Lottie Moon: "The Mother of Missions"
Daily Threads
Christmas is deeply innerwoven into the life story of Lottie Moon. She was born during the Yuletide season of 1840 to an affluent family in antebellum Virginia. She passed into eternity on Christmas Eve, 72 years later. In between those two fateful Christmases, she became what many considered the most educated woman in the South, adopted a homeland on the other side of the world, won countless souls for Christ, and forever influenced the role of missions within the Southern Baptist denomination.
Charlotte Digges Moon made her arrival into the world on December 12, 1840 at her family’s tobacco plantation, Viewmont, near Scottsville, Virginia. The middle child of eight, Lottie, as she came to be called, was precocious and headstrong. Though her godly parents tried to instill Christian principles into each of their offspring, each child rebelliously rejected the teaching from a young age and even avoided attending church whenever possible. After her father’s untimely death when Lottie was only 13, the family’s finances became strained and her future prospects seemed greatly diminished.
Viewmont
Despite these challenges, Lottie, who was a highly gifted student, attended both the Virginia Female Seminary and Albemarle Female Institute where she became one of the first women to earn a Master of Arts degree from a Southern institution. The talented Miss Moon especially flourished in languages and soon mastered Greek, Latin, French and Italian. She could not have foreseen how this natural talent for languages would soon be used by God in the foreign mission fields of China. For though Lottie was obviously brilliant, she was also self-satisfied and used her quick wit and ability on her own vanity. She especially scoffed at the Christianity in which she had been raised. However, on December 21, 1858, as her 18th Christmas neared, Lottie Moon experienced a spiritual awakening during a campus revival which would forever change the course and focus of her life. It was then that she accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior and surrendered her will to His.
Lottie's Name in Chinese Script
After graduation, Lottie at first embarked upon a teaching career and with her good friend, Anna Safford, opened her own academy for girls. Though Lottie grew increasingly drawn to a life of Christian service overseas, her Southern Baptist denomination at that time advocated sending only married women to the mission field. After this policy was relaxed, Lottie’s younger sister, Edmonia, was chosen by the SBC mission board to serve as their first single female missionary to China in 1872. On July 7, 1873, Lottie’s legacy was set in motion as she, too, answered the call and joined her sister at the North China Mission Station in Shantung..
What was Lottie thinking as she embarked upon this exciting, yet daunting, experience? She was most likely full of zeal, fully trusting in the Lord for His provision and eager to begin “winning souls.” Then the reality of a foreign culture with its strange language, customs, and religious traditions dispelled the more romantic notions. The 19th century China in which Lottie suddenly found herself living could be likened to visiting a foreign planet.
A Pagan Temple in Shantung
The port of Dengzhou, where the mission was located, was protected by international treaty and the missionaries had relative safety and community with their fellow laborers within its confines. But even in this environment, Lottie and her friends often met with danger. Soldiers were especially hostile to these “foreign devils,” as they called the missionaries, and could make their life miserable at whim. Lottie’s sister, Edmonia, was physically attacked and pelted with rocks by an angry crowd.
Even the children could be vicious at worst and overwhelming at best with their constant intrusive questions, badgering, and begging. The Confucian philosophy which shaped the culture brought incalculable misery, superstition, and bondage to the everyday life of the Chinese population. There were also the new foods which could wreak havoc on a Western digestive system as well as rampant disease, constant political upheaval, and unsanitary conditions. Any new missionary to this environment could quickly become overwhelmed, lose faith, and become despondent. And what was worse, the Southern Baptist foreign missionary of that time was expected to remain in this environment for the rest of their life with uncertain support and no expectation of furlough except under extreme medical conditions. As if these challenges weren’t enough, Lottie also found herself in the midst of infighting between some of her fellow missionaries, for even those in full time service to our Lord are not immune to the egotism, selfishness, and pettiness that is common to all human beings. So, it was under these conditions that Lottie Moon embarked upon her journey on a foreign mission field!
One problem Lottie and her fellow women missionaries immediately saw was that men could not effectively minister to the female Chinese population. The upper-class Chinese women were virtual prisoners within their own homes and seldom, if ever, ventured outside. The lower-class women were second class citizens, at best, who were not permitted to even speak to a man who was not a close relative. Lottie saw that the key to winning the family was connecting with the mother and the way to get an invite into the home to meet mothers was to befriend the children. To this end, the missionaries established schools for educating both boys and girls. Lottie also found that her special Tea Cakes were just the ticket to win over any child.
Though her work in Shandong kept her busy, Lottie wept for the millions of Chinese who lived in the villages outside the treaty ports who had never heard the Good News. She decided she would focus her on efforts on this population. After two years in China and many appeals back home to America, Lottie wrote that she and her friend Sally Holmes had recently been invited to a nearby village to speak to a hall overflowing with potential converts. She described her dilemma: “I hope you won’t think me desperately unfeminine, but I spoke to them all, men, women and children, pleading with them to turn from their idolatry to the True and Living and Legend God. I should not have dared to remain silent with so many souls before me sunk in heathen darkness.”
Lottie continued to face the challenges of missionary life daily. Some of these were personal, such as the mental and physical breakdown of her sister Edmonia, who had to leave China and return to the US. Some were life and death, such as the barbarous Boxer Rebellion of 1900 which led to attacks on all things Western and the murders of many missionaries. But many were the day-to-day worries of how to secure the additional workers and financial means by which to continue the Mission. To this effort, Lottie constantly wrote letters back home to her fellow Christians in America describing the successes and challenges while pleading for help. As a result of her extraordinary efforts, Moon was lauded as no other woman missionary had ever been. Southern Baptist women regularly paid tribute to her with articles in their publications and organized fundraising efforts and committees for assistance.
Photo: Lottie in her later years with two younger missionaries who answered the call to serve in China
In 1887, Lottie wrote an article for the Southern Baptist Foreign Mission Journal in which she proposed a special Christmas offering dedicated to foreign missions. SBC women’s groups embraced this by creating groups such as The Woman’s Missionary Union to spearhead the fundraising. The first effort the following year raised $3,315, which was enough to send three more missionaries to China. This fundraiser was renamed the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering in her memory in 1918 and now averages more than 20 million dollars per year. Perhaps the most telling measure of Miss Moon’s stature in the denomination came in 1890, when, at the Southern Baptist Convention meeting, a delegate, after hearing the report of her work for the year, remarked that it had often been said of her: “She is the greatest man among our missionaries.”
As she aged, Lottie continued to maintain her full schedule, welcome and train new missionaries, and publicize the continuing needs. As the SBC began to experience financial uncertainty after the turn of the century, missionary funding became tenuous and Lottie grew increasingly concerned about the need to carefully manage every dime of funding in order to keep the Mission going – even to the point of foregoing food for herself so that there might be more to share with others. It was most likely this stress acting upon her aging body that led to her final illness and her doctor ordered retreat from the field in order to seek treatment in America. On Christmas Eve, 1912, as the ship she was on pulled into the harbor of Kobe, Japan, the frail 72-year-old Lottie Moon looked to heaven, gave a Chinese gesture of greeting, and met her Savior face to face Who pronounced, “Well done good and faithful Servant! Enter into the Joy of the Lord!”
Photo: The Lottie Moon Memorial Stain Glass Window at Crewe Baptist Church in Virginia
Lottie Moon’s sudden decline and death surprised her friends and relatives in the States and left a gaping hole in the Tengchow mission force, who realized the irreplaceable loss they had suffered. One missionary described the scene: “Christians and heathen wept together upon hearing of Miss Moon’s death.” The new senior missionary, W. W. Adams, who had arrived only four years earlier, wrote “Our station is lost without Miss Moon.”
Lottie Moon serves as a torch bearer for the Faith and as a model for us as modern-day Christian women. Indeed, may we all possess the same unquenchable desire for the conversion of souls! Lottie summed up the necessity for mission work and the personal responsibility she felt towards the Higher Calling of spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ:
