Mrs. Wallis, the nobody behind the nobodies

By Elizabeth Prata

Today in these times, there are a lot of women ‘teachers’ claiming that the best or only way to show women you value them in church is if they can lead and preach. The two biggest issues with alleged Bible teachers who go false, are that these women either claim direct revelation, or promote usurpation into a pulpit. Those are the two biggies.

History remembers. Revelation’s Jezebel was directly rebuked by the same Jesus she was allegedly hearing from in her false prophecies. I hope that threw cold water onto her sinful prophecies! Anne Hutchinson of the 1600s usurped and brought chaos to the Puritan colony. Beth Moore and Aimee Byrd stirred division in an entire congregation (Baptist and Presbyterian) with their prancing and their complaining. When women remain in their roles all goes well. When they don’t, chaos reigns.

There are so many wonderful examples of named woman in the Bible who did submit to their roles and as a result the orderly workings of God’s plan proceeded apace, with many souls saved or many brethren edified. Isn’t this what we aim for in life? To glorify God by obeying Him and to love one another as ourselves? Yes!

Was Lydia’s or Martha’s hospitality for nothing? Was Dorcas’ sewing for naught? Was Susannah’s financial support for nothing? Did Anna waste her widowhood? Of course not!

Providentially, I learned of another woman who is engraved on the hearts of many in Baptist history. Martha Wallis of Kettering, England.

Beeby and Martha Wallis were staunch supporters of traveling evangelists, local preachers, and churches. They did all they could to help, including opening their home in Kettering. The Wallis’ were so well known for their hospitality, their home was fondly nicknamed The Gospel Inn. They were faithful members of Andrew Fuller’s church where Mr Beeby was a deacon for 24 years. Mrs Wallis was fully on board with her husband, helping for the last 20 years of hospitable service to those brethren who knocked at their door. Sadly, Mr Beeby departed this life on April 24, 1792.

Widowhood in the 1700s was no easy path. Even though she was still mourning, Mrs. Wallis continued the tradition of opening her home to the brethren for lodging, meetings, and support.

In October of 1792 there was one particular meeting a local group of pastors that we know the details of to this day. At the prompting of William Carey, 12 pastors, one deacon, and one student, 14 in all, gathered at Wallis home AKA ‘The Gospel Inn’, and were served humbly by Mrs. Wallis, just as she had done these 20 years past for many others.

The group was to discuss how to catalyze the local ministers to support missions abroad. The Carey story is one that books and books written could not finish the glorious story. When William started out, circulating the idea that the Matthew 18 commission was a duty to fulfill in those 1700s times, he was called a “miserable enthusiast”. His group was thought of as “nobodies from nowhere”. Why?

Most of the men assembled led churches of fewer than 25 souls. Their congregations, indeed, the local area itself, was impoverished, illiterate, and ill-equipped to launch a global missions concept. Yet these men were undeterred by their congregation’ circumstances.

Mrs Wallis was undeterred as well, despite the loss of her beloved husband. By that standard, Mrs Wallis, was as far as possible from what Jen Wilkin calls “visible leadership”, hosting then retreating so the men could discuss. Joseph Timms, who was a wool-stapler, had just been elected to fill Mr. Wallis’ place as a deacon, and Timms acted act in Mrs. Wallis’ stead as official host. Martha Wallis was a nobody behind the nobodies!

Here we read from Carey’s great-grandson Pearce Carey,

“For the evening fellowship and bounty and business the ministers were welcomed, as so often before, into the hospitable home of the Wallis’s, the home that they used to call ‘ Gospel Inn,’ so many preachers having been guests there through the twenty years of its standing. Deacon Beeby Wallis himself had died just a while before : nonetheless his widow gathered them to her table, arranging, it would seem, with Joseph Timms (a wool-stapler) who had just been elected to fill her husband’s place on the Kettering diaconate, to act in her stead as nominal host.”

And what was the fruit of that propitious meeting? Global Missions! It was here the first missionaries decided to send, here that the organization that became The Baptist Mission Society was born. Here was the desire for souls burst into flames. Here was the commitment to pursue the Great Commission. In a hospitable widow’s living room.

“After this fellowship and bounty they adjourned for the day’s chief business into the cosy lean-to back-parlour. The fire was lit within him, [William Staughton] always said, in Widow Wallis’s back- parlour. So American as-well as British Baptist Missions were in the womb of Kettering that night.” (Source “William Carey“)

How beautiful for a woman to provide a place where matters could be discussed, organized, cemented in the bosoms of men who go forth in loving honor for the Lord!

Mrs. Beeby Wallis continued her support and her hospitality until her death at about 1812. Her will bequeathed £400 to the minister and deacons of the Particular Baptist Congregation; as to £2 10s. to the minister for preaching occasionally in neighbouring villages, £2 10s. in Bibles and hymn books for poor of congregation, £5 to poor of congregation, £4 10s. in repair of Meeting House and residue for minister. (Source). She continued to take care of her people even after death.

The historic Wallis House is now the “Carey Mission House.” A featured attraction is the “Martha Wallis Court,” now a residential facility of the elderly. The room in which fourteen men met, on October 2, 1792, to form the Baptist Missionary Society, still contains the table and chairs they used.

That hospitable house, the Gospel Inn, is a place of honor today, to which many come to view, to see the spot where God moved momentously.

“There gathered thousands in 1842 to hold the first jubilee of modern missions, when commemorative medals were struck. There in 1892 the centenary witnessed a still vaster assemblage.” (Source)

“The little parlor which witnessed the birth of this society was the most honored room in the British Islands, or in any part of Christendom; in it was formed the first society of modern times for spreading the gospel among the heathen, the parent of all the great Protestant missionary societies in existence.” (Source)

There is a plaque in front. It reads:

“In this house on Octr. 2nd 1792, a meeting was held to form a society for propagating the Gospel among the heathen and £13.2s.6d was contributed for that purpose. Andrew Fuller was elected Secretary and Reynold Hogg Treasurer. William Carey to whose sermon at Nottingham in May of the same year, the movement was due, embarked for India on June 13th 1793. This meeting marks the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society and the inauguration of modern foreign missions.“

Yet millions of single women, (Gladys Aylward), widows (Anna, Martha Wallis), married couples (Prisca and Aquila, Katy and Martin Luther, Susie and Charles Spurgeon), and mothers (Mary, Monica) have helped shape Christianity on this side of the veil and have honored the Lord on the other side. We don’t serve in order to receive a plaque and to be remembered, but the Lord allows honor due those with whom He is pleased in His Son’s name. Mrs Wallis is one of those, her ‘simple’ service celebrated and respected to this day.

No service for the Lord is simple. No service is hidden. No service is lowly. Spiritual strumpets like Beth Moore, Jen Wilkin, Aimee Byrd and others prance around the pulpit stage, demanding to be installed in places where God has not intended, rejecting as useless and lowly the honorable biblical service God set before them. These women forget that on his knees, Jesus washed feet.