Wednesday in the Word

what the Bible means and how we know

women's ministry

45+ Sample Icebreakers

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45+ Sample Icebreakers | WednesdayintheWord.com

Tired of the same old icebreakers?  Are you using the same 3 interesting facts about yourself at every group and gathering?  Here are 45 sample icebreakers to kick start your thinking.

  1. What is your favorite thing to do in town?
  2. What’s your favorite restaurant in the area?
  3. If you had 10 days off and $10,000, where would you go and what would you do?
  4. Tell us a favorite childhood memory.
  5. Tell us about your best friend.
  6. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
  7. What was your mom’s best meal when you were a kid?
  8. What would people be most surprised to find out about you?
  9. How would you describe the perfect life?
  10. What was your favorite music group as a teenager? Do you still listen to them now?
  11. What is your perfect vacation? Have you had it?
  12. What was your biggest flop in the kitchen?
  13. How many pairs of shoes do you own? Is it enough?
  14. Did you earn any trophies in high school?  What were they for?
  15. How many times have you moved in your life?
  16. Which meal do you like best: breakfast, lunch or dinner? Why?
  17. What do you like to read best (e.g. books, magazines, newspapers)? What’s your favorite?
  18. How many siblings do you have? Where are they now?
  19. What brought you to here today?
  20. What is your favorite outfit? Why?
  21. What is your favorite way to spend a weekend?
  22. Did you go to college? What did you study? Are you doing that now?
  23. What are your hobbies and interests?
  24. What do you think God looks like? Why?
  25. Did you plan your wedding as a child? What was it like?
  26. Finish this sentence: “At the end of the year, I hope I will be better at….”
  27. What is your primary role in life (e.g. spouse, parent, child, friend, employee)?   Is the role easy for you or do you have to work at it? What are you doing to “work at it”?
  28. Have you had any spiritual dry spells? What did you learn from them?
  29. Would you characterize your spiritual growth as a cluster of sprints, a steady marathon or a dead stop?
  30. Finish this sentence: “Lord thank you that I am strong in….”
  31. If you lived in a commune and had to choose one job assignment for the year, what would it be? (e.g. cook, gardener, child care, bookkeeper, social director)?
  32. What do you appreciate most in the created world?
  33. Why were you given your particular name?
  34. What is your favorite food? Candy bar? Cookie?
  35. What is your favorite kind of music? What is your favorite song?
  36. What place would you like to visit?
  37. Do you like to sing? Do you like to dance? What musical instruments can you play?
  38. What are three adjectives which describe you?
  39. What do you want to be doing in 5 years? 10 years?
  40. What were\are your favorite subjects in school?
  41. When you have an hour of free time, what do you like to do?
  42. What is your favorite movie? Why?
  43. What is the strangest thing you ever did?
  44. What is the strangest food you ever ate?
  45. Tell us 2 things that are true about you and 1 “lie”.  (Others guess which is the lie.)
  46. In high school, you would have found me…..
  47. Which reality TV show would you like to be on?
  48. Which song(s) hit you with a wave of nostalgia every time you hear it?
  49. What’s your favorite season of the year? Why?
  50. What are 2 thing you would never spend money on?

Still need more: Random question generator

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Resources for Ministry Leaders

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7 Things to Remember When You Invite an Event Speaker

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7 Things to Remember When You Invite an Event Speaker | WednesdayintheWord.com

Advice from an expert on how not to burn out your retreat speaker.

NOTE:  As I was preparing for a women’s retreat, I found a rumpled paper copy of the article below among my papers.  I offer it on the blog as helpful advice.  Unfortunately,  my attempts to find the author proved unsuccessful.   My crumpled paper copy contains only the following line of information:  “This article is by Tara Barthel, a speaker who has served thousands of women at retreats and conferences over the years.” Apologies if I have misidentified the author in any way.

1. Don’t forget that she is a human being.

Your event speaker is undoubtedly there because she loves God and loves His people. She wants to serve! However, she is a human being—not an ATM machine. So if you schedule every single moment of her time and see that she is being bombarded with hour after hour of women wanting to speak with her and seek her counsel and care, please intervene and help her to “disconnect” so that she doesn’t fall over from pure exhaustion. (Subtopics under this one would include “don’t forget to offer your speaker occasional food & water” and “if it’s minus five degrees, be sure she has a blanket in her cabin.”)

2. Think carefully about who you assign to drive her to/from your event.

This may seem like a small thing, but trust me, it’s not. Most event speakers can hang in there with the best of them when it comes to wrong turns and delays due to simple driving mistakes. But when you assign your event speaker to a reckless driver who talks non-stop on her cell phone while gunning her sports car, or to a sweet but absent-minded and unsafe driver, it adds a level of stress to the event that could be easily avoided. Ditto on putting your speaker in a minivan with five troubled women and expecting her to counsel them for the entire two-hour drive to and from the event. (If you burn your speaker out, she won’t be able to serve well.)

3. Don’t elevate your speaker above her audience.

I can’t tell you how counterproductive it is when event hosts read my professional bio aloud to introduce me. Formal education, degrees, work, and ministry experience might be interesting to a person thinking about attending an event—but no one wants to hear that at an event. The people are already in the room! And the ground is absolutely level at the foot of the cross. The best introduction I receive at events is, “This is Tara. She is Fred’s wife, Sophia Grace’s mom, and a sinner saved by grace.”

4. Remember that even though this is your one big women’s event for the year, it is probably one of many for her.

Please don’t expect your retreat speaker to both teach at your event and participate in all of the fun and games. She may be an extrovert who receives a lot of energy off of spending time with people and so she may want to join in with all of the festivities. But more than likely, she’ll need some down time to rest, call her family, and prepare for the next session. Be sure her room is far away from the all-night “fun” and that her name is not on her door (to avoid any 2AM drop-by visits in jammies).

5. Be careful how you provide her with information on your event.

She may prefer long phone chats; but more than likely, she will organize event details in writing/via email. Please don’t bombard her with contacts from multiple people on your event team. Instead, assign one woman to be the “interact with the speaker” contact person and have your team work through her. Also, whenever your event contact interacts with the speaker, be sure she identifies your event (“Florida, June 2008”) in her emails. Although it could be perfectly clear to you which event you’re talking about, she may have hundreds of details to keep straight for multiple events. This will help her to serve you better.

6. Think carefully about your speaker’s thank-you gift.

Huge gift baskets are really nice, but completely impractical if your speaker is running to make three flights home to her family at the close of your event. Ditto on the hand-blown glass trinket. If she is married and has children, consider remembering them. (Gift certificates for date nights are always appreciated!) As a general rule of thumb, unless you plan on mailing it to her, avoid gifts that can’t be taken in a carry-on (and that includes lotions/liquids over 3 oz) or anything that requires bubble-wrap.

7. Make sure she has water (or whatever else she needs).

Not to sound too speaker-centric but if your speaker can’t get to water and she’s teaching for five or six hours, things are not going to go well. Consider assigning a happy and hospitable woman to keep an eye on the speaker and find ways to serve her. (Some of the off-the-chart generous things that have blessed my socks off have been having a woman do my ironing—especially when my flight was late and things were rushed, assigning someone to strip my linens and deal with my “self-cleaning” room requirements at more “rustic” retreat settings, and making sure someone was there to help with the baby when Sophie was a newborn.)

Resources for Ministry Leaders

Photo by The Climate Reality Project on Unsplash

Criteria for evaluating a ministry

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Criteria for evaluating a ministry | WednesdayintheWord.com

While serving as the Director of Women’s Ministries for over 20 years, every January we had a “state of the ministry” meeting where we would focus on two questions:  1) What are we doing well? and 2) What can we do better?

But what criteria do we use to answer those questions?  Numbers do not always reflect an accurate picture.  A ministry can be growing while drifting from its purpose.  Similarly, numbers can be decreasing while growth among those who remain is increasing.  As my pastor frequently says, “More time with fewer people has greater kingdom impact.”

To sort that out we developed the following criteria for evaluating the success of our programs:

Equipping the saints, growth, and evangelism

  • Is the ministry primarily staff-led or lay-led?  (Lay-led is better in the long run.)
  • Does the ministry have a growth track that regularly equips the saints to do the ministry? (Lay leaders should always be training their replacements).
  • How many lay people involved in the ministry are being given real responsibility?
  • Why are numbers increasing or decreasing?
  • Does the ministry regularly present the gospel message?
  • Are those who are involved in the ministry actively inviting people to hear the gospel message?
  • Are people coming to faith and growing in their faith?
  • When people leave the ministry, is it because they are rejecting Jesus or seeking new ways to serve him?

Ministry Leadership and Oversight

  • Is the ministry primarily staff-overseen or elder-overseen?
  • Does the ministry have functioning elder oversight?
  • At the practical top of the team performing the ministry, is there one or many?  (One alone at the top can lead to burn-out.)
  • Does the ministry respect, encourage and strengthen the priorities that God has placed on those in the ministry?
  • Does the ministry respect, encourage and strengthen the relationships and authorities that God has put in place?

Ambiance

  • Is everything that is done, done for the glory of God?
  • Does the ministry attract those who are seriously interested in Christian growth and discipleship?
  • Is the ministry attractive and inviting?
  • Is the commitment of discipleship set appropriately high?

Teaching content

  • Is the teaching rooted in the Bible?
  • Is the teaching something that those listening don’t already know?
  • Does the ministry have a planned curriculum for teaching the whole counsel of God?
  • Does the teaching also show the Bible study method to confirm the authenticity of the message?
  • Does the message ‘feed the sheep’ (cause growth) or ‘beat the sheep’ (cause a try-harder perfectionism)?
  • Is the message “be perfect” or gospel oriented?
  • Is the teaching connecting with those being taught?
  • Is the teaching clear and practical? Or is the message couched in Christian jargon, vague or abstract?
  • Does the teaching excite those listening about Christianity?
  • Is the teaching of the ministry done by a group of people?
  • Is the teaching of the ministry reviewed and critiqued by a group with authority over the teaching?
  • How much real teaching and discipleship is happening in the ministry?
  • Does the message lead to changed lives when it is heard?
  • Does the message cause the listeners to grow in living their faith more fully?
  • Are people becoming more people of the Word?
  • Are people becoming more people of prayer?
  • Are people becoming more people of faith?
  • Are people becoming more single-minded in their identity are part of the household of God?

More resources for Ministry Leaders

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7 Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Leaders

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7 Habits of Unsuccessful Leaders | WednesdayintheWord.com

I found the article “Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives” on Forbes.com eerily familiar.  In the article, Sydney Finkelstein shares his research on how fortune 500 companies disintegrate into bankruptcy because their CEOs shared 7 bad habits.  

The “Seven Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives” are  (see the full article for details):

Habit # 1: They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environment. As far as they’re concerned, everyone else in the company is there to execute their personal vision for the company.
Warning Sign for #1: A lack of respect
Habit #2: They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation’s interests. Instead of treating companies as enterprises that they needed to nurture, failed leaders treated them as extensions of themselves. And with that, a “private empire” mentality took hold.
Warning Sign for #2: A question of character
Habit #3: They think they have all the answers. Leaders who are invariably crisp and decisive tend to settle issues so quickly they have no opportunity to grasp the ramifications. Worse, because these leaders need to feel they have all the answers, they aren’t open to learning new ones.
Warning Sign for #3: A leader without followers
Habit #4: They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them. CEOs who think their job is to instill belief in their vision also think that it is their job to get everyone to buy into it. Anyone who doesn’t rally to the cause is undermining the vision. Hesitant managers have a choice: Get with the plan or leave.
Warning Sign for #4: Executive departures
Habit #5: They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image. Instead of actually accomplishing things, they often settle for the appearance of accomplishing things.
Warning Sign of #5: Blatant attention-seeking
Habit #6: They underestimate obstacles. When CEOs become so enamored of their vision, they often overlook or underestimate the difficulty of actually getting there. And when it turns out that the obstacles they casually waved aside are more troublesome than they anticipated, these CEO have a habit of plunging full-steam into the abyss.
Warning Sign of #6: Excessive hype
Habit #7: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past. They insist on providing a product to a market that no longer exists, or they fail to consider innovations in areas other than those that made the company successful in the past.
Warning Sign of #7: Constantly referring to what worked in the past

While I’ve run into these “habits” throughout my business career, unfortunately I’ve also seen them on display in the church. It’s easy to become so passionate about your piece of God’s kingdom that you turn it into your own personal fiefdom, forgetting who we serve.

But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” – Matthew 20:25-28

More: Servant Leadership in Practice

Resources for Ministry Leaders

Divine Secrets of the Yahweh Sisterhood

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Divine Secrets of the Yahweh Sisterhood

The book (and the movie) “The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood” tells the story of four women who form a pact as young girls to be friends forever.   When one of them is in crisis, they have a “full-scale Ya-Ya alert” causing the other three to fly to the rescue.

Their “divine secrets”–  which are recorded in a scrapbook — consist mainly of their marriages, childbirths, failures and sins.  They support each other, annoy each other,  and they are always there for each other from adolescence to empty nesters.

The movie highlights their commitment to each other and their perseverance in doing what they think is best for each other despite what it may cost.  True, they have many flaws.  Their best attempts are sometimes misguided and soaked in alcohol but they are bonded by their commitment to each other as fellow Ya Yas.

Becoming a believer is in some ways like becoming a Ya-Ya.

When you become a believer, not only do you gain a vertical relationship with God, you gain a horizontal relationship with other believers.  While God calls us to himself personally, He also calls us to be in a community;  to weep when one of us weeps and to rejoice when one rejoices, to bear each others burdens and to encourage each other through the ups and downs of life.  Upon conversion, you gain not only a personal relationship with your savior, you gain a sister relationship to all his other children.

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01 John 15:1-11 Membership in the Yahweh Sisterhood

The first divine secret of the Christian sisterhood is if you want to thrive, not just survive, you must trust Jesus as your Lord & Savior. Teacher: Krisan Marotta on November 2, 2007

02 2 Timothy 3:14-17 Scrapbook of the Yahweh Sisterhood

The second divine secret of the Christian sisterhood is building a relationship with God begins with prayerfully and thoughtfully reading your Bible. Teacher: Krisan Marotta on November 3, 2007

03 Ephesians 4:1-16 Sparklers of the Yahweh Sisterhood

The third divine secret of the Christian sisterhood is there are no spectators and no competitive maturity in the sisterhood, the body of Christ. Teacher: Krisan Marotta on November 3, 2007

04 Romans 5:1-12 Blood-Bond of the Yahweh Sisterhood

The fourth secret of the divine sisterhood and that is triumph is inevitable, because our hope will not disappoint. Teacher: Krisan Marotta on November 4, 2007

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I offer my bible studies, podcasts and resources free of charge under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Unported License.  I do not seek or accept advertising, affiliations or donations. But it does encourage me to hear from you about how you used these studies and/or what you learned.

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Are older women invisible in the church?

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WomaninPew-580

In the introduction to our study of 1 John, I referenced a July 2013 post on the Christianity Today Her.meneutics blog concerning how “youth focused Christianity may be sidelining the gifts of older women.”

Below is the section from which I quoted:

But one theme emerged that I hadn’t expected: women in the middle of their lives who felt invisible and ignored by the church, the same way they feel invisible or ignored in our culture.

These are women of my mother’s generation, maybe 10 or even 20 years on either side. I heard their hurt, sorrow, and stoicism about life within the church. In a sea of artful hipsters and energetic young people with self-promotion apparently engrained into their DNA, they feel invisible and overlooked.

One woman told me about how she had led worship at her church for years. But when a new young pastor was hired, he wanted a cooler band to get more young people in the door. First thing to go? Older women. “No one wanted to see middle-aged women on stage,” she wrote candidly, and so she was replaced with young women in their late teens and early twenties.

Another woman told me she had very high levels of education, a seminary degree, a long history of teaching with many beloved students, but every teacher at her church’s education program was a young, charismatic man with half her education, let alone experience. The church’s “official” position welcomed women in ministry but in practice, it wasn’t actually happening. She believed it was because she did not fit the expected look or personality or gender of their education program.

Another woman shared about how she has welcomed the shift in the churches of her context towards women in leadership and ministry even though they are all young and beautiful with identical outgoing and big-smiling personalities. The glass ceiling remains for her because she doesn’t fit the preferred look or personality but she cheers on these young women anyway. Her view is that at least women are in public ministry now, in a way that the young women of her generation couldn’t be.

You can read the entire post “The Invisible Generation” by Sarah Bessey here.

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Photo Cogitation in the Chapel taken by Small-Realm and used here under Flickr Creative Commons.

Women’s Retreat Survival Kit

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Women's Retreat Survival Kit | WednesdayintheWord.com

A conference I attended gave each participant this simple and heartwarming “Conference Survival kit.”  The kit was a small ziploc bag that contained the following items and attached card with this explanation:

  • Heart Sticker – “Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love.” – David McCullough  Ecc 3:13  also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil–this is God’s gift to man.
  • Smarties – “Success is more attitude than aptitude.” – unknown  Php 2:14  Do all things without grumbling or questioning,
  • Starlight Mint – “To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act.” – Anatole France  Php 2:15  that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world
  • Double Bubble Gum – “If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate.” – Thomas J. Watson  Php 4:13  I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
  • Eraser – Every masterpiece needs editing. Joh 15:2  Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
  • Band Aid – God heals all disappointments and broken hearts.  Isa 61:1  The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; 2  to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn;
  • Hershey Hug – Everyone needs an embrace now and then.  Ecc 3:5  a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
  • Toothpick – “Success … it’s what you do with what you’ve got. ” – Leroy Van Dyke  Pick out your good qualities and don’t compare yourself to others.  2Co 10:12  Not that we dare to classify or compare ourselves with some of those who are commending themselves. But when they measure themselves by one another and compare themselves with one another, they are without understanding.
  • Rubber band – Be flexible when things don’t go your way.  Pro 3:5  Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. 6  In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.
  • Wooden Cross Prayer Reminder – P.U.S.H. – Pray Until Something Happens  1Th 5:17  pray without ceasing,
  • Laffy Taffy – “The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.” – E.E. Cummings  Pro 17:22  A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
  • Tea Bag – Relax.  Php 4:6  do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
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Also, in the conference packets was a pink sheet  titled:

WE WANT TO GET TO KNOW YOU
Name:
Address:
Occupation:
First timer?
My main reason for coming is:

What personal “anecdote” would you want to share with this conference — in hopes of winning a prize?  (Interesting fact about you, inspiring or funny story about yourself, unusual occupation, hobby or experience. etc.”

The attenders were encouraged to turn the pink sheets in the first day.  During the conference the MC selected the most interesting/unusual entries, called them up did a short interview with them and explained their anecdote and they won a door prize.

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Resources for Ministry Leaders

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Women’s Ministry: The view from 1852

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Sunday in the Park

Since I’ve been blogging on the Why Have a Women’s Ministry, I found this quote from a book published in 1852 interesting.

My Dear Young Friend:

A clergyman will, of course, have much and constant occasion to be in the company of females.  They form a most interesting and active part of every church.  Many things may be accomplished by their pious agency, which could scarcely be attained in any other way.  And happy, indeed, is that minister of the gospel, who, by wisdom, fidelity, prudence, and Christian delicacy, is enabled to conciliate the esteem, and to acquire and maintain the unlimited confidence of his female parishioners, and of other persons of worth of that sex, with whom he may be called in Providence to associate.

He who fails of doing this, cannot either be very acceptable or very useful; while he who succeeds in attaining it, not only possesses one of the most valuable pledges of permanent popularity, but also enjoys the advantages for doing good of the richest kind.

The female part of every congregation have, in general, an influence, which, while it cannot be defined, cannot, at the same time, be resisted.  And, for the most part, this influence, I believe, is as just in its ultimate award, as it is sovereign in its sway.

From “Letter 12: Female Society, Marriage, etc.” in Letters on Clerical Manners and Habits:  Addressed to A Student in the Theological Seminary at Princeton NJ  by Samuel Miller, published 1852.

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Photo: “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat.

Breaking the Women’s Ministry stereotype?

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Breaking the Women's Ministry stereotype | WednesdayintheWord.com

Since I recently wrote on “Why have a Women’s Minstry”, this post on Her-meneutics The Christianity Today blog for women caught my eye: Why it’s Your Job to Break the Women’s Ministry Stereotype

Here are some thought-provoking quotes from the blog:

Emotional forms of ministry have their place, but women in the church are eager to move beyond emotion, and beyond the surface.

Blogger Emerging Mummy recently captured this sentiment in her impassioned post “In Which I Write a Letter to Women’s Ministry”:

But I’m here with you tonight because I want what the world cannot give me. We’re choking on cutesy things and crafty bits, safe lady topics and if one more person says that modest is hottest with a straight face, I may throw up. We are hungry for authenticity and vulnerability, not churchified life hacks from lady magazines. Some of us are drowning, suffocating, dying of thirst for want of the cold water of real community. We’re trying really hard – after all, we keep showing up to your lady events and we leave feeling just a bit empty. It’s just more of the same every time.

But she is not the first to express such concerns with women’s ministry.

Several years ago author Wendy Horger Alsup wrote a post titled “Pink Fluffy Bunny Women’s Bible Studies” in which she criticized the “emotional fluff out there masquerading as Bible study.”

… Women’s ministry, as a form, is in the midst of a massive shift. Many women’s ministries have responded to the outcry and evolved, but the stereotypes have not always changed accordingly. Rather than doing justice to the change, broad stereotypes have remained, further stigmatizing women’s ministry in the minds of female church-goers.

Nowhere has this stigma been more apparent to me than in my efforts to involve young women. In most of the churches where I have served, the 20-somethings have been all but absent from women’s ministry events. This younger generation has grown up hearing about “fluffy” women’s ministries, and the stereotype has become entrenched. Even when change is happening in their churches, many young women persist in the belief that all women’s ministries are inherently superficial. 

I’m happy to report that the PCA has been fighting this stereotype for years.  The first General Assembly adopted a philosophy and theology of women’s ministry which they continue to actively teach and explain.   We may quibble about how successfully we’ve implemented the vision, but at least the vision is theologically driven — not program, project or personality driven.   The theology provides the guideline for mapping the specifics of our programs and evaluating them.

More resources for Ministry Leaders

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Why have a women’s ministry?

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Why have a women's ministry? | WednesdayintheWord.com

What is the purpose of a women’s ministry?

Soup kitchens, ladies’ luncheons, parenting classes and charity fairs all serve good causes, but they are not the reason we have a distinctive discipleship of women in the local church.  Not only is it important to have an intentional, deliberate approach to female discipleship, it is necessary for a healthy church community.

Why have a women’s ministry? In his letter to Titus, the apostle Paul includes instructions on proper church conduct.  After describing the qualifications for elders, Paul instructs Titus on what to teach older men and “likewise” to teach older women so that older women can teach younger women (Titus 2:1-5).

God created men and women differently.  While I’m sure that shocking truth did not just dawn on you, a wise church pays attention to the distinctive needs and temptations of men and women.  We recognize that some of those lessons are best learned and applied in single-sex groups. Having a deliberate, biblically-based, women’s ministry allows us to effectively address the different needs of women.

Women’s ministries exists to serve and minister to women of all ages

  • by teaching the Word of God
  • providing fellowship, evangelism and discipleship,
  • with the purpose of encouraging a deeper walk with Jesus Christ
  • as well as equipping women for ministry. 

The goal of women’s ministry is not to keep women busy with fun, fellowship or service opportunities, but to help women grow in faith.

Within that mission, Women’s Ministries strives to teach women to live and serve by balancing the educational and relational components on our programs.  If a ministry is purely educational, it is academic and cold.  If a ministry is solely relational, it is anemic and will collapse under the storms of life.  Just as a good team needs both offense and defense, biblical discipleship teaches the content of the covenant within the context of covenantal relationships.

Related Interesting Articles

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