The Colorado Missions Offering in Honor of Nicy Murphy is named for a woman who, at the beginning of the Colorado Baptist General Convention, focused the attention of the local church on missions—state, North American, and international. Miss Nicy served the newly formed convention as the first Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) Executive Director.
Southern Baptist Churches were planted all over Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota in the early 1950s. It was evident a new convention was needed to serve these churches and the churches in Western Nebraska. The convention organized in 1955, and with it, a convention-wide WMU. Officers were elected, and they set out to find the woman who would lead them. Virjama Hamilton, the president, later told Nicy, “I feel so sure that the Holy Spirit suggested you to me because no one else mentioned you…I did not even know that you were doing WMU work.” The two had become friends during their time in graduate school.
Nicy resigned her position as assistant to the Oklahoma WMU Executive Director. The position had equipped her well for the administrative tasks, missions promotion, and leadership development she would be responsible for in Colorado. She wrote, “Reluctantly I resigned the position in Oklahoma to launch into a new, exciting venture which would test and put into play all the spiritual resources and practical experience which had been building up over the years.”
Preparation for Serving in WMU
Nicy Murphy grew up in a Christian home—her mother a “staunch Baptist” and her father a member of the Christian church. Her mother held missionaries in high esteem, especially cousins who were missionaries in China. Nicy read missionary biographies and other books on missions.
The teen attended “a church camp slanted toward youth” in Cimarron County when she was sixteen. She decided to follow God wherever he led. She wrote, “This meant the need for a college education. That seemed an impossible dream because of the depressed economy. But Mother found a way.” Nicy worked her way through Oklahoma Baptist University by teaching. She graduated in 1935 with a BA degree. A work scholarship from a Texas associational WMU allowed her to attend Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. She graduated with a master’s degree in religious education in 1937. She expected the next step to be an appointment with the Foreign Mission Board. That did not happen; the Board was acutely short on funds and had nearly stopped sending missionaries.
Instead, Nicy earned another degree, ready to serve God in a full-time capacity. No doors opened. She taught in a northeastern Oklahoma school and in Hooker, Oklahoma, where her brother was superintendent. After three years in Hooker, she declined the contract for the next year. She told her brother she was going into full-time Christian work, but she didn’t know where.
Word got out that she was available to serve a local church in religious education. Vacancies were created in churches, just as they were in other professions, during World War II. She served two churches, the first for six years and the second for three. Nicy loved serving the local church, and “could have gladly served there for the rest of my life…,” she wrote in 1988. God moved her to the state’s WMU position, another step in her preparation for Colorado.
Miss Nicy faithfully served Colorado churches for eleven years. Among her responsibilities were missions promotion, equipping leadership, and directing girls’ mission camps. She said, “As the first Executive Director of the WMU for the CBGC, I had the unique opportunity of having some foundations in leadership training, strengthening of organizational structures in the local churches and associations, and establishing basic principles and procedures for GA [Girls in Action] and Acteen camping.”
Serving five and a half states meant constant traveling. She relied on volunteer age-level leaders to help her equip new leaders and increase the local church’s commitment to missions at every level. “One of my most fulfilling experiences,” she said in 2005, “has been in seeing giggling little girls and sometimes rebellious teens grow up into fine responsible leaders.” She also enjoyed helping young women from states in which WMU was firmly established, become missions leaders in their own church.
Change of Venue
In a planned exit, the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana left the Colorado Baptist General Convention to create the Northern Plains Baptist Convention in 1967. Northern Plains asked Nicy Murphy to serve as their executive director. It was a difficult decision. She was happy in Colorado. She knew the work would be less stressful with only one state to focus her efforts. And, she had just bought a small house in Littleton and was enjoying fixing it up. She wrote, “All the while I was making the improvements, I was hoping the Lord would let me stay. I felt deep in my heart, however, that I would soon leave it behind.”
Leave it, she did. When she received the call asking her to make the move, she said, “I have already prayed about it and know what my decision must be.” Though she was obeying God, the actual leaving was challenging. Later, she reflected on that transition. “As I look back I think how foolish I was to be so reluctant to accept the known will of God. I spent nine happy and fulfilling years in the Northern Plains…Only mandatory retirement forced me to give up the position at the end of 1976.”
Retired to Serve
Miss Nicy returned to Colorado at her retirement. She wasted no time getting involved in her local church, Arapahoe Road Baptist Church, and in the state WMU. She taught a senior adult women Sunday school class and taught in the church’s English as a Second Language ministry.
Sydney Portis, the Colorado WMU Executive Director, described Nicy’s influence after her return to Colorado. Sydney said her predecessor was “a real influence on my mission-mindedness. She’s been a blessing to me in all the things she did for me. She was willing to help in any way she could. She is a good example, I think, of what a person should be in this work as they retire.”
Twelve years into retirement, serving God through her local church, her convention, and writing, Miss Murphy described her life as a jigsaw that was almost a complete picture. She lived another 24 years and continued to serve in Colorado and Oklahoma. In 1997, she moved to Guyman, Oklahoma. Though she was legally blind, she continued to teach Sunday school and mentor young women. Some of those young ladies served as her nighttime caretakers.
State Missions Offering
In 1976, the same year she retired from the Northern Plains Baptist Convention, Colorado Baptists named the state missions offering in her honor. It was a recognition of the foundation of missions engagement she built in beginning years of the Colorado Baptist General Convention.
The annual offering is collected to support missions work in the state. In 2005, Nicy well into her 90s, stated the value of missions to the local church. She said, “My deep desire for Woman’s Missionary Union is that it never lose or diminish its responsibility of providing missionary education or the church. It is the church’s basic organization charged with the responsibility of providing information about the needs of people locally and worldwide. When church members are made aware of starving children, unmet needs for supplies, and staff or schools, hospitals and orphanages, for help in better farming methods or for new church buildings, members are prompted to pray, to give financially and to send or go themselves. This naturally contributes to spiritual growth, both for individuals and the church.”
Her final encouragement to Colorado Baptists was, “My prayer is that future generations will never lose their excitement and enthusiasm for seeing lives changed, new churches started, and older churches reading out to plant new ones. At the same time we must keep our minds and hearts open to the necessity of teaching the millions in other countries who have never heard of Jesus.”
Nicy Murphy’s prayers are partially answered each year when Colorado give to the state missions offering named in her honor. The funds are available to support Colorado’s local church’s community outreaches, equip seminary students and pastors, to help Disaster Relief volunteers do the work to which they are called, and to teach children and youth at camp.
The investment in missions begun by Nicy Murphy more than 50 years ago continues decades after her passing into eternity.
Claudean Boatman is the volunteer Colorado WMU Executive Director. She grew up under the mentorship of Sydney Portis and had the privilege of interviewing Nicy Murphy.
