Clear Lake A.M.E. Women's Ministry

The Women's Missionary Society (WMS) of the A.M.E. Church exists to:

	Help women and youth grow in the knowledge of God and Christian experience through Jesus Christ.
	Promote fellowship with women of other lands through cooperative relations
	Foster missionary activities of the local church and overseas.

The first woman missionary of the A.M.E. Church was Sarah Allen, wife of Richard Allen, the founder and first Bishop of the A.M.E. Church. Her first missionary project was to look after the physical condition of the preachers who her husband sent out into the field. This was done because many of the preachers returned in very poor physical condition, and Sarah Allen organized the women of the church to mend their clothes and provide them hot nourishing meals when they came to make their reports.

As time passed, more and more women with a missionary spirit came together in organized groups in attempts to meet the many needs evident around them. The two main organizations were the Parent Mite Missionary Society (est. 1874) and the Women's Home and Foreign Missionary Society (est. 1895). In 1944, the desired consolidation was completed, providing us with the organizational structure and name we know as the Women's Missionary Society.

Women's Missionary Society Mission Statement

We, the Women's Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, do endeavor to make possible opportunities and resources to meet the changing needs and concerns of people throughout the world do ordain this Society and offer a fellowship so strong, a message so convincing and so enthusiastically contagious, that the gospel through us will be at work in the world.

The Mission of the A.M.E. Church is to minister to the spiritual, intellectual, physical and emotional, and environmental needs of all people by spreading Christ's liberating gospel through word and deed. At every level of the Connection and in every local church, the A.M.E. Church shall in every local church, engage in carrying out the spirit of the original Free African Society, out of which the A.M.E. Church evolved: that is to seek out and save the lost, and serve the needy through a continuing program of (1) preaching the gospel, (2) feeding the hungry, (3) clothing the naked, (4) housing the homeless, (5) cheering the fallen, (6) providing jobs for the jobless, (7) administering to the needs of those in prisons, hospitals, nursing homes, asylums and mental institutions, senior citizens' homes, caring for the sick, the shut-in, the mentally and socially disturbed, and (8) encouraging thrift and economic advancement.

The Purpose of the Women's Missionary Society

The purpose of the organization shall be to help people to grow in the knowledge and experience of God through His Son Jesus Christ, through continual Christian training, as well as individual and collective mission works, thus challenging them to respond to God's redemptive plan in the world.

	To seek fellowship with people in all lands by initiating and maintaining a support system that will enable all people to achieve fulfillment.
	To provide materials and programs which will enable every member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church to become mission conscious and involved in the same way.
	To coordinate and unify the work of our connectional structure for maximum involvement and effectiveness.
	To be the advocate for editorial and educational arms of the society.
	To serve as an advocate for human rights.