Charlotte Digges Moon

In RAs and GAs, we are studying the pioneer missionaries, along with our own IMB and NAMB Missionaries. We recently studied about Lottie Moon (Charlotte). In studying about her, I realized I actually knew very little about her life and service to the Lord. Honestly, I knew more about the Lottie Moon Christmas offering than the actual person.

Lottie Moon was from an affluent family in Virginia. Her father died when she was just 13 years old. Her family valued education. In 1861, Lottie received the first Master of Arts degree awarded to a woman. She was fluent in Latin, Greek, French, Italian, and later became an expert in Chinese.

Lottie cared little for the Christian beliefs most of her friends had, until she had a spiritual awakening on the college campus she attended, as many of her friends prayed for her.

In her early years, she taught at female academies until July 7, 1873, when the Foreign Mission Board (IMB) officially appointed 32-year-old Lottie as a missionary to China. She settled in Dengzhou and discovered her passion: direct evangelism. She had come to China to “go out among the millions” as an evangelist, only to find herself relegated to teaching school children.

She became a prolific letter writer to the head of the Foreign Mission Board, informing him of the realities of mission work and the desperate need for more workers, both men and women.

At the age of 45, she gave up teaching and moved into the interior to evangelize full-time. Her converts numbered in the hundreds. She continued to write letters and share the desperate need for more missionaries, which the poorly funded board could not provide. She encouraged Southern Baptist women to organize Mission Societies in the local church, to help support additional missionaries. This was the beginning of the Women’s Missionary Union (WMU). She then proposed that the week before Christmas be established as a time of giving to Foreign Missions.

During the wars in China, famine and disease took their toll. She began to share her personal finances and food with anyone in need around her, severely affecting both her physical and mental health. By 1912, at 4’3”, she only weighed 50 lbs. Fellow missionaries arranged for her to be sent back to the States with a missionary companion. Sadly, Lottie died en route on December 24, 1912, at the age of 72 on the ship in the harbor of Kobe, Japan. When Lottie died, she had almost nothing left to her name, because she had given everything to the Chinese people she served.

I am so proud that our church gives so generously to the Lottie Moon Christmas offering. This year we surpassed our goal and gave $257,760 that will go to IMB missionaries around the world.