Ellen White and the Role of Women in the Church

6. “Address the Crowd Whenever You Can.”

This injunction, published in Evangelism, 473, in a section the compilers entitled “Women in Public Ministry,” was directed to Mrs. S. M. I. Henry, who had already been granted a ministerial license the previous year. It has been taken by some as Mrs. White’s encouragement for women to seek a preaching ministry, which today is equated with being an ordained minister of the church. EWRWC 9.3

Is Ellen White here promoting the employment of women as ministers in the usual sense of the term? No. The context is clearly a concern for the women of the church to be instructed how to be servants of Jesus. The statement comes from a letter from Mrs. White, published in Mrs. Henry’s column in the Review. ²⁴ In the paragraph right before the passage quoted in Evangelism, she writes of her concern for the sisters: “If we can, my sister, we should speak often to our sisters, and lead them in the place of saying ‘Go.’ Lead them to do as we should do: to feel as we should feel, a strong and abiding perception of the value of the human soul. We are learners that we may be teachers. This idea must be imprinted in the mind of every church-member” (emphasis hers). The concern for the sisters is explicit again two paragraphs after the Evangelism passage: “Teach our sisters that every day the question is to be, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do this day?” EWRWC 9.4

To what work was Mrs. White specifically encouraging Mrs. Henry? The first three paragraphs of the letter make it plain: EWRWC 10.1

The work you are doing to help our sisters feel their individual accountability to God is a good and necessary work. Long has it been neglected; but when this work has been laid out in clear lines, simple and definite, we may expect that the essential duties of the home, instead of being neglected. will be done much more intelligently. The Lord would ever have us urge upon those who do not understand, the worth of the human soul.

If we can arrange, as you are now working, to have regularly organized companies intelligently instructed in regard to the part they should act as servants of the Master, our churches will have life and vitality such as have been so long needed.

Christ our Saviour appreciated the excellency of the soul. Our sisters have generally a very hard time, with their increasing families and their unappreciated trials. I have so longed for women who could be educators to help them to arise from their discouragement, and to feel that they could do work for the Lord. And this effort is bringing rays of sunshine into their lives, and is being reflected upon the hearts of others. God will bless you, and all who shall unite with you, in this grand work. ²⁵

Teaching Ministry. It seems that Mrs. Henry’s work was to encourage the establishment of regularly organized companies, presumably of women, and to instruct them in how to serve Christ. This would add life and vitality to the churches. In addition, Mrs. White encouraged her to “address the crowd whenever you can.” This would have included the Adventist pulpits, though it seems it was not limited to them. The article on Mrs. Henry in the SDA Encyclopedia notes, EWRWC 10.2

In 1898 she conceived a plan for what she called “woman ministry.” Lecturing on the role of the mother in the moral education of society, she stressed this from coast to coast in the United States and Canada. She also presented her plan to SDA congregations. A. W. Spalding remarked later that in the work instituted in the SDA Church by Mrs. Henry came “the first semblance of an organized effort to train parents and to give help in their problems”. ²⁶

Ellen White was not encouraging Mrs. Henry to aspire to a pulpit ministry, nor to become a pastor in the usual sense of that term. She was counseling her to continue in her teaching ministry, to use every opportunity that might come her way (including pulpit invitations) to promote her view of “woman ministry” (and, for that matter, lay work irrespective of gender), a view that would strengthen the home and family life and help women see the value and beauty in serving Christ, even within their traditional roles. EWRWC 10.3

When Ellen White herself published the material she had written to Mrs. Henry, she did not publish the entire letter, but reworked portions of it for general use. She published it in Testimonies for the Church 6:114-116, under the title, “Women to Be Gospel Workers.” And the section where Mrs. White said, “Address the crowd whenever you can,” does not appear there. EWRWC 10.4