Wesleyan Life - Spring 2009 Back to Wesleyan Life Home

Interview with Martha Blackburn

Martha Blackburn is General Director of Wesleyan Women, a department of The Wesleyan Church that provides curriculum, training, and events for approximately 30,000 women across the Church.

WL: I’m sure our readers would like to know about your background.

MB: I am the eighth of nine children born to a Wesleyan pastor and his wife, and raised in Clarksburg, W.Va.

WL:Where did you attend college?

MB: I attended nearby Marshall University for several reasons, including the fact that I could live at home and not have the expense of boarding along with tuition. With my father’s meager salary that was a real plus! Another was that nine young people from my church attended Marshall.

WL:You have a teaching background.

MB: Yes. I taught elementary school in the Appleton and Eau Claire, Wis. school systems, taught high school at the former Frankfort Bible College academy, and was an adjunct professor at Oklahoma Wesleyan University in Bartlesville, Okla.

WL: And you were a pastor’s wife.

MB: My first husband, Bob Murphy, was a Wesleyan pastor. During the time we served at Appleton, Wis., Bob was diagnosed with a kidney disease and went through an unsuccessful transplant. At the end of four years, we moved to Eau Claire, Wis. The chief of staff at an Eau Claire hospital attended the church. Bob later had a successful transplant, but succumbed to complications from the kidney disease.

WL: How did you develop such an interest in women’s ministries?

MB: As a pastor’s wife, I had an extensive women’s ministry, which included women from fourteen area churches. Following Bob’s death, I began to travel and speak to women’s groups, and continued to teach at OWU. In God’s providence I met and later married, Dr. Jim Blackburn, a former missionary to Haiti and then with American Bible Society. We moved to Indiana. In 1994, former Wesleyan Women General Director Nancy Heer invited me to be her assistant. Following her retirement in 2003, I was elected General Director.

WL: How has the department’s ministry changed over the years?

MB: In its earlier years, the women’s ministry of the Church was called the “Home and Foreign Missionary Society.” Its purpose was primarily one of raising funds for local church and overseas missions. Former General Director JoAnne (Drury) Cutler—predecessor to Nancy Heer —began to expand its emphasis to include women in our churches who came from non-faith backgrounds. Believing that spiritually and emotionally healthy women contribute to the health of local churches, Wesleyan Women’s ministry has promoted women having vital relationships with each other and with the Word of God.

WL: Wesleyan Women is coordinating an anti-human trafficking training in September. How did this event evolve?

MB: Since social justice is a Wesleyan heritage, I couldn’t think of a better issue than taking a stand against the criminal activity of approximately twenty-seven million people who are victims of human trafficking. As I prayed for the Lord to raise someone in the Church to lead in that fight, the Lord seemed to burden my heart to be that person. My next question was, “Okay, Lord, what should we do?” The need for a credible training event began to unfold. The Faith Alliance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAAST)—which teams with such organizations as World Hope International, The Salvation Army, and World Relief—was contacted, and they made training curricula available that has forty authors with expertise on the subject. Wesleyan Women will be hosting a September 10–12, 2009, training that will call Wesleyans (men and women) from churches across North America to: 1. Learn about trafficking issues, 2. Learn what to do to fight trafficking, and 3. Learn how to be effective in that effort. We will train people whom we pray will return to their churches to teach others.

— Jerry Brecheisen, Managing Editor

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