Posts Tagged ‘women’s ministry’

The Two Main Areas of Christian Development

Posted in All Posts, Discipleship Tools, tagged , , , , , , on October 2, 2012 | 1 Comment »

“Your Christian development can be divided into two main areas of concentration:

Learning to follow Christ and learning to make Christ known.

Following Jesus involves repentance, baptism, reading and studying God’s Word, obedience and surrender (AKA – just do what He says already!), and accountability. Growth in Christ is impossible without those basics, but your personal growth alone is not the objective of Christianity.

As much as God loves you, He’s really not content with just having you or doing things for you, so it’s imperative you grow up so you can effectively make Christ known to others. Our God wants the rest of humanity, too, and He wants to use your converted and sanctified life to reach them! Making Christ known starts with a willingness to identify yourself with Jesus. That involves becoming an active part of a church body, serving others, discovering and using your spiritual gifts, knowing and sharing the gospel message and your testimony as often as you have opportunity, and inviting people to be a part of what has made a difference in your own life.

These are the parts and pieces that make for an active and effective Christian life vs. a fairly passive and useless religious life spent attending church, listening to sermons, singing songs and waiting to be asked to do something. I pray you’re one of the Christ-followers that brings glory to His name and Kingdom because, quite frankly, we’ve got to shrink the ranks of the Christian onlookers and temporary volunteers.”

- guest blog by Susie Walther, The Well Bible Study Ministry (Tampa, FL)

http://www.thewellbiblestudy.org

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Is going to church all the time changing you?

Posted in All Posts, Devotional Thoughts, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 25, 2012 | 7 Comments »

I’ve noticed something since moving to the South last year.  People sure do go to church a lot.  Every time the door is open – Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and a few Mondays and Fridays thrown in too.

People are busy DOING things at church too.  Singing in the choir.  Volunteering in the nursery.  Teaching Vacation Bible School or Sunday school.  Collecting food donations.  Even going on mission trips!  People are really BUSY… serving and helping.  Doing good things.

So here’s my question – with all this “doing” have we forgotten the importance of “being” – or rather “becoming more like Christ”?

I have met very few women who have a spiritual hunger, a desire to know more of Jesus and to become more like Him.

So many women I see are… well… just busy at church… but not changed, not growing, not renewed and transformed, and not even excited about Jesus and all He is doing in their lives.  Mostly they are tired.  And over committed.

A friend wrote this week, “Unfortunately, for the most part, bunches of women attend Bible studies week in and week out, and church Sunday morning after Sunday morning, but nothing at all changes.  They attend, and attend, and attend with spiritually little to show for all that attending they do. They’re content to be a “good enough” Christian or worse, to possess a “form of godliness that has no power” (2 Tim. 3:5). Their bad habits don’t change. Their speech doesn’t change. Their attitudes and thinking don’t change. They’re still unforgiving. They still treat their husbands with disrespect. They still don’t invite anyone they don’t know to Bible study or church. They still haven’t shared their faith with anyone. They still don’t read their Bible or do their Bible study.

But they come week after week regardless, and I have to ask, why? Is it just to get out of the house? Is it because they believe there’s a righteousness in being a part of church? Is it because they believe Jesus is pleased when they attend Christian things?

And so I hope session after session that women in my Bible study are different from the majority of women out there who are “always learning but never come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7).” – Susie Walther, www.thewellbiblestudy.org

I hope you’re not in the same spiritual place you were at this time last year!!

If you are, ask God to give you a spiritual hunger for His Word.

Ask Him to help you find some other hungry women and then study His Word with them.

Ask Him to help you re-prioritize the way you spend your time – your precious little time!

Resolve right now that this year will be different – this year you’re going to pursue Jesus and allow Him to change your life.

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Want to be a good mentor?

Posted in All Posts, Discipleship Tools, tagged , , , , on May 10, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Want to be a good mentor?  Have a look at this blog post from Lifeway’s Inside Girls’ Ministry.  Courtney Veasey wrote a short piece on three characteristics of a relationship that reaps rewards:

http://blogs.lifeway.com/blog/girlsministry/2012/05/mary_and_elizabeth–a_model_fo.html

 

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So much Bible study, so little life change – Why?

Posted in All Posts, Discipleship Tools, tagged , , , , , , , on May 9, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Excellent question!  Here’s an article by Jen Wilkin that addresses the issue and offers so ideas about how to do things differently:

I meet with women all the time who are curious about how they should study the Bible. They hunger for transformation, but it eludes them. Though many have spent years in church, even participating in organized studies, their grasp on the fundamentals of how to approach God’s Word is weak to non-existent. And it’s probably not their fault. Unless we are taught good study habits, few of us develop them naturally.

Why, with so many study options available, do many professing Christians remain unschooled and unchanged?

Read her blog post here  http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/tgc/2012/05/07/why-bible-study-doesnt-transform-us/

 

 

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Why we don’t need “Women’s Ministry”

Posted in All Posts, Discipleship Tools, tagged , , , on November 30, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

(*Guest blog – I couldn’t have said it better myself!!)

Dear Women’s Ministry:

The world can give me cute cupcake designs and decorating tips, scrapbooking parties, casserole recipes, and other ways to pass the time. But truly, with my respect and love, may I be honest? If I wanted to learn how to decorate cupcakes, I would take a class in it. If I wanted to be educated on strategies for decorating my home inexpensively from Winners, I would just, you know, go to Winners. Or Pinterest.

But I’m here with you now 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.

The women of our world aren’t looking for a safe place to cry about housework and ooh-and-ahhh over centerpieces. We’re not all mothers, some of us work outside the home, some of us have kids, and others don’t or won’t or can’t. Is womanhood only about wifehood and motherhood? What about those among us that are not wives and mothers? We’re not all in the same season of life. We are – or should be – diverse image bearers of a Divine God. 

We need Jesus. We are seeking deep spirituality. We are seeking fellow travelers. We are hungry for true community, a place to tell our stories and listen to another, to love well. But above all, point me to Jesus–not to the sale at the mall.
You know what I would have liked instead of decorating tips or a new recipe? I would have liked to pray together. I would have liked the women of the church to share their stories or wisdom with one another, no more celebrity speakers, please just hand the microphone to that lady over there that brought the apples. I would love to wrestle with some questions that don’t have a one-paragraph answer in your study guide. I would like to do a Bible study that does not have pink or flowers on the cover. I would have liked to sign up to bring a meal for our elderly or drop off some clothes for a new baby or be informed about issues in our city where we can make space for God. I would like to organize and prioritize, to rabble-rouse and disturb the peace of the rest of the world on behalf of justice, truth, beauty, and love. I’d love to hear the prophetic voice of women in our church.

Please, may we be the place to detox from the world – its values, its entertainment, its priorities, its focus on appearances and materialism and consumerism?

So here is my suggestion: Please stop treating women’s ministry like a Safe Club for the Little Ladies to Play Church. We are smart. We are brave. We want to change the world. We run marathons to benefit our sisters, not so that we can lose weight. We have more to offer to the church than our mad decorating skills. I look around, and I can see that these women can offer strategic leadership, wisdom, counsel, and even, yes, teaching. We want to give and serve and make a difference. We want to be challenged. We want to read books and talk politics, theology, and current events. We want to wrestle through our theology. We want to listen to each other. We want to worship, we want to intercede for our sisters and weep with those who weep, rejoice with those that rejoice, to create life and art and justice with intention.

Let’s be a community of women, gathered together to live more whole-heartedly, to sharpen, challenge, love, and inspire one another to then scatter back out to our worlds bearing the mandate to be women that love.

I’ll bring the cupcakes next time (although they likely won’t look as cute).

Copyright – Sarah Bessey, http://www.churchleaders.com/pastors/pastor-articles/155219-sarah-bessey-why-women-s-ministry-needs-jesus.html#.TtW_ZpGuJNR.email)

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What if we were like the Special Forces?

Posted in All Posts, Devotional Thoughts, tagged , on October 21, 2011 | 1 Comment »

This weekend, my husband and I attended the Navy Ball celebrating the Navy’s 236th birthday and 50 years of the Navy Seals. I love these kind of events because of the caliber of person I’m around – men and women, like my husband who is now retired Special Forces, who train hard and are always battle ready. People who understand the risks, the sacrifices, the challenges and the failure involved to accomplish their mission at hand, and do what they do anyway.

Oh, that the Church today was more like this special operations community! Oh, that every woman who signed up to be a follower of Jesus Christ got the training necessary to make a disciple out of her. Oh, that we had a Creed like the Green Berets or the Seals that made us want to be more than just church goers. Well, since I can dream, maybe part of the Seal Creed would sound like this in a Christian context:

“I will serve with honor in and out of Church. The ability to control my emotions and my actions, regardless of circumstance, sets me apart from other women. Uncompromising integrity is my standard. My character and honor are steadfast. My word is my bond. I expect to lead and be led. In the absence of orders, I will take charge and lead my sisters in Christ to accomplish our mission which is to Love God, Love People, and Make Disciples. I WILL NEVER QUIT. I will persevere and thrive on adversity. My God expects me to be physically harder and mentally stronger than my enemies. If knocked down, I WILL GET BACK UP, every time. I will draw on every remaining ounce of strength to protect my sisters and to accomplish the mission. I AM NEVER OUT OF THE FIGHT. Discipline is demanded. Innovation is expected. The lives of my sisters and the success of our mission depend on me – my technical skill, my tactical proficiency, and my attention to detail. MY TRAINING IS NEVER COMPLETE. In the worst of conditions, the legacy of those who have died and gone before me steadies my resolve and silently guides my every deed. I WILL NOT FAIL.”

Oh, how my heart yearns to be this kind of Christian woman and to serve alongside other women who have this very same resolve.

** Guest blog by Susie Walther who lives this creed and inspires others do to the same at http://www.thewellbiblestudy.org in Tampa, Florida.

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