Tele-Forum Summary

Express

Experience

Examine

Expand

Explore

These five verbs are going to be used to guide us through right now.

 EXPRESSION OF SELF:  Women come to events hungry to express who they really are.  They just want to express their true selves.  They want to feel appreciated and welcomed.  We know this because that's the way we feel, too.  It’s common among women to think, “I want to be off the tread mill.  I just want to find out who I am again.  I feel like I have forgotten who I am.”  So, it is very important to take advantage of the opportunity we have to greet women, to refresh them, and to let them know that they are welcome here. 

 EXPERIENCE GOD’S PRESENCE:  Women come to events sponsored by churches because they want something different than they could get by just going to a local conference about “how to write a book”, ”how to get along with your husband better”, or “how to run a family more efficiently”.  When they come to something like a church retreat, they want to experience God.  Time is such a premium in our culture.  We want to pray and we want to experience God daily, but how can we experience God's presence when we get so busy?  So, when women come, they want to experience God.

 Side note: I encourage you to bathe people in prayer and have a time where women can actually pray together and have a time of worship.  Poor worship dampens the experience of the presence of God.  There are many other subtle ways we can help people experience God's presence.  We have the opportunity to notice people's personality style and how they would be able to help out and exercise their gifts in the arena of ushering others into the presence of God. 

EXAMINE GOD’S WORD:  It is very important for the Word of God to go into the spirit and soul instead of just being words read off a page.  I believe it was A.W. Tozer that once said, "Those of us who do not apply God's word are no better off for having read it."  Women who plan the event should try to go out of their way to give other women a personal experience of God's word for that day.

EXPANSION:  Women come to have their hearts and minds expanded.  They want to grow.  They should be sent home empowered and ready to take up their lives again.   It's so awesome and humbling when God sends the words through you to others' hearts so that they can expand their hearts and embrace what God is telling them.  I think when we are able to glean the stories of other people and can relate to them, when we can have questions and answers, and when we can give others some scriptures and then put them in groups where they can talk about their stories, then they have a discovery of how God can help them rather than just us telling them.  It’s important to ask, “Lord, how can we enable them to discover you?,” rather than just teaching them what will evaporate when the retreat or event is over.

 EXPLORATION OF LIVES:  We need to help women explore their lives right now.   There are times in all our lives when we are overwhelmed.  This doesn’t change.  We have a huge age span of women to minister to, is it any wonder that we sometimes keep reaching for heaven and keep our feet on the ground?  How can we plan events that will bless women and at the same time meet their practical needs in their life right now as this busy young mom or this older woman who is possibly looking at heaven as only being a few years away.  So, we must help women explore their lives right now so they can live God's truth in the moment, and not only hear it. 

 Questions and Answers:

Question:  I find that women have no time and they don't see the value in coming together with other women.  I don't know how to expand that understanding of what body life is and the importance of it.

Answer:  We have the same problem.  One thing that happened for us was that we did a retreat last year with another church and the women who went to it came home so committed to reuniting our church.  One woman stepped up and proclaimed our women’s ministry as “Under Construction.”  She set up a table, got a hard hat, tools, and a blue print; she even wore a leather apron.  People were drawn to her table and the idea of helping to build the ministry.  She had people signing up because it sounded like fun.  There were 80 women at the first meeting.  So, using things to catch their attention and providing a fun and different approach can be very helpful.

Another idea of how to build commitment to a ministry is small mentoring groups of just four or so women that meet within homes.  You don’t always have to be doing major events, sticking to an intimate basis can be enough and very beneficial. 

Other Comments:

**We have a midweek bible study that started with 50 women and has grown to 150.   Our events are promoted through the bible study.  We break up into small groups in the study, which builds commitment and community.  Then women come to the big events and bring their friends.  We found just having events here and there sometimes leaves women too disconnected.  But they become dedicated through the fellowship of the small group bible studies.

**We can't make people come to these things, but we can make the event attractive enough to make them want to come.  One thing we have done is a Spring Tea.  We gave each woman who has an inclination toward a hospitality gift a table and asked her to decorate it the way that she wanted to and she would be in charge of that table.  The women brought in their own tablecloths, china, and whatever decorations they wanted.   It was like an old-fashioned English tea where we wore hats and dresses.   People came because it was so different and there was more of a gentility about it rather than a bible study.  Plus, we try to pay attention to people's spiritual gifts and ask them to participate according to the gifts they have been given.

**Even getting one of your best friends and starting to pray about a women's ministry together can be a real seed for starting something that will grow.

 **Going back to basics is primary when things become very overwhelming because we try to do too much too big.  Getting back to basics and doing things the simple way excellently and very well and honoring God in that seem to have helped our leadership team a lot.  Try to give people one job.  Give them little things that make a major impact.

 **We started having “Noisy Nights and Quiet Days”.  Friday nights we had noisemakers, games, and color-identified tables that people rotate around.  We even have impromptu things, kind of like the show “Who’s Line is it Anyway”.   It lasts 3 hours and no one wants to go home when it’s over.  Then, they come back on Saturday mornings for the “Quiet Day”.  That quiet day is used to examine, expand, and explore our relationship to God.  There is a speaker or someone to give a 15-25 minute talk.  Then the ladies are sent off on their own and it is a quiet retreat where they spend time alone somewhere on the campus and come back 30 minutes later to hear the next thing we are going to do.  And there is a time of divesting yourself of everything you took in that day.  It has been a great way to help build community within our church.   It also is appealing to all ages because some women choose to only come on Friday night for the fun and some only on Saturday for the stillness and enrichment.

 **Sometimes we just need to do something fun.  Our God is a God of joy and fun.  Maybe we need to appeal to that teenage girl within and give her those fun things that we used to do.  One of my friends had a slumber party with a few other women and they had a great time and were refreshed by each other.

 **A good example is David.  He ran the whole gamut of emotions.  He had such great joy, such rage, such sorrow, and such peace.  God let him experience all these things.  Sometimes we get so busy, we forget that and that it is OK for us to play and relax.

 Question:  If you're in a church where people are not excited or enthusiastic about their life in the Lord would trying to get people alone with God be a problem?

 Answer:  Start where you are.  Simply having people over for coffee and buns on a regular basis to help people get to know each other is a wonderful way to start building a ministry.  There are no prerequisites.  Provide a place to eat, talk, and pray and that is can be enough.

Conclusion:

In John 8:12 Jesus said, "I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”  I just want to leave you with the encouragement that as we plan and participate in women's ministry events let us keep in mind and in our hearts that when we do follow Christ we have all the light we will ever need.  Even when we are desperate and scared, just go back to Him and His Holy Spirit will guide us.

About Karen O'Connor - Special Guest
About Barb Connor - WomensMinistry.Net Teleforum Facilitator
About Jennifer Rothschild - Publisher, WomensMinistry.Net

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