A LITTLE WORK is done by our young people in neighboring towns, etc.,” replied Mrs. R. to a query from one desiring to train for Christian service, “and this is the thing that puts into experience the lessons learned. Those who really get the benefit of this work usually are the residents—staying with us till the Lord opens a door for them. Most of the young people who have gone from us have done so when a door opened for ministry somewhere.”
The year after the work in Kenosha was opened, another mission was opened in Racine, Wisconsin, where several students from the Homes ministered throughout the following years. Then in 1918, during the time Mrs. R. was in Toronto, one of the junior ministers of the Faith Homes rented a little hall in Waukegan, then a city of 19,000, and began to hold meetings there. Upon her return Mrs. R. encouraged some of the young people to go along and help in the street meetings and various services. Well-intentioned as was the effort, it was a bit premature and almost proved abortive. After a while the hall was closed, though cottage meetings were continued. A second hall was later secured and meetings started with little better success. All in all, the venture was not very well organized, and somehow there was “a lack of faith” if there was “not lack of courage.”
At this juncture, in the spring of 1919, Mrs. R. offered to pick up the matter. The Lord, she knew, was interested in Waukegan and would be pleased to have a “Branch Work,” as it were, of the Faith Homes in that city which would serve as an outlet for ministry for some of the young people who by their knowledge and experience were now suited for some practical experience.
Throughout the summer of 1919, Mrs. R. encouraged a number of the Faith Home young people to participate regularly in the street meetings there each Saturday night. The Lord, however, indicated that these young people should be more than “just street workers,” for, “no ministry could preach to people long, seeing no fruit, having no personal attention to those preached to, unless he is so experienced he doesn’t get one-sided in a period of such work.” Furthermore, precious as ministering on the street is, unless it is followed up, it “does shallow work.”
Therefore, with the coming of the fall (1919), when the street meetings would normally close, the time seemed propitious for doing something of a permanent nature in Waukegan. “Now, do you young people who go to Waukegan to just have a Saturday night meeting not get lonely for those people you minister to?” Mrs. R. asked those who had been helping there in a letter dated September 26.
“Do you not long to find them helped in their daily lives just like you know?
“In what way will you get the fruit for your labors if you drop it every Saturday night? Can’t you follow them up in any way?..
“Are you hungry to see souls saved? Would you be glad to be one of those who saw a door to do something for My Waukegan people, at hand?...
“What one among this number is willing to go on the altar and do something more valuable, more permanent, of more benefit than you have been doing?
“The Lord Jesus Christ has a plan that will interest you and please you, unless your heart is not ready for souls, or God, or unless He calls you to something else.”
The proposition which Mrs. R. presented was that those definitely interested in ministering together in Waukegan should first of all ask themselves some searching questions such as:
“Of what nature is your personal call? That is, are you just eager to preach and to be public in the pulpit? Is that your call? Or are you eager to win souls, help souls, bless them, and are you really in earnest to bear the burden of being patient with those who are weak and backward? Is it God’s work and God’s people that interest you, or your own development?”
Having searched their hearts as to the purity of their motive in engaging in this ministry, it was to be understood that in undertaking this deputational work in Waukegan, it was to be something in addition to their secular duties and spiritual service in the Homes, which were not to be neglected.
The principle of God’s plan in His ministry, so the Lord indicated, is: “Give your life to Jesus, whatever the work is, and don’t under any condition consider it ignoble to work by your hands. Yet, in case your life is filled with preaching, intercession, preparations, and personal work for souls, so you do not have time for the liberty of your hands, in daily occupation, then to be wholly confined to your ministerial work is best. For the real training of the ministry is the simplicity of a well-spent, devoted, daily life, always, in all places, doing your work because of, and for Jesus, and every bit of recreation (which you are entitled to sometimes) being for Him, unto Him. That is the true ministry.
“But, in addition, you must have a great spirit of self-sacrifice. No child of God, no Christian, is ever fully prepared for the ministry till he can bear the stress of a busy life and yet keep in prayer and keep in God, so his prayer and life and Bible study measure up. Daily opportunities come in these Homes for faith, prayer, love, grace, and real service for souls, and for other things. Keep to your ministry; see that at this time your life is given to His vineyard, and the Homes are part of that vineyard.”
The young people who felt called of God to work in Waukegan were to do so as a team. All of them were to be “equal as ministers.” To begin with, they were to spend— and did—many days of prayer together for the proposed mission.
Then, two by two, they were to engage in an extensive door-to-door visitation program throughout the city, advertising the meetings and personally inviting people to them. Mrs. R. gave minute instructions regarding this campaign: e.g., the men were to go into certain sections such as the business districts and “tough” neighborhoods, while the women were to canvass the residential areas.
With the opening of the services themselves, the young people were to take turns in leading them and in the actual preaching. In other words, all were to pray the work through together, labor together, minister together, and trust the Lord together for the expenses incident to the mission, each one feeling personally responsible for the work.
“I would like those who are interested in Waukegan,” Mrs. R. wrote, “to regard the actual will of God, not go by feelings,
‘I would like to do this or that.’ Under no circumstances say, ‘I’ll do a few things, help when I feel like it.’
“What are you? A servant of God or just sort of a beginner in consecration? Is your heart really given?
“Well, the ones I want are those who say, ‘Jesus, I want to be in Your vineyard, and I give myself for ever. I will do the thing that will bless Your work and not think of just myself, my developments.’
“And yet the soul that does say that is the one that does develop, and no one of these young people have really seen Jesus in their call and ministry, if their cry is a chance for experience and development and not a cry to help souls, but if you help souls and do it for God, you get to love them.”
Although Mrs. R. indicated she would help and guide these young people, as the Lord led her to do so, the Lord made it very clear that if the project was to succeed, it would have to be by their faith—”or not at all.”
So the Waukegan Full Gospel work was launched by a gospel team composed of some eight or ten workers.
Foremost in the group were Mr. and Mrs. Rex B. Andrews who had been engaged in the work of the Lord for a number of years. Mr. Andrews had first visited the Faith Homes in the fall of 1913, just after the Robinsons had come back from Montreal. In April of the next year Mr. and Mrs. Andrews with their two children, Carolyn and Charles, came to live in the Faith Homes at the express invitation of Mrs. R.
“Those days,” Mrs. Andrews recalls, “my nerves were at the breaking point.” Mrs. R. was used to help her greatly. Shortly after she arrived, one day Mrs. R. sat down with her on the davenport in the parlor and began to talk to her about her needs. Without having been told a word, Mrs. R. by the Spirit of God discerned the cause of some of her tensions or strain—for one thing, trying to be something spiritually beyond her present experience. The result of this “little” teaching was that she was brought out of her strain, an excellent example of Mrs. R.’s fruitful, personal ministry. Naturally, Mrs. Andrews was occupied primarily with their children in those years, (a third child, Faith, the only child born in the Faith Homes, later completed the family circle), but Mr. Andrews was received as the junior minister or vessel of the work (July 4, 1914). This being so, and Mr. Andrews having had a real call from God to work in Waukegan, he was in a sense to be the leader among equals.
Others included in this group were: Helen Innes, whose conversion has been narrated and who had already ministered in the Racine and Kenosha assemblies;
Stella Leggett, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. James Leggett, who had been converted in the Homes in 1912 and shortly thereafter had been engaged in secretarial work for Mrs. R.;
Minnie McConnell, who had been associated with the work in Toronto and had recently come to Zion for a period of training;
John Robinson (no relation to Mrs. R.), a native of England, a graduate of Moody Bible Institute and a student at Wheaton College, who had come to the Homes as a result of Mrs. R’s ministry in Wheaton some years before;
Marie Wegman, a German Swiss, who had migrated to Zion City as a girl, had attended the first tent meetings, and after her conversion some time later had made the Faith Homes her church home;
Joseph Wannenmacher, born in Hungary, who had been a devout Roman Catholic before he was converted to Christ and, at the same time, instantaneously healed of tuberculosis of the bone about two and a half years before. A man of much prayer, Joseph was an exceedingly zealous witness for Christ and an effective personal worker.
This gospel team was very earnest, and from the start souls were saved, the sick healed, and believers filled with the Spirit. After meeting for a year or so in an upstairs hall right in the heart of Waukegan, Mr. Andrews purchased a library building from the nearby Great Lakes Naval Training Station and hauled it to Waukegan where it was rebuilt at 18 Philippa Avenue. By the summer of 1921 it was sufficiently ready for the meetings to be transferred to it. Thus the Full Gospel Tabernacle was established and one of the great desires of Mrs. R. was fulfilled—to see these young people, her joy and crown, launch out into the work of the Lord.
As a true “mother in Israel” Mrs. R. watched over and encouraged the “Waukegan young people,” as this band of workers was called. While she kept before them the vision of needy souls, at the same time she constantly reminded them of the need in their lives for knowing Jesus more greatly, and that “Jesus being sought always brings His blessing.” Ever they were commanded, “Be stedfast toward the Lord that you want Him.”
If she warned them that they were in danger of putting their vineyard work ahead of their seeking and wanting Christ alone, she also taught them how to consecrate that work to Christ and that if they did that, God would prosper the vineyard as a natural result.
If she discerned by the Spirit of God, and told them so, that they did not love souls enough, “Mother” Robinson also told them, according to the knowledge God gave her, that they were “putting up a pretty good fight—and getting used to it”—i.e., fighting the good fight of faith.
Sometimes Mrs. R. gave personal help to one and another of the workers. Referring to two of the number who were very strong physically, she said they also “must be strong spiritually to bear the cross and dare to step out spiritually.” To another, who later worked in Waukegan, she advised not to reflect and worry about what she had said in her preaching. Once she was finished, she should commit her talk to the Lord and not be concerned about what she had said.
In teaching the group once, she praised one of the young men very highly as a preacher: He knows how to preach, is one of the best preachers around here. Then straightening up—a characteristic mannerism with her—she added, “But I am to say, he doesn’t always practice what he preaches.” (Many years later he himself told this story, and when the congregation laughed, he said, “Don’t laugh! The rest of you are the same.”)
(Often when Mrs. R. was used of God to teach an individual, she began by praising him, perhaps singling out some quality or ability in which he really excelled. It was what followed the straightening of her whole body and the words, “But I am to say,” which one awaited with wonder, possible fear, and which left no room for boasting or pride of any kind.)
Throughout the years an outstanding feature of the Waukegan work continued to be—even to the present day—its street meetings which have always been productive in the salvation of precious souls. Located only four miles from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station with its thousands of sailors, multitudes of whom naturally spend much of their off-time in this city, Waukegan has provided an unusual opportunity to witness to Christ to these as well as to the residents. In addition to these listeners, often people who were passing through the city on what for years was the main route from Chicago to Milwaukee, Sheridan Road, would stop to listen. How many of these transients heard the gospel and believed then or at some later time, only eternity will reveal.
There was one outstanding experience which the workers had in this respect, however, which taught them how God was working. They had been praying most earnestly for some time for souls to be saved. Then one day the Lord told them that they had prayed enough to pray in one hundred souls. Now there had been no hundred souls added to the Waukegan congregation. Therefore, they could only conclude that although they might have prayed sufficiently, they evidently had not mixed their prayers with faith.
About that time two transients stopped to listen at the street corner, were converted, and then drove off. A year later these two returned to the street meeting, and they had a story to tell. After their conversion, they had witnessed in their home church, located down the line on the North Shore, and as a result a revival had broken out and ninety-eight souls had been saved! All because these two had heard and accepted the gospel the year before.
The original team of workers, one by one, answered the call of God to other fields of service:
Stella Leggett became increasingly occupied as Mrs. R’s secretary and as a minister in the Faith Homes.
Minnie McConnell returned to Toronto where she later conducted a home for the benefit of evangelists, ministers, and missionaries.
Marie Wegman and John Robinson were married and later went to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where they faithfully and successfully labored for many years.
Immediately after their marriage in 1921, Helen Innes and Joseph Wannenmacher went to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they still are laboring for the Master. Burdened for his own Hungarian people, the Wannenmachers began their work among them. Every Hungarian in Milwaukee received a copy of the Gospel of John in his native tongue. Many came to the mission and were born again. Later, English services were started. As the congregation grew, it “mothered” a half dozen other assemblies in the metropolitan area of Milwaukee. These, in turn, have started other churches. In addition to this, the Wannenmachers have been instrumental in sending more than fifty young people into full-time Christian service in this and foreign hands.
With the departure of the members of this gospel team to their respective fields of labor, the Andrews became the settled pastors of the Full Gospel Tabernacle. True, Mrs. R. encouraged and directed other young people of the Faith Homes to go to Waukegan to help there in various capacities from time to time, but the Andrews assumed the leadership of the work. Mrs. R., however, continued her deep interest in the Waukegan work and sought in various ways to help the Andrews personally and in their ministry. For example, “the fire of faith” and love burned in Mrs. R.’s heart to reach sinners, and God especially burdened her for the many unsaved who daily passed through the railroad stations of Waukegan—”souls God cared for,” many of whom would not get the help they needed or even might be lost if they were not witnessed to by some means. Consequently, the Lord led her to provide tracts to be placed in a box in one of the stations.
“Tracts indeed seem a small way to serve Him,” Mrs. R. wrote Mr. Andrews who had volunteered to keep the box supplied with tracts which she would personally select and furnish for this purpose, “but tracts launched with faith expectant of His using them have sometimes accomplished more than meetings….
“Can you not believe as these tracts are put in the station, the right person at the right time will get the right tract and that souls may come to Christ, not by coming to the mission only, but just to Christ, and in what way or by what means He provides? Won’t you pray over the tracts and papers before they go? And lift up your heart to Me occasionally about them when they have gone? And won’t you be responsible for them, wanting them to go on time, etc., wanting fruit for Jesus?
“You see when I tell you about these tracts, I tell you something that doesn’t concern our meetings at all. It presents to you the question whether those passing strangers souls are precious to you, whether all souls press upon your soul for salvation....
“Is it souls you are after, or good meetings? What is the real burden of your heart? Are you wanting souls? Or have you sought your success in meetings, and in your mission? Why aren’t you in some way seeing the souls outside of meetings? Souls that are not likely to get into a mission at first, and not even yours, perhaps, anywhere, where souls are, but especially when God gives you any chance for them, for then God helps you to help. ..
“The Lord has amazed me in the way He has been talking about the people that go through that depot,” added Mrs. R. in a p.s. to this letter. “My tracts are mostly for Christians, but He put them nearly all away for tracts for sinners. He did put in a few for Christians, but He says that we don’t know how the people are without the knowledge of Christ. They are real out-and-out sinners, never hear the gospel. The Lord says we don’t realize how wicked the world is begun to be. Naturally this stirs me up further over our little opportunity.”
In the same postscript Mrs. R. made a comment which was very significant regarding the future ministry of the Full Gospel Tabernacle. Evidently Mr. Andrews had expressed to Mrs. R. the thought that he believed the Lord desired Leonard Johnson, who had been training in the Faith Homes, to help in Waukegan. In response to this thought, Mrs. R. commented “that it seems to us God is leading you about Leonard.” Subsequently Leonard Johnson went to help in the Waukegan assembly. After the Andrews left in 1928, he became its faithful shepherd and has “departed not out of the tabernacle,” but with his wife, Constance Andresen, who also trained in the Homes, continues to minister there.
Not only have many souls been saved in Waukegan itself as a result of the work which Mrs. R. was used of God to launch there, but from this one assembly about thirty have gone into full-time service in various parts of the United States and to India and South America.
“Thus out of small beginnings greater things have been produced by His hand that made all things of nothing, and gives being to all things that are, and as one small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many, yea, in some sort to our whole nation; let the glorious name of Jehovah have all the praise.”ⁿ
Note: Of Plymouth Plantation, Bradford, William, Edited by Samuel Eliot Morison, p. 236.
Be the first to react on this!
Martha Wing Robinson (1874 - 1936)
Martha held meetings which touched people to return to the work of the service of God. The Robinsons opened a "Faith Home" where people would come for teaching and prayer. Like George Muller they depended on God to provide what was needed for expenses. Thousands came through her home and healings were a regular occurrence. Her husband died in April of 1916, but Martha continued in her ministry. She had a very sharp gift of discernment and regularly told people the secrets of their hearts. She often had directive prophetic words for those under her care. Many young people came to the home for training and went into the mission fields and evangelistic endeavours.Martha Wing Robinson died June 26, 1936. Shortly before she died she stated her life's message "Nothing matters but Christ Jesus." Her whole life was spent in the service of God and for the Glory of His Son Jesus. She had seen many healed, saved, delivered, empowered and sent out. She was truly a mother in Israel. In 1962 Gordon P. Gardiner wrote a book about her life called "Radiant Glory" because that is how she lived her life.