A History Moment

A Hi sto ry Moment

Baptist Women • Black History

The Women’s Missionary Auxiliary - Amherstburg Regular Missionary Baptist Association 137 years in the service of the Lord

The Women ’s Home and Foreign Women’s Society of the Amherstburg Regular Missionary Baptist Association (ARMBA) was formed in 1882. Sis. Elizabeth Shadd Shreve of North Buxton organized this group of women. She became the group’s first president when she moved to Canada after the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850.* Women came together in 1883 for their first meeting.

The women of the Society were highly enthused with true missionary spirit. They travelled by horseback through brush and roads that were almost impossible. They ministered to the sick, collected and delivered food and clothing to the needy, preached the gospel and prayed for lost souls.

In the 1800s, the object of this Women’s group was to assist the Home Mission Board in its efforts to promote the Gospel of Jesus Christ as written in Matthew 25:31-46; to walk alongside churches and contribute funds to the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Quebec (now Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec). Today, the group’s purpose and aim is to spread the Gospel of our Lord at home and abroad, using modern methods and technology, exalting our Lord and Saviour with the message of God’s love.

In 1996 the group’s name was changed to the Women’s Missionary Auxiliary of ARMBA.

Over the last 70-100 years, the group has sent and supported missionaries to West Africa and Haiti. Others have served in England and Bangladesh. Members have supported women who are church planters in Ontario or active in children’s ministry in British Columbia. Along with the Western Association they helped lay the foundation for Matthew House, Windsor.

Many of the missionaries in the groups today watched their mothers and grandmothers work tirelessly to assist the poor, hungry and needy. Members have a keen awareness that God is up to something and they desire to be the instrument God uses to complete the work that was started so many years ago.

*Reference: ARMBA publication Pathfinders of Liberty and Truth by Dorothy Shadd Shreve.

Rev Della D. Bost 

Home and Foreign Missionary Society

Photo courtesy Della Bost