Margaret Allen used to pray about becoming a missionary in Africa. Her prayers were answered but her mission field was in Richmond, Va., among people living in the inner city. In 1986 she began service as a community missionary of the Richmond Baptist Association which has a long history of operating mission centers. Next month she retires after 25 years as a missionary.
Fred Anderson
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As a community missionary in Richmond, she also is under appointment of the Southern Baptist Convention’s North American Mission Board. She recalls the time she told a fellow church member that she was going to Georgia to be appointed a home missionary of the SBC. The friend told her that she used to work for a white woman who told her that there would never be a black home missionary and the friend added, “I wish she were alive to know about you.”
“I have enjoyed being a NAMB missionary,” says Margaret. “I have spoken in many churches and met many people along the way and have been blessed. The hospitality has been great. I have come to realize that everybody everywhere has hands to use to bring God’s Kingdom to earth.”
Reaching retirement, she remains amazed and grateful. “I sometimes think, ‘God, you are something the way you work in history. You have put me in places I never thought I would be and put me with people with whom I would never have thought I would have known.’
“It is amazing to have come from a little farm girl to work in missions and to think how God has used me to help so many people. It is not me. It is God. It is the work of the Lord. He put me here to work.”
Margaret Allen
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Margaret Maxine Jefferson grew up as one of six children on a farm near Townsville some 20 miles away from Henderson, N.C. It was hard work but it taught her many lessons and developed certain gifts which she identifies as “perseverance, patience and encouragement.”
Life on the farm also convinced her that she “was not going to be a farmer or a farmer’s wife.” “I was dreaming beyond the farm.” She once thought of entering the Air Force but her parents said, “No.”
Through the help of her parents and a work study program, she followed her older sisters and enrolled at North Carolina Central University at Durham. She credits her mother as a great encourager. Today all the Jefferson children can look back upon their accomplishments.
Margaret enjoys her visits with her parents and appreciates the country because “it is so peaceful and slow.” It is a great contrast to the inner city neighborhoods where she has devoted her working life.
After college, she lived in New York City, where she worked at Columbia University’s Harlem Hospital as a therapeutic nursery teacher in child psychology. She worked under an accomplished African-American woman child psychiatrist, Margaret Morgan Lawrence. It was preparation for part of her work as a community missionary.
After she moved to Richmond, Paige Chargois, a Baptist minister, recognized her love of missions and told her about a position with the Richmond Baptist Association. She applied and waited. At one point her husband told her that if she wanted a job she better “start hitting the pavement.” “Don’t say that,” she countered, “you are messing with my faith.” “I always believed this job was for me.” She adds, “If you are called of God I know he will provide you with the means to do it.” She got the position.
She began working at the South Richmond Center when it was located at First Baptist Church on Decatur Street, and she has moved with the center from Bainbridge Street Baptist Church to its present location at St. Paul’s Baptist Church South, which occupies the former Weatherford Memorial Baptist Church’s building. It is a grand edifice built to resemble Monticello. “I used to pass by this beautiful building,” says Margaret, “and never imagined that one day I would be working there.”
Three locations and four executive directors of the association later, Margaret Allen is still on the job. “I am from the old school — I stick with a job!”
She has operated pre-school care for children — a field of special expertise for her — as well as a clothing closet, food pantry, sewing and Bible study group and the Hope Builders program which helps teach practical job skills and spirituality. “Some of the women say that they really appreciated the spiritual part of the program because they could get the job skills other places.” People found that they could confide in the missionary without fear of her judging them.
Today she sees people in stores and they come up to her and say, “You probably don’t remember me.”
“I tell them something important that happened in their life and they exclaim, ‘You really do remember me.’ People and relationships mean a lot to me.”
She is full of success stories of persons whose lives were transformed because of the influences of the Baptist Center. Collectively the success stories are Margaret’s story.
She is quick to credit Baptist women who through Woman’s Missionary Union of Virginia have volunteered and supported the center. Ruth Guill, a WMU stalwart, says that the women love her. “If Margaret says to bring one of something, we bring two. Everybody goes the extra mile for her.”
What will Margaret do in retirement? The first months will be spent haunting antique shops and searching Ancestry.com. She will spend more time with her family. She will help at Fifth Street Baptist Church where she is a deacon. And then she would like to start a ministry helping women when their prison terms are over.
Margaret Jefferson Allen will continue to be a missionary. It is her life’s story.
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies, located on the campus of the University of Richmond. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.