"200 Years of Women at First Presbyterian" Psalm 148: 7-14

Thanks to the Bicentennial committee for putting together a service recognizing the role of women in the church's life over the last 200 years.  

"200 Years of Women at First Presbyterian" Bicentennial Sunday, March 10, 2013

Richard: As part of our Bicentennial celebration, this morning we are focusing on the role of women here at First Presbyterian Church,

Noelle (interrupting loudly): Excuse me, Papa.

Richard: Uh, Noelle, you know you're interrupting me while I'm preaching my sermon about women here at First Presbyter...

Noelle: Yes, I know, I'm interrupting you. But I need to ask you a question.

Richard: Right now?

Noelle: Yes, right now.

Richard: Okay. Watt?

Noelle: why are you preaching a sermon on women at First Presbyterian Church.

Richard: If you'd been listening instead of interrupting, you'd know why. It's the Bicentennial celebration of women in the church.

Noelle: I heard that. What I mean is, why are YOU preaching the sermon.

Richard: Who else would?

Noelle: If it's about women, why don't we hear from some women? Right now I have three women with me who are former presidents of the Presbyterian Woman Association. I bet they could do a better job that you could in telling us about the women. It would probably look better, too!

Richard: Really?

Noelle: Really.

Richard: okay.

Noelle: Thanks. Now if Mrs. Collier, and Mrs. Kerns and Mrs. Eppleston will help me out, we can hear from First Presbyterian Church Women about First Presbyterian Church women.

Stephanie: I'm in.

Nancy: Me too.

Sherry: I'm ready to go.

Stephanie: Noelle, what would you like to learn about the women who have served at First Presbyterian?

Noelle: I'm kind of curious what it was like for women to serve the church at different times in our history. I know we have women elders, and deacons, and trustee now, but I don't think we've always had women officers. Did women do anything important before they were officers?

Sherry: Have we got some stories to tell you. In fact, after you hear them, you might decide that women were more effective in ministry when they could not be officers.

Noelle: Really?

Sherry: Really!

Nancy We've learned lots of stories over the years about the role of women in our church and recently Teri Okrutny (a woman, I might add) has done lots of research on the role of women in the church on behalf of the Bicentennial committee.

Stephanie: I find it fascinating how the women of the church have organized themselves in different ways to meet the needs of the community and the church.

Noelle: What do you mean?

Stephanie: For instance, in communities like Troy during the first part of the 19^th century educational, missionary, and evangelical work by men and women alike was accomplished by community volunteer societies.

The women of our church did not necessarily have their own group within the church, but they helped organize these volunteer societies in the community. Yes, Christians from all denominations participated, but these societies were generally organized and led predominately by Presbyterians, and often by the women!

Sherry: For example, The Troy Female Bible Society was the first volunteer women’s society in which the ladies of FPC were actively involved. It was organized in 1843 as an affiliate society of the American Bible Society and had as its sole object the distribution of the Holy Scriptures.

As the story goes, men (one of whom was the pastor of the Franklin St. Presbyterian Church and another was pastor of the Main St. Presbyterian Church – that was when were split between Old School and New School Presbyterian churches) led the organizing meeting, but the women took over after that. Sarah Jane Rice, the wife of one of the Presbyterian pastors, served as one of the group’s first vice presidents.

Their aim was that every family in Troy had a Bible in the home. During the Civil War, they saw to it that every soldier carried a Bible in his pocket when going away to the war. They also placed Bibles in local schools and distributed Bibles to inmates in the jail and children at the Knoop Orphan Home.

Nancy: Don't forget the Troy Women’s Christian Association. This group was organized in 1872 by a number of ladies from different churches, including a significant number of of members from our church.

Their purpose was “to provide relief for the destitute, aid the needy, and to promote the spiritual, moral, mental, and social welfare of those in our midst.”

This group took the lead in petitioning the commissioners to provide a home for orphans. Their efforts led to the establishment of the Knoop Orphan Home.

In 1877, they added self-help to their objectives and a year later established an industrial school at which girls could learn to knit and sew so they could find jobs. Girls between the ages of 12 and 18 were provided materials and patterns and were required to learn Bible verses while working on her sewing.

Some of the groups that have been helped over the years include: the Troy Nursing Association, Miami County School for the Retarded, FISH, the Child Development Center, Head Start, Well Child Clinic, Mobile Meals, the Abuse Shelter, Hospice, LIFE, Children’s Services, Habitat for Humanity, Agape Ministries, and Partners in Hope.

Stephanie: And, of course, Presbyterian women were active in the Women's Christian Temperance Union.

Noelle: Is that the group of women who tried to enforce no drinking?

Stephanie: You are correct. In fact, the first president was Mrs. J. B. Riley, a member of our congregation. She was joined by Mrs. Lucinda Lewis, who served as secretary and later as president as well as an officer in the state organization and delegate to the national convention.

They also used our church as the venue for many meetings and conferences on the topic of temperance in the 1870s and 1880s. IN 1919, the year in which the Prohibition amendment was ratified, their prayer service on election day was held in the Sunday School room here.

Sherry: Were they the women who went into bars and prayed?

Stephanie: Yes, indeed. They would ask to be invited in to the bar, or saloon as they called them, and hold a prayer meeting right there. If they were not invited in, they would stand outside the bar and hold their prayer meeting.

Nancy: I love the story of the Jewish bar owner who told them they needed to pray in Hebrew so that they could understand them!

Sherry: But times changed and the way women from the church organized themselves changed as well.

As the 19^th century began, the Presbyterian Church became the first Protestant denomination in the United States to organize a missions committee at the national level in 1802. Subsequently, they organized a permanent Board of Missions in 1815 and a separate Board of Foreign Missions in 1837. As various boards were organized at the denominational level, individual churches organized their own locally affiliated boards.

Nancy: This shift in how to organize for mission culminated in 1870 when the newly-reunited Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. organized the Women’s Foreign Missionary Society in Philadelphia, the first and largest of the denomination’s women’s boards.

This led to the to creation of The Woman’s Missionary Society of Troy for Heathen Lands later known as Woman’s Home and Foreign Missionary Society or simply The First Missionary Society. This was the first women’s group within FPC.

It was organized on January 12, 1872, with 12 members as an auxiliary to the Woman’s Board of Missions connected with the Presbyterian Board of Missions at Philadelphia.

The object of the society was to aid the denominational board in sending and sustaining single women who would labor as missionaries among heathen women, train and superintend native women, and open schools for girls. Membership in the society was restricted to women who made an annual contribution of not less than fifty cents. Meetings were held monthly, and officers were elected at an annual meeting in January.

Stephanie: IN the following years, the Woman’s Home Missionary Society later known as The Second Missionary Society formed.

This group met twice a month and had dual purposes of study and mission work. Membership was open to anyone who paid the seventy-five cent annual dues.

Although the society at times provided financial aid to ladies of other Presbyterian churches in the U.S., most of their work involved sewing clothes and making quilts to fill missionary barrels that were sent to American mission schools or churches. There also was mention of the ladies providing funds to Miss Orbison, delegate to the temperance convention in 1903, to lessen the burden of the expenses associated with attending the convention.

In 1905, after noticing the decline of the membership of the First Missionary Society, the ladies of the Second Missionary Society voted to invite them to unite with them, and they functioned as the Ladies Missionary Society 943.

Sherry: During this time the Ladies Church Society also came into being.

The purpose of this group was to provide aid to First Presbyterian Church of Troy, Ohio. They accomplished this through the following committee structure:

2. Department of Visiting the Sick
3. Committee for Visiting Strangers
4. Committee for Caring for Church
5. Department of Caring for Parsonage
6. Kitchen Committee
7. Flower Committee
8. Care of Church Linen
9. Care of Silver
10. Care of Communion glasses
11. Music Committee
12. Committee on Entertainment

In addition to their standing committees, work was delegated to them from the Session. A few examples include: praying on behalf of the unconverted; afternoon prayer meetings; repairing old hymnals and raising money for new hymnals; provide the supper at the annual congregational meeting; and provide refreshments at special services.

This group’s fund raising efforts were so successful, that it was to them that the Trustees turned when the church was short of money. They also purchased the stained glass windows that weren’t given as memorials.

Noelle: If the women were doing all that, what did the men do.

Stephanie: That's a question for which we do not have an answer this morning!

Nancy: In 1943, the Ladies Church Society merged with the Ladies Missionary Society to form the Presbyterian Women’s Association.

That's the group that all of us were president of once upon a time.

As we moved through the 20^th century, things began to change in the Presbyterian denomination that impacted us as well – officers were no longer elected for life terms and beginning in 1930 women could be elected to hold office of elder or deacon.

Four years later, here in Troy, we elected the first woman Deacon, Mrs. Jessie West Baker.

It took awhile for the church to elect its first women elders, but in 1959, Donna Dixon and Helen Lefevre were elected as elders, and Maralynn Houser was elected to serve as a Trustee. Our church may have decided that was the right time to elect women elders since the first woman in the Presbyterian Church was ordained as a minister in 1955.

Stephanie: In the midst of these changes nationally and locally, the women in the denomination in 1943 the Plan of Organization of Women of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America, which sought to unite all organizations of church women under one inclusive departmental organization.

The organizing meeting was held on October 14, 1943. Rev. Coyle spoke on the subject “Why We Are Presbyterians” and then installed the officers. A motion was then made, seconded, and carried to disband the Women’s Missionary Society and The Ladies Church Society. Mrs. W.H. Mitchell was the first president.

The group was active for 59 years and continued to serve the same functions as the predecessor societies until there no longer was a need or a function was reassigned to a Sessional committee, the Deacons, or the Trustees. Circles formed for study and social purposes. The Thursday evening circle remains active today.

Sherry: While many Presbyterian Women Associations still are Active and alive in many congregations in our denomination, the Presbyterian Women's Association in our congregation ceased to exist in 2002.

The times have changed – when the Women’s Association began women of the church were mainly stay-at-home mothers, when many functions of the life of the church were performed by the women. Many of the women of the church now have jobs outside the home, children involved in numerous activities and many church activities have been taken over by committees, Deacons and Stephen Ministries.

And perhaps with women in the leadership structure of the Presbyterian church as ministers, elders, deacons and trustees, there is no longer as great a need for women to organize for study, fellowship, and mission projects on their own.

Nancy: Noelle, what do you think? Which model of organizing Presbyterian women appeals to you.

Noelle: I'm not really sure. But I hope that however Pr4esbyterian women in my generation organize, we will use the technology and resources of our time, but still serve God as and the God's church as well as the women who have come before us.

Stephanie: My hope is that in your generation the Presbyterian women will rediscover the need to join together in new and different ways.