Who in the World is Henrietta Mears?!

Talking about Elisabeth Elliot tonight over supper made me go back and do a google on her. But what I ended up taking away was not about EE but about this amazing woman called Henrietta Mears.

I had found her name next to EE's on a website collecting the stories of extraordinary Christians. The little .gif image they used to represent her looked like a chubby, dowdy woman with bizarre taste in spectacles and flamboyant hats. I did not click on her first, preferring to read the more well-known names I had seen before - George Washington Carver, Oswald Chambers, C.S. Lewis.

When I finally got to Henrietta Mears, I was amazed and incredibly encouraged at the parallel tracks of thinking we were running on.

She was a teacher in Hollywood in the 1920s and had seen a gap in her church - The Sunday School material was not engaging or empowering young people. Thus, she began to painstakingly design and develop her own curriculum. Soon, youth ministry's attendees swelled, calls from other churches came in looking for her material and she started a publishing company, Gospel Light Publications to meet the need. Still, she went on teaching and dreaming. She shortly set up a conference centre for youths to be empowered through grounded Bible teaching. Demand just kept coming in and Gospel Light Publications evolved into Gospel Light International.

Interestingly, through her unorthodox demeanour, dressing and manner, she reached out to many in the entertainment and journalistic sector as well in secular Hollywood. The secular world loved how off the cuff she was in her interviews, and the clever wit she displayed in answering questions about her faith.

I mean this really floors me! She was a woman of the 1920s - pre feminism, pre globalisation, pre Information Revolution, pre modern education initiatives. Her achievements sound like something ripped out of the current news. The fact that she achieved all that in her time is just....Divine.

"When I consider my ministry, I think of the world. Anything less than that would not be worthy of Christ, nor of his will for my life," Mears told her college students. Her vision of conquering the world for Christ influenced the vision of the many youths who passed through her classes - most noteworthy of them, Billy Graham and Bill Bright (Founder of Campus Crusade). Graham said once that apart from his wife and his mother, he could not think of another woman who had influenced him more in his life.

A Christianity Today article states: "At a Sunday school convention in 1950, Mears explained what it takes to do the job. "It is my business as a Sunday school teacher to instill a divine discontent for the ordinary. Only the best possible is good enough for God. Can you say, 'God, I have done all that I can?'" The beloved "Teacher," whose teaching methods transformed Christian education, certainly could say yes."

This woman is my hero. She made her dream of Christian education happen 50 years ahead of her time.

Come on School of Thought, you can do it. Let's get that dream cracking, stop your foot-dragging and fear-grubbing - focus on that dream. Education that ties head, heart and will. Education that sees a link between textbook and reality. Youth ministry material that empowers youth to change their lives and their communities. Christian youths who live and love extraordinarily and bravely with heart, mind and strength.

"Instill a divine discontent for the ordinary". OH, I LIKE the sound of that, baby!

Henrietta, you crazy spectacle-loving, mad, hat-loving, activist spinster. I raise you one cup of salvation in cheers to you and in salute to our Saviour and toast to a future to come. Man, I wish I knew you. We would so get along. If you are watching from the Kingdom, cheer me on, Henrietta. I will try my best, in His grace, to pick up where you left off. ha. :)

Christianity Today article on Henrietta Mears