Memorial Reflections About Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler
By Catherine B. Allen
When Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler was born in 1930, two scientists were studying a phenomenon rarely observed in the Milky Way–a spectacular exploding star which changes the galaxy. She was just one year old when those scientists coined a new word to describe the special star: a “supernova.” Those of us here today would have no trouble believing that Carolyn was our supernova, because a supernova creates new stars and beams radiance to illuminate dark corners of the universe. Many of us here today because her supernova’s radiance beamed into our lives, and we are here to reflect it.
From an early age, she knew that she had a flame within—something brighter than the Florida sunshine. The Weatherfords were a loving family who took her to church and encouraged her. Others recognized her divine energy and helped her to understand that God was working within her. Like thousands of Baptist girls of her time, she memorized some special Bible verses about stars.
“Arise, shine, for thy light is come,” she learned in GA.
“They who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars forever and ever,” was the important verse for young women.
Carolyn was one who believed those verses—but how would she arise from the orange groves and shine like the stars forever and ever?
An episode from the last days of Jesus’ earthly ministry is fitting to be remembered at Carolyn’s memorial service. It is recorded in some form in all four Gospels, but this reading is from Mark.
While He was in Bethany at the home of Simon the leper, and reclining at the table, there came a woman with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume of pure nard; and she broke the vial and poured it over His head. But some were indignantly remarking to one another, “Why has this perfume been wasted? For this perfume might have been sold for over three hundred dena-rii, and the money given to the poor.” And they were scolding her. But Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you bother her? She has done a good deed to Me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them; but you do not always have Me. She has done what she could;
she has anointed My body beforehand for the burial. Truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memorial of her.” (Mark 14:3-9)
In the pioneering days of the women had their own understanding of this passage. Their paraphrase said, “She hath done what she couldn’t.” Often this has been the case for women who are shooting stars into the future.
As Carolyn’s star began to rise beyond Florida, the Baptist establishment often told her what she could NOT do.
- She could NOT be a missionary, because her health made her a risk, and she was unmarried.
- She could NOT study theology, because she was a woman.
- She could NOT preach, because she was a woman.
- She could NOT become one the best known missions advocates of the 20th century and beyond because she was a woman.
And she was a woman. Fortunately, her gender proved to be a blessing, not a liability as a beacon to God.
Foolish Baptist bureaucrats. Didn’t they know that a divinely guided star cannot be extinguished? In Carolyn Weatherford’s case, things that were prohibited became the very things at which she would shine. Woman’s Missionary Union first gave her a place to shine.
She served 31 years as a salaried missions promoter within WMU in Alabama, in Florida, and nationally. She managed to help hundreds of thousands of women do most of the things people had said that she couldn’t do. But she wasn’t through yet. After marrying Joe Crumpler in 1989 and retiring from WMU, she then she gave 25 years as a voluntary missions innovator who helped to create new channels of sharing Jesus Christ throughout the world. That is a total of 56 years of pouring out and being poured out as an offering to Jesus Christ.
Her years as a WMU official are well documented; she was the best-known Southern Baptist woman; she will ever have heroic and iconic status because of what she did through and within WMU. The next 25-year period, she was making history too fast to keep up with her own biography. When historians dig in the roots of post-SBC Baptist life, they will find the imprint of Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler. Probably no Baptist individual engaged in more diversified innovation for the cause of Christ between 1989 and 2014. And nobody at greater sacrifice. She participated in the founding or early survival of at least eleven new entities that now help to carry out the commands of Christ. Each of them assumes that women will be free to serve as God leads.
She often told the charming story from Florida GA camp in 1962. The first transoceanic communications satellite was launched. Appropriately, it was called TelStar. Carolyn was directing a GA camp when the news was first televised in real time across the Atlantic Ocean. A young girl said, “Miss Weatherford, now we can really do it, can’t we?” “What is that?” Carolyn inquired. “Now we really can tell the story of Jesus to everybody.”
This moment was decisive in Carolyn’s understanding of the new era of possibilities which had suddenly opened before her.
Another decisive moment came when she met a renowned scholar of missions from outside the Southern Baptist empire. He informed her that she was in fact a missiologist. And so were her staff at the WMU office. Until this point, WMU had allowed ourselves to be limited to the educational and fundraising segments of missions. We were to raise support for the SBC mission boards, without having the right to participate in policy. Carolyn’s trajectory lifted substantially when she waked up to the untapped ability and responsibility of WMU to exert leadership in missions strategy. She changed her message and our focus from passive to active.
About one hour after Carolyn became the executive director of WMU, SBC, she stepped into her first press conference. There she learned that women’s rights and roles would be an underlying controversy of her administration. In the past, WMU officials had managed to skirt the issue by claiming that their task was missions, not women. Carolyn realized that avoidance was no longer was no longer right, wise, or possible. A group of young women told her, “You have to do something. You are our leader.” She considered whether any organization could speak with integrity, if it told females to “arise, shine” but to restrict their radiance to certain limits, if told to hide their light under somebody else’s umbrella. Carolyn approached the question in the only way she knew how: prayer, scriptural study, and reliance on the Holy Spirit.
Shortly before she achieved national visibility, Frank Stagg had written a book entitled The Holy Spirit Today. The book spent several pages proving that the current women’s liberation movement was guided by the Holy Spirit to unhinder the gifts and callings of women in the church. Some have said that Carolyn’s theology was actually Staggology. When she had been told she could not get a degree in theology in seminary, she managed to spend her electives in Dr. Stagg’s theology classes. In 1978, she invited Frank and Evelyn Stagg to teach their book, Women in the World of Jesus, to the entire executive and state leadership network of WMU. Thus Carolyn interpreted the changing times for women in the 1970s and later, in light of scripture. And she helped WMU leaders gain a new vocabulary for answering the demands of the day.
Also in 1978, Carolyn put her staff to work to organize the highly controversial Consultation on Women in Church Related Vocations. She wanted people to realize that time-honored job descriptions for women in missions and church staff positions were being deliberately erased. Especially in missionary appointments, women had less opportunity for full-time ministry than in the past, even while doors were opening wider for women in secular professions. Carolyn wanted awareness and action. She was not alone in
putting the issue forward; the chief executives of the two mission boards, the seminaries, and all the Southern Baptist agencies stood with her. Within months, a formal declaration was issued towards the conservative takeover of the SBC.
Carolyn was quoted in the press as saying, “The Southern Baptist Convention has a poor record of putting women in leadership roles, and it didn’t start when the conservatives took over.”
In such acts of bold leadership, Carolyn let her light shine before men and women. A light on a high candlestick is a visible target for anger and abuse. Carolyn absorbed endless wounds. She never allowed attacks upon her to distract her or her colleagues from daily work of missions promotion. In fact, it proved to be a fabulous golden age of growth and creativity in WMU and in missions. If she had been in good health, the stress would have killed her on the spot many times. But she had already been told she wasn’t strong enough for mission work, so she kept on pushing missions.
And, she became greatly trusted and beloved. When Daniel Vestal asked her to run a second time for first vice-president of the SBC, she did not win the race, but she did win more votes than any other woman has ever received in a Southern Baptist vote count.
Whereas she had said that it took a staff of 158 to stage her wedding, she found in 1989 that she had no staff but the Crumpler family. They were marvelous supporters, especially Joe, who constantly encouraged her and worked beside her. She had no expense account, no streams of income other than savings—and she was only 59, not old enough for Social Security. The stars in their courses fought for her. Faith, family, and friends found the funds and fortitude to build and nurture new organizations.
Carolyn was living proof that God’s call transcends bureaucracy. In recent years, Carolyn began to wonder—will free and equal people choose the special calling to minister in the most difficult and dangerous places? Will free women choose to serve through missions, and will they create missions methods for this age?
One of the world’s greatest missiolo-gists, one outside the Baptist fold but very well informed, wrote to me last week and said, “I was so blessed to know her. I can still see Carolyn saying that we must pray and pay.”
Everybody here knows some part of her accomplishments and worked closely with her to make history. Yet most of us are puzzled about where Carolyn Weatherford Crumpler got her star power. She is described in terms of sunny disposition, warmth, honesty, approachability, kindness, friendliness, happiness, and self-confidence, and self-control. Her former employees have said, “She made us feel better, loved, respected.” Closest coworkers marveled at her intelligence. She was a “quick study.” She was always prepared. She answered correspondence speedily and concisely—and email had not yet been invented. At countless junctures of confusion and depletion, she could reach into her knowledge of the Bible to supply a creative word from the Lord.
What I remember about her arrival as my boss in 1974 is this: she said that she had stopped first at the home of an elderly retired missionary out of state, a woman of the Holy Spirit who promised to pray for her. Over time, I realized that she had a considerable cloud of invisible, unidentified spiritual counselors. I suspected and feared that God was totally on her side of any argument. In this she found the fuel to be a supernova.
Like the woman of Mark 14 who anointed Jesus, Carolyn engaged Jesus directly, personally. She showed her devotion directly, personally. She gained his approval directly, personally. She courageously did it in full view of highly placed people who criticized, threatened, and insinuated, yet she did not hesitate.
Carolyn had an inner divine light that often enabled her to look ahead into troubled waters and sense what might be happening. Like the woman who anointed Jesus, Carolyn came out
in public in advance, ahead of times, and did what she could, –or couldn’t– before it was too late to be counted among the righteous, before it was too late to save some.
In placing Jesus first, Carolyn and also the woman of Mark 14 sacrificed their very best—treasure and trove that most people would have kept in reserve for their own protection in hard times. The woman in the Bible brought her treasure out in public and–she broke it –broke it! She broke it, so that its precious contents could run free and accomplish its purpose. Her valuable treasure, every drop of it, could now be used for only one thing: the honor and glory of God. If she had not made the break, her best gift, the finest oil and fragrance, could not have put Jesus in the spotlight, nor could it have been enjoyed by everybody in the house. Yes, even the vilest critics enjoyed the benefits of the fragrance which they denounced.
A sad thing about supernovas–they don’t last long. Their tremendous energy is spent in creation of new stars–new starts. It is up to them to beam light to the places that are stumbling, and maybe they need to burn collectively as a group.
Which thought brings us to a memorial challenge.
The Bible woman’s good deed is her memorial. Any gravestone and any institution bearing her name would have long since been ground into dust, but her unforgettable memorial has been commended by Christ and repeated by his people. Her memorial goes with the preaching of the Gospel throughout the entire world. Maybe missions of the future depends on our retelling her memorial more avidly and loudly.
That’s what the Bible seems to promise. Let us keep on following Carolyn’s star and rejoice greatly as it beams across the ages.
Presented by Catherine B. Allen on January 24, 2015 at Carolyn’s Memorial Service at Mt. Carmel Baptist Church in Cincinnati, Ohio
