Welcome to this post that includes some parts of our worship at Digby Baptist Church. Videos today include the Children’s time, prayers, sermon in three parts (two videos), and saying farewell to Deacon Joyce Marshall.

SERMON: 150 Years of Atlantic Baptist Women (1 Kings 17:1-16; Luke 4:20-30) – J G White – 11 am, Sunday, Nov 1, 2020 – UBC Digby

Strategic Support: Hannah Maria Norris (Armstrong)

November first is ‘All Saints Day,’ so it is very fitting we look back at some believers who inspire us and cheer us on. Today, we celebrate 150 years of Atlantic Baptist Women, an organization supporting mission that has been creative and innovative thru all these years. It all began with one very energetic woman.

It’s 1870. A teacher in the women’s department at Horton Academy in Wolfville is inspired to leave and serve as a missionary in far-away Burma, Southeast Asia. We call it Myanmar today. The teacher was Miss Hannah Maria Norris, from Canso. She wrote,

I was teaching in the Seminary in Wolfville till near the close of 1869. It was during that year that the thought first came to me that I was needed in Burmah [sic). It was a still small voice that made itself heard when I prayed alone, and that rose up to disquiet me amid present activities.

But the Baptists of Atlantic Canada had no funds to send Maria and fund her mission. Just as she is about to embark on a ship bound for Boston, and meet with the American Baptist Missionary Union, some leading NS Baptists intercept her and they suggest she apply again to the Atlantic Baptists and seek the help of the women of our Baptist Churches. After a prayer meeting in Halifax, it was resolved “that an appeal be made to the sisters in these Provinces to supply the funds necessary . . .”

When Miss Norris applied the second time, she was approved, awaiting the raising of the necessary funds. The “Sisters” of our churches had a history of supporting such causes. What Maria organized next is incredible. Her notebook of 1870 contains the entry: “Left home June 23rd [after forming a Circle in Canso), returned August 29th. Met 41 appointments with different churches, organized 32 Societies (Circles), visited seven Sabbath Schools, attended Central and Eastern Associations and Convention . . .Two Circles were also formed in Halifax but I was not present . . .” Three weeks later, Hannah Maria Norris, a school teacher, left for Burma, the second single woman from the Maritimes to go as a foreign missionary. (H. Miriam Ross, Women’s Strategies for Mission: Hannah Maria Norris Blazes the Trail in 1870, Historical Papers 1992: Canadian Society of Church History.)

In barely over two months, Maria organized thirty-two mission societies, and a month later was on her way to Burma! Here is where those first women’s circles were organized: Canso, Amherst, Windsor, Falmouth, Hantsport, Wolfville, Pereaux, Canning, Canard, Upper Aylesford, Billtown, Tremont (Lower Aylesford), Pine Grove (Middleton), Bridgetown, Clementsvale, Hillsburg (Bear River), Weymouth, Yarmouth, Hebron, Beaver River, Ohio, Jegoggin (Chegoggin), plus those in New Brunswick, and two in Halifax not organized by Maria.

This woman was a force to be reckoned with! Dr. Miriam Ross was my professor of missions, and in her paper about Hannah Maria Norris’ strategies, Dr. Ross pointed out the ways Maria used the social networks available to her: family and childhood friends, educational contacts, church contacts, and literature and publications. 

The mission societies that began in 1870 continued, and many others were formed, especially to support the single women who went out to serve around the world. At some point, our women’s missionary society began here at Digby Baptist.

I see in this a manifestation of the challenge to support a travelling servant of God that we see in Jesus our Saviour. As Amelia read for us today, we see Jesus had a hard time in his hometown. Part of his own strategy was to challenge the thinking of the people. His sense of mission was to be wide-ranging. He highlighted the Old Testament stories of helping and healing people who were not Jews in religion or culture, a little family in Zarephath, and a Syrian leader named Naaman. 

Jesus claimed for Himself the ministry spoken of in Isaiah 58 and 61: anointed to bring good news to the poor, freedom to captives, sight to the blind, and so forth. And this work was to be His for the whole world, continuing on long after his death, and resurrection, and ascension away from here. Jesus’ ministry continues at our own hands. Think of Maria Norris, and what is possible!

Integral Mission: Lavinia E. Wilson

Jesus read the words of the Isaiah scroll in Nazareth one day, words that He declared He was now fulfilling, words of a comprehensive ministry. What we, today, call integral mission. Ministry to the whole person and all of society. 

 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

    because he has anointed me

        to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

    and recovery of sight to the blind,

        to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

We could ‘spiritualize’ Isaiah’s words, and say this is all about good news for the spiritually poor, freedom for souls that were captive to evil, sight for those blind to the truth of God, and so forth. And I think it does mean these things. But it also includes help for those poor in things, freedom for those behind real prison bars, and healing for eyes that cannot physically see.

Three months ago I preached to you, briefly, the story of land reform and freedom for enslaved farmers in Bolivia, in the 1920s 30s and 40s. This was the work of Canadian Baptist missionaries, such as the innovative leader, Rev. Dr. Earl Merrick, later of Acadia University. It was also the work of an ordinary young woman from Hillgrove, Digby Co.

In 1901 a new member, baptized into the Hillgrove Baptist Church, was a teenager named Lavinia Wilson. She went on to answer the call to mission overseas. Actually, directly south of us here in Nova Scotia, in Bolivia, where Baptist missionaries had been working since 1898.

Lavinia joined the mission work there in 1919, and served for five years, mainly on the shores of Lake Titicaca, in Huatajata, on the farm that got named Peniel Hall. What was the mission work of Wilson, and Merrick, and others, there? Yes, there was Christian evangelism, preaching and teaching of the Gospel, in that area. There was education for children, and Lavinia was a teacher there. She and an assistant, Alice Booker, began schooling indigenous children, even with some opposition from the local farmers. Wilson also had begun as the first Canadian Baptist administrator of the mission there. The task was to run the large farm there on Christian principles – no small challenge. Canadian Baptists took full responsibility for the mission under these conditions:

• The Canadian Baptist Mission would take care of the farm with the condition of reopening the school in a permanent fashion.

• The project would maintain the work of evangelism and education according to a late benefactor’s wishes (Antonia Chiriotto).
• The new managers would improve and mechanize the farm with modern machinery as soon as possible.
• The gospel would be taken to other neighboring communities as a witness of the project.

Other workers joined Wilson & Booker to accomplish this work. But after just five years, it seemed the climate of the high Andes took its toll on Lavinia Wilson. Many visitors there feel the effects of altitude illness – I did when I was there for ten days in 2010. Living there is a severe challenge for some. The thin air and low oxygen did its damage, and young Lavinia developed a heart condition, and after she was living back in NS, in Barton, Bright’s Disease, an old term for a kidney disease that accompanied heart disease. She was 46 years old when she died on April 26th, 1933, at the home of her sister here in Digby.

In her long, biographical obituary, it is reported how Rev. Dr. Patterson eulogized her at the funeral in Hillgrove. He emphasized the sacrificial character of her Chirstianity, which was as apparent in her service in his church as it was later in Bolivia. To the strain of handling single-handed the revolution on Penial Hall Farm he partly attributed her final break-down. He also spoke of her fine intellectual qualities which enabled her with uncommon clarity of perception to see straight thru non-essentials to the heart of a problem. This was also evident in her religious faith, which disregarded the unimportant things, looming so large to many, for the fundamental truths.

Here again was a servant of Jesus, used in remarkable ways, even for such a short time. Supported back home by the Women’s Missionary Societies, Lavinia Wilson played an important role in the development of farming, freedom, and faith among the Bolivian people, 100 years ago. 

What is Digby Baptist doing as a mission station here in Digby County, today? 

Inspiring Servanthood: Eleanor ‘Nellie’ Timpany

Poet and activist, Jan Phillips, says, “No matter what our attempts to inform, it is our ability to inspire that will turn the tides.” (Marry Your Muse, 1997)

A portrait hangs in our Church Parlour, the photo of a woman, to inspire us today. She was a local resident and member of this Church who so inspired us that the Women’s Missionary Society took on her name, Eleanor Timpany. Who was Nellie Timpany?

In 1871, likely in Little River, a child was born to Mary and Bernard Havey. The mother, Mary, had been a Denton. The child was named Mary Eleanor Havey. I have not discovered much of her early life. In 1893 she married John Stuart Timpany, who that same year graduated from Medical School in Detroit, Michigan, and was ordained a Baptist Minister. Coming from a family of medical and other missionaries, John set out right away, with his bride, to serve on the mission field in India, under the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Board.

Also in our Parlour is this old photo, showing CANADIAN BAPTIST MISSIONARIES IN INDIA. This is from the late 1800s. Among the servants here are Nellie’s mother and father-in-law, Jane and A. V. (Americus Vespucius) Timpany, who’d served in India for twenty years before’s A.V.’s death at 46. 

It was about ten years later that John and Eleanor Timpany arrived in Hanamakonda, India, and their thirty-two years of work there began. Another Baptist medical missionary, Dr. Dorothy Timpany, described her cousin John’s work this way:

Dr. Timpany had a double ministry. He alone was in charge of the evangelistic work in a 6000 square mile area, but the preaching often met with opposition, until the people saw his healing ministry. In time people asked for a hospital in the area. An Islamic man started a fund to which all classes of people contributed and, after nine years in India, Dr. Timpany had a hospital of twenty-six beds, paid for without money from the American Baptist Board!

(Dorothy E. Timpany, Love Affair With India, 1993)

It was in 1925 that John Stuart and Eleanor Timpany retired to Digby, NS. I believe they lived on Queen Street. John died in 1939. Nellie said of her husband, “He and his father loved the people of India and gave themselves for them.” She went on to live until 1954. Their grave is Woodlawn cemetery. 

These people were clearly inspired by others, in their own family, and outside it. They have inspired many, and continue to do so. We tell and retell such stories, stories of God’s work and intervention, the Master’s planning and purposes, the Spirit’s guidance and powerful accomplishments around us. 

Thousands of years ago, Elijah was inspired to trust God to bless a poor woman and her son on the shores of the Meditereanean, in Phoenicia. When the son died, God used Elijah to raise him back to life! Hundreds of years later, Jesus was inspired to mention that story, an example of God’s care and goodness to every type of person on earth. What stories inspire you? What do you do when you’re inspired? & shall you be an inspiration to someone else? May it be so!

PRAYER Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End of all good things: we pray on this day as we worship and praise You for the gift of the Atlantic Baptist Women’s movement, and each local Missionary Society. We give thanks for Your servants who still inspire us, Maria Norris, Lavinia Wilson, Nellie Timpnay, and many others. Give power and purpose to our own Missionary Society here, in this decade of challenge and need. We pray for our sisters and brothers in the African Association today, who have recently lost two incredible leaders, sister Alma Johnston-Tynes and Rev. Tracey Grosse. As they join that great cloud of witnesses who encourage us, may we continue to run the race with perseverance, O Son of God.

Christ, you turn our eyes to the whole world, each day. Today we pray for the places where there is fresh and alarming violence, and places where the terror has gone on a long time. Disasters strike, Jesus, and we cry of for mercy where earthquake and flood and fire destroy. And, Master of the loving heart, we pray for our friends of the United States of America, as their election finally arrives: may there be good choices made, good working of the whole voting process, and good responses to the election results.

We continue in prayer for those dear to us. Bless in body, and spirit…… and these we name aloud or silently… 

And we pray for ourselves, a fellowship in Christ we call Digby Baptist Church. Still lead us, Master, into the ways of truth that rely upon Your guidance, the actions of love that stem from Your powerful care, and the fellowship of faith that is as wide and welcoming as You were here on earth. O Saviour Jesus, save again today, reach out to save those near us, we pray. In Your name. AMEN.

PRAYER of farewell to Deacon Joyce Marshall

Mighty God, You who know who we are, You who renew our souls in Christ, You who prepare our path and lead us: hear our prayers for Joyce. Take her and bless her as much as possible; we are releasing her into Your total care. But we will still care, dear God, we will keep in touch, we will pray for her, we will even still be inspired and helped by her while she is away. 

We give thanks for the ministry gifts Joyce shared, Heavenly Father; we ask forgiveness for any offenses and harm we have done; we mourn and say goodbye to her whose fellowship and friendship we have enjoyed.

O Lord, bless Joyce and keep her, 

make Your face shine upon her 

and be gracious unto her, 

lift of the light of Your countenance upon her, 

and give her peace. 

In the name of Jesus, AMEN.