A Youth Group Discussion on Perseverance based on Martha Cross' Life in Liberia

 

This week’s famous Kentucky Christian is Martha Cross. Her story may trigger conversations in your youth groups and children’s church about perseverance.

Martha Cross emigrated to Liberia with her husband, Alexander, and their seven-year-old son, James, in 1853. They were the first missionaries to Africa sent from Kentucky by the Disciples of Christ. Theirs was an interesting story. Alexander was an enslaved barber. Both Martha and James were free people of color. They attended the Ninth Street Christian Church in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The church decided to purchase Alexander and to fund the family’s expenses to join the Kentucky Colonialization Society. This obliged them to leave the United States. The church paid for their passage on the ship, Banshee, as well as for the cost of a piece of land and their expenses for the first year. Unfortunately, both Alexander and James died soon after arriving in Africa due to a tropical disease. Martha stayed. Eventually she married another missionary.

Ask your students how they think Martha Cross must have felt after sailing across the ocean to a land she did not know to start a new life for herself and her family. Then ask how they think she may have felt after both her husband and her son died. She knew some people who had been passengers with her on the Banshee but she was left grieving and alone. What would your students have chosen to do? Would they have stayed in Liberia or would they have tried to return to Kentucky? Why? If they had been listening to her praying, what do they think she would be telling God? How do people keep going when it seems like life is against them to steal their future, hope and destiny?

By Lesley Barker ©2021

Women of God (from Kentucky) on the American Frontier

 

This week’s featured famous Kentucky Christian introduces the ideas of commitment, achievement and recognition. When your youth group or children’s church learns about Sister Mary Rhodes perhaps they can be led to think about what people whose lives were set apart for Christian service have achieved even when their circumstances appear to have been hard. Perhaps the students can be helped to understand that recognition and rewards for what they do may not come in their lifetime but that that prospect does not, for a Christian who believes in eternal life, diminish either the value of their work or the size of their reward.

Sister Mary Rhodes was a famous Kentucky Christian. She came to Kentucky in 1811 where she started teaching children who had no other access to a school. Soon she was joined by two other women and the school grew into a boarding school. The women and the school were Roman Catholic. The women decided to devote themselves to teaching and to God. They became the first American order of Catholic nuns. Mary Rhodes was the Mother Superior of the Sisters of Loretto for ten years. She must have been a skillful leader because by 1822, the order had grown from three to 160 nuns. By then, the order had spread to nine different locations where nuns from Kentucky were educating children. By the middle of the twentieth century there were 70 communities of Loretto nuns in the United States[1].

These nuns as well as women from other Catholic sisterhoods were vital to the spread of education and to the introduction of Christianity among the Native American tribes in the nineteenth century American west[2]. They were undaunted by the challenges they had to face perhaps because they were confident that they had fully given their lives in the service of Jesus Christ. Some historians think that the nuns who lived and worked on the American frontier are great examples of how women can challenge gender norms with a creativity and finesse that gets big things done[3]. Perhaps a lot of people did not know about their work during their life-times but the impact of what they were able to achieve is still producing results two hundred years later.

By Lesley Barker©2021

 

 

 

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[1] https://www.lorettocommunity.org/about/history/

 

[2] Ann M. Butler, “Nuns on the Frontier”. New York Times. 2012. ONLINE at https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/16/opinion/nuns-on-the-frontier.html. ACCESSED 1/14/2021

 

[3] Erin Blakemore. “How Frontier Nuns Challenged Gender Norms” in JStor Daily. 2018. ONLINE at https://daily.jstor.org/how-frontier-nuns-challenged-gender-norms/. ACCESSED 1/14/2021

An important question based on the life of the tenth president of Liberia for youth groups and children's ministries

 

The story of the tenth president of Liberia can be used in youth and children’s ministries to pose an interesting and important question. Here is a brief summary of his life.

The tenth president of Liberia was Alfred Francis Russell. He was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1817. When he was sixteen, he moved to Liberia. Because he agreed to go to Africa, his grandmother, who was also his owner, set him free. He did not know anything about Africa, its climate or how to survive there when he arrived. Neither did any of the other 200 emancipated American slaves who traveled across the Atlantic Ocean with him, but they learned. Some people caught malaria and other tropical diseases that are not in Kentucky. Some people died. After a while, Russell became a farmer. He grew coffee and sugar cane, two crops that do not grow in Kentucky. He became a Methodist minister and took the Christian message of salvation to the native tribes living in Liberia. Then he became an Episcopalian priest.  He was elected a senator and then vice president. The president resigned while Russell was the vice president which is how he became the tenth president of Liberia.

What do your students think they would do if they had the opportunity to travel far from home if they knew 1) they would probably never get to go home again, 2) they believed that the move would give them the opportunity to prosper and 3) they thought that by moving, they would be able to share their faith with people who had never heard about the Christian message?

By Lesley Barker ©2021