After this weekend, I have a better understanding of how Moses felt when God called him to lead Israel out of Egypt and to the Promised Land—completely overwhelmed and totally inadequate for the task. Four other ladies and I spent Friday evening and Saturday morning at a training event sponsored by the Georgia Baptist Convention WMU/WEM (for those who don’t know, that stands for Women’s Missionary Union/Women’s Enrichment Ministry). This event was designed to enlighten, train and equip local church leaders of Women’s Ministries for leading their ladies in effective ministry to women in the 21st century. Whew!!! Was I ever blown away!
Recently I was appointed as the Director of Women’s Ministry at our church (http://www.fbcvision.com/). I was very excited about the opportunities that awaited me and naively thought that this would be, not an easy job, but one that wouldn’t be a huge challenge. WRONG!!! God gets such laughs out of me. Twenty first century women’s ministry ain’t your grandmother’s women’s ministry with simple Bible studies and luncheons! Ministering to women in the post modern era means ministering to divorced women, single parents, homeless women, abuse women, young women and older women who have unique and complicated needs. We live in an age when many are cynical about ‘church’ and won’t even consider Sunday school, therefore we have to think outside the box on how to draw the unchurched woman into our midst. We have to be creative in our planning, advertising, and implementation of programs so the woman who normally would not consider going to a ‘church’ function will be attracted to our events and programs.
Simply put, we have to have Jesus as the Director of our Women’s Ministry. I am only a vessel, and a quite unworthy vessel at that. I realized this weekend that it is time to shake the pews of the local church and make a few people uncomfortable. We sit in our whitewashed churches doing programs for our members and feel quite smug about doing ‘ministry’, while people are dying and going to hell in the shadow of our steeples. This has to stop! We have to allow Jesus to develop a heart within us for the lost person. We must realize that unless we do unique and sometimes very new and different things to draw the unsaved and unchurched to Christ, they may never know about Jesus. It is simply not acceptable to me to continue in ‘business as usual’ in Women’s Ministry.
So, I feel extremely inadequate for the task the Lord has given me and I cry out to Him to equip me and enable me to see where He is working and how He wants me to join Him. I fall to my face and beg Him for His wisdom and guidance and I know that He will be faithful to give it. I ask Him to give me a heart for seeing lost women come to Christ and the boldness to share Jesus with them.
After this weekend, I know that our programs must not just be ‘feel good’ programs for our members, but instead must reach out into the community to those who don’t know Christ. I applaud Janet Speer and the ladies at the Georgia WMU/WEM (http://www.georgiawmu.org/) for thinking outside the box of usual Women’s Ministry and pushing those of us in Women’s Ministry to do the same. It is my prayer that I will be faithful to Ephesians 2: 10, “For we are His creation—created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time so that we should walk in them.”
