continued to write music, believing that her work was divinely inspired.
6. Catherine Booth (1829-1890)
Who She Was: As a street preacher in London and co-founder of the Salvation Army with her husband, Booth had a heart for those in poverty.
Why She Matters: Crosby sparked a movement to help the poor, in addition to making huge strides in women’s rights in ministry. She wrote Female Ministry: Women’s Right to Preach and led hundreds of women known as “Hallelujah Lassies,” female evangelists in the Salvationist movement.
7. Mary Slessor (1848-1915)
Who she was: short, red-headed girl from Scotland who was inspired by a Presbyterian pastor to go to the mission field at a time when women were discouraged from such work.
Why she matters: She ended up in a dangerous region of Calabar (modern Nigeria), and she established a mission station among tribal people by traveling to them in a canoe. Her work laid the foundations for the widespread growth of Christianity in Nigeria today. With her characteristic spunk, she opposed African traditions and successfully stopped the ritualistic killing of twins in Calabar.
8. Amy Carmichael (1867-1951)
Who she was: she was a brave Irish Presbyterian who sailed to India and founded the Dohhnavur Mission.
Why she matters: Her mission pulled hundreds, if not thousands, of children out of ritual prostitution. Known to the children as "Amma," which means "Mother," she dressed as an Indian and even dyed her skin with coffee to fit into the local culture. When a British woman asked Carmichael what missionary life was like, she simply wrote: "Missionary life is simply a chance to die."
9. Ida Robinson (1891-1946)
Who she was: She was an early Pentecostal pioneer ordained in the United Holy Church of America and appointed to pastor a small church in Philadelphia in 1919.
Why she matters: A few years later she felt God gave her an assignment to "loose the women" so more females could be ordained in ministry. Thus she founded the Mount Sinai Holy Church of America, which became a network of 84 churches by the time of her death in Florida.
10. Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944)
Who she was: She was Born in Canada, she preached the gospel to her dolls as a child.
Why she matters: After she began preaching throughout the United States in the 1920s and 1930s—often under a large tent—she was more popular than evangelist Billy Sunday. People loved "Sister Aimee" because she used drama and theatrics to make the Bible come alive. When she built her church, Angelus Temple, in Los Angeles in 1923, people came from all over the nation to hear her—including Hollywood stars. She eventually founded the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, which today has more than 8 million members worldwide.
11. Corrie ten Boom (1892-1983)
Who she was: She was the daughter of a Dutch clockmaker, who led a rather boring life until Nazi forces invaded Holland.
Why she matters: Corrie and her Christian family began hiding Jews in their home to protect them from German death camps. But their work was exposed, and she was sent to Ravensbruck, a women's labor camp in Germany. Her horrific experiences there prepared her for a worldwide ministry that took her to 60 countries. She preached about forgiveness and Christ's love well into her 80s.
12. Gladys Aylward (1902-1970)
Who she was and why she matters: his simple British woman wanted to go to China as a missionary, but she was told that women could only serve as teachers or nurses—and she was neither. So without official backing she used her life savings to buy a one-way ticket to Shanxi Province. Once she got to China, she became an official "foot inspector," helping Chinese officials enforce a new law against the cruel "foot-binding" of Chinese girls. This led to her work among orphans. Her brave attempt to protect children from the Japanese invasion of China was memorialized in the 1958 film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness—a film that Aylward hated because it glamorized her very simple life.
Culled from: J. lee Grady Article.
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