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In 1996 Sisters In Service began empowering indigenous Christian women to light their worlds for Christ. Today, SIS consists of 20 chapters across the United States, hundreds of advocates at large, and other advocacy groups formed in women’s Bible studies or women’s departments of churches. They network abroad with indigenous projects, bringing resources to make real the ministry dreams of oppressed Christian women around the world. Here’s a conversation World Pulse copy editor Deann Alford had with SIS President and CEO Michele Rickett.

Q: Why do women and girls suffer more in a society? The powerless always suffer more. The psalmist said poverty is the ruin of the poor. Whether it’s the power of money, decision-making power, or power of opportunity or friends, [women are] the most vulnerable. Ever since the fall of man and woman, the enemy has targeted women and children. That war has been going on ever since, and it’s meant disproportionate suffering for women and girls.

Q: What happens when the gospel is introduced? Wherever the gospel takes root in a culture, the lives of women and girls improve because Jesus valued women as well as men, little boys as well as little girls. If I have a boy and a girl, they’re both going to school. I’m going to educate and feed them the same.

Q: How does inequality manifest in cultures without the gospel? The girls of India are not eating protein. If there’s an egg or a little bit of chicken, it goes to the boys. So girls fall behind physically, emotionally and educationally. They don’t have a hint that God created them, loves and treasures them. God is equally incensed when there’s no one to stand in the gap. That’s what Sisters In Service exists to do: raise up voices that will be as incensed as the Lord is at this kind of injustice.

Q: Do SIS advocates themselves go abroad? If God gives liberty to go and is calling them, they need to go. But the vast majority of SIS women in the US will not go. They’re moms and working women. But they will send a representative from their group to see the project whenever possible and then to keep the women informed in prayer. Prayer advocacy is a big part of what we do.

Q: How have your years as a missionary in Africa impacted SIS? Upon completing our assignment we returned to the US. I had a much clearer idea of the two kinds of poverty God was calling me to address: actual poverty of resources for his servants and poverty of vision and inspiration for North American women. I continued to learn about the disproportionate suffering of women and girls, about the history of women’s involvement in global outreach, and about exciting initiatives of indigenous women to extend God’s love.

Q: Do any American men support the work? How has your husband, Daniel, responded? A number of our major supporters and board members are men. Many men have been strong advocates to their areas of influence—elders of churches, missions pastors, businessmen. One talked to his boss, a Christian, who has given corporate funds to Sisters In Service. My husband is my biggest cheerleader and encourager. He has willingly released me to spend my efforts on this calling, in part, because I strongly supported his calling for 25 years while our children were still young, and I still do.

Q: How does women’s ministry differ in the US from Africa and Asia? This is a gross generalization, but I know when I ask the director of a US church’s women’s ministry [to describe its activities], they’re going to say, “We have a Bible study every week, we do a Christmas outreach, and we do a women’s retreat.” When I ask the same question of a Christian woman in Africa, Iraq or Egypt, or if I had asked it of a Christian woman in 1900, they would have described to me their ministry: orphanages, working in prisons, taking food to refugees.

Q: Has it been a struggle to change attitudes? For example, when I spoke with the director of a large church’s women’s ministry, she told me to talk to the missions pastors because “The missions department doesn’t mess with women’s ministry, and I don’t mess with missions.”

I said, “You and I really have a common goal—to bring these women to completion in Christ. They can’t be mature in Christ when, as they lean on the Savior’s breast daily in Bible study, they don’t hear his heart beating for the unreached, for the nations.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “You’ve got to help me,” she said. “I can’t lead these women where I’m not going. Start with me.”

She went with me to India. In three months she came up with the other half of what was needed for the Dalit women’s center. Every woman of her church feels like they have a share of reaching the unreached in south India. If they’re not hearing Jesus’ heart, something’s got to change. She will never think of her women’s ministry the same again. Her borders have been expanded to reach the whole world.

Q: Why aren’t Western women more involved? They’re afraid that it’s going to be too much to ask, be too hard, that it will take over their lives. What I try to bring them is the message that you can’t do everything, but you must do something.