9343.jpg)
- Pastors reminded to honor calling at annual conference
- Conference breakout sessions focus on pastors family, Christian life, leadership & transition
- Love: What the world needs now
- Florida Baptists celebrate evangelism, church planting & church strengthening priorities
- Hughes urges pastors: Go for the ‘big ask’ of members, themselves
- State Board of Missions hears report from past presidents on GCR
- FBSC messengers applaud pastors who have served 60-plus years
- Messengers in Pensacola approve nominees for Florida’s SBOM & agencies
- Florida Focus
- Obituaries
- Latest Stories...
RSS News Feed
The woman for whom the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American Missions was named lived from 1850 to 1938, but her boldness and commitment to missions during her lifetime continue to serve as a model for today.
 |
| Click image for related coverage |
Her strong commitment to taking the Gospel to Native Americans and immigrants came as a result of listening to missionaries’ stories about the needs of these groups. She personalized that commitment by serving her church and leading women to minister to immigrants arriving at the Baltimore pier. She also traveled to Indian territory to minister personally to the Native Americans. While she could not be hands-on all the time, she encouraged women to make up boxes of supplies for missionaries in order that they could be better equipped to take the Gospel to all people.
 |
Annie also served as the first corresponding secretary of Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU), which began in 1888. It was a job she did wholeheartedly and without pay. Writing about her work, Annie said: "I am more and more persuaded that all that is required of those who have the work in charge is faithful seed sowing. The harvest is bound to follow ... . No matter how heavy the burden, daily strength is given, so I expect we need not give ourselves any concern as to what the outcome will be, but think ‘go forward.’"*
Annie indeed "went forward" with her support of missions. Her capacity to write letters advocating mission work has been well documented. She wrote literally thousands of letters every year, and in one year alone that number topped 18,000.
She spoke in churches to spark the interest of women to take seriously a commitment to missions and support Southern Baptist missionaries. It was fitting that the offering which benefited the missionaries she so dearly loved and supported was named in her honor in 1936.
Annie Armstrong died in 1938, and her tombstone reads," She hath done what she could." The question for all Southern Baptists is,"Have we been faithful to do the same?"
*Sorrill, Bobbie. Annie Armstrong: Dreamer in Action, 1984, Broadman Press, p. 155. Annie Armstrong in the Twenty-first Century