 |
Leadership Training Conference
February 21-23, 2013 at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel, Atlanta GA. wicleadership.pcacep.org or call 1-800-283-1357. |
What is this conference and Who is it for?
Local Women’s Leadership Teams
Women
CEP invites Women in Leadership to attend Annual Training Conference
2013 Women in the Church Leadership Training Conference
Called to Serve – Equipped to Lead – Leading with Compassion
February 21-23, 2013
Sheraton Gateway Hotel, Atlanta, GA
A Conference for PresWIC Leadership, Local Women’s Leadership, Bible Study Leadership, Directors of Women’s Ministries, and PCA Staff Women
PURPOSE: To equip women for kingdom ministries
THROUGH: Transferable training, affinity groups, seminars, denominational connections, and networking of ideas and resources.
February marks the date for one of CEP’s most productive conferences…the annual Women’s Ministry Leadership Training Conference. We commend this event to:
Pastors: This conference provides an intentional opportunity to train up kingdom disciples who know, understand, and apply the Gospel. Value and encourage the gifts of women in your local church by investing in this training in loving and serving The Bride of Christ.
Women Ministry Leaders: Do you desire to grow in Christ? Do you desire to be further encouraged and equipped to better understand your ministry call? Do you desire to build communities of compassion among the women in your church? Then LT 2013 is being designed for you!
Visit wicleadership.pcacep.org for more information about the conference faculty and sessions.
Evaluate the emphasis on: teaching sound doctrine, providing transferable training tools and seminars, opportunities for relationship building, and regional denominational connectedness.
Read comments and benefits from recent attendees.
Pray about being part of an event whose emphasis is to equip women for, and involve them in ministries of compassion that bear kingdom fruit within the local church.
2012 Women’s Tuesday Program for General Assembly – Seminars
On Tuesday afternoon, June 19, CEP will offer two back-to-back seminars designed especially for elders’ wives. The first seminar hour (2-3 pm) will combine a teaching segment and a season of prayer. The second seminar (3:30-4:30pm) will offer two separate panel discussions-one designed for Ruling Elders’ wives and one for the wives of Teaching Elders.
Elders’ Wives: What am I to do?
How do we think about our call to be an elder’s wife? Do questions like, “What am I to do?” or “Where is the training manual?” enter your mind? Just how do we biblically support our husband’s call as a shepherd in God’s Church? Join us for a discussion thatcombines purpose with practical equipping. A teaching segment that focuses on the Church, the household of God,will be followed by panel discussions highlighting the privilege of leadership marriages. Our prayer is that we will all leave encouraged and strengthened with answers to our questions.
Teaching Session: Kathy Stair, Ruling Elder’s Wife and Women’s Ministry Trainer
Panel Leaders: Karen Hodge, Teaching Elder’s’ Wife and Women’s Ministry Trainer and Cathy Wilson, Ruling Elder’s Wife and Women’s Advisory Sub-Committee Representative for Mid-America
If my husband had a dime for every time he heard me say, “You just don’t understand, nobody really knows just how I feel,” he would be a rich pastor. If you are anything like me, there are moments from time-to-time when you experience loneliness and isolation.I wantto invite you to join a conversation on Tuesday afternoon at General Assembly…one that is safe, authentic and one, prayerfully, where you will feel encouraged and enfolded. It is a conversation about the highest highs and the lowest lows of all that arepart of the calling of ministry marriage. I look forward to telling my husband “I was wrong…there are women who understand how I feel.”
Karen Hodge is a motivating and encouraging pastor’s wife and mother of two beautiful children. She is having the time of her life serving alongside her husband Chris, Senior Pastor at Naperville Presbyterian Church. Prior to their newest adventure, Chris and Karen have served at Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, AL, Christ Covenant Church in Charlotte, NC, and planted Treasure Coast Presbyterian Church in Stuart, FL. She also serves as National Trainer for the Women’s Ministries for the Presbyterian Church in America. She has a heart for MNA (Mission to North America) and sits in an advisory role to the Standing Committee of MNA as well as serving the Church Planting Assessment Center. It is from this perspective as wife, mother, leader, and friend that she offers insight from God’s word to women concerning how she and they can most effectively learn to enjoy and extend God’s glory.
_____________________________________________________________________
Each year that I attend GA, I look forward to seeing friends from all of the places that we have lived and labored and sometimes it is a real “blast from the past” with wonderful surprises. But I also look forward to seeing the bigger picture that God is painting of His Church. Just as our local church “bodies” are built with individual gifts and graces, just like each of my friends, this PCA “body” is built of churches with individual gifts and graces that together help visualize God at work. This year I look forward to fellowshipping with ruling and teaching elders’ wives as we look at what Scripture shows us about how, we as wives of elders, are an integral part of this “body” building.
Kathy Stair is the wife of Randy Stair, ruling elder and President of the PCA Foundation. They are parents of Julie and Brad, and grandparents of Samantha,Aidan, and Logan. Kathy and Randy are members of ChristChurch Presbyterian, Atlanta, GA. Kathy has served in several churchesin Women’s Ministry, five years as Administrative Assistant to CEP’s Coordinator of Women’s Ministries, and is a CEP Women in the Church Trainer.
______________________________________________________________________
In a culture attuned to individual callings and responsibilities and rights, are we taking time to evaluate our ministry as a couple to our local church? We will have a conversation with several ruling elders’ wives that will include, in part, these questions: What does the BCO have to say about our husband’s callings and what does that mean for us as wives? How do we come along side of them to enhance and support their service as elder to the glory of God and the edification of our churches? What might that look like in the context of our churches’ demographics and missions and our individual families’ giftings and other callings/responsibilities? My prayer is that we can be iron sharpening iron and contemplate together our privileges and responsibilities as wives of ruling elders, so thatwe can spur further discussion with our husbands and with our fellow church family elder’s wives.
Leading the discussion is Cathy Wilson, wife of Bill Wilson, ruling elder at Christ Church, Normal, IL. Cathy serves as the Women’s Advisory Subcommittee representative for the Mid-America Region. During their marriage, they have been members of four PCA families in Memphis, St. Louis (where Bill also served on Session and Cathy was part-time coordinator of Women’s Ministries at Kirk of the Hills), Jackson, MS, and now Bloomington/Normal, IL. They have two college age children: Alexandra and Strother. Cathy works part-time at Talbots and serves on the Christ Church women’s ministry team, volunteers with Bill for Young Life, and helps him juggle his work, church and community involvements including his tennis matches! She runs for health, friendship and stress release!
2012 Women’s Wednesday Program for General Assembly – Tim Lane
Timothy S. Lane, M.Div., D. Min. Tim is Executive Director and faculty member at CCEF and has been counseling for more than 25 years. He has previous experience in both campus and pastoral ministry, including serving as a PCA pastor for ten years in Clemson, SC. He is the author of several mini-books (Conflict, Practicing Forgiveness: Joining Wisdom and Love, Family Feuds, Freedom from Guilt, and Temptation). He is also the co-author of How People Change and Relationships: A Mess Worth Making. In addition, he is the co-author of CCEF’s Transformation Series Curriculum: How People Change; and the newly released Change and Your Relationships-A Mess Worth Making Study Guide.
2012 CEP General Assembly Women’s Program:
The Gospel and Your Relationships
Every day our lives are filled with opportunities to experience the Gospel, and these often come through the relationships that fill our lives. How do we learn to walk with humility, gentleness, and love? What do we do when we experience conflict? How does God take the “ordinary” or even the painful moments of our relationships, and transform them into opportunities for growth and change? In this session we will explore these and other questions, and we will discover that Scripture speaks persuasively and practically about our relationships and the redemption that we can experience through them.
2012 WIC Love Gift
2012 DVDS and bulletin inserts for the 2012 Women in the Churcn Love Gift will be available from the CEP Bookstore starting January 20. These are free of charge.
Gifts for the 2012 Women in the Church Love Gift may be mailed to: CEP, Attention: 2012 WIC Love Gift, 1700 North Brown Road, Suite 102, Lawrenceville, GA 300043 – 8122.
Gifts for the 2011 Women in the Church Love Gift for Covenant Theological Seminary are also still be accepted.
Thank you for your support of the ministries of the Presbyterian Church in America.
2,000 Participants Gather in Atlanta of the Amazing Grace 360 Conference
There were 2,000 participants who came together at the Cobb Galleria, Atlanta, Ga., Friday, Saturday and Sunday, for the PCA’s 5th Christian Education and Publications Women’s International Ministry Conference, Amazing Grace 360, emphasizing the whole Gospel for the whole life and whole world. Older women and younger women came from across the PCA with representatives from several countries where PCA ministry is realized. 200 of the participants were under 20 years of age and 200 were over 66 years of age.
With the confusion abroad about “grace” the conference sought to present a program that would encourage and enable the participants to understand the “it is all about God” who is a God of grace and mercy. That theme was carried throughout the conference with Nancy Guthrie leading the plenary sessions unfolding the whole story of: creation, fall, redemption, and consummation (covered by Brian Habig mentioned below). Her messages were clear and set the stage for the more than 30 seminars on different aspects of the whole story.
500 of the participants came for the pre-conference events which featured Lydia Brownback as the plenary speaker and breakout seminars for that “pre-con” event. Kevin Twit and Indelible Grace (above, bottm left photo) effectively led the conference in the worship sessions. Kevin Twit is a PCA teaching elder and has assisted CEP and the women’s conferences on previous occasions.
One of the highlights of the conference, along with the good solid teaching and warm fellowship of the participants, was a Friday night concert, featuring Laura Story (second from right) an accomplished singer and songwriter and winner of the prestigious Dove Award for her album Great God Who Saves, and who serves on the worship leadership team at Perimeter PCA Church in Duluth, Ga. And Saturday night there was a concert featuring Kevin Twit and Indelible Grace.
Indelible Grace has produced a number of CDs, featuring some of the great hymns often set to new music. Kevin is a graduate of Covenant Theological Seminary. He is also an RUF (Reformed University Fellowship) campus minister at Belmont University in Nashville, TN.
Read entire issue of Equip to Disciple, 4th Quarter 2011 (Acrobat Reader required).
Another highlight of the conference came following the Saturday night dinner, as PCA women from across the country and from more than eight countries were introduced who brought greetings from such locations as: United States, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Germany, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, China, Canada, West Africa, Greece, Korea, Latin America, the Caribbean, Far East Asia, and Europe. The evening session was narrated and led by Barbara Thompson of Zachary, Louisiana, and Susan Phyllis of Hendersonville, North Carolina. The theme for the evening was appropriately called, “faces of grace.” During that evening session the wives of PCA military chaplains, especially those serving in Afghanistan and Iraq, were asked to stand to an auditorium filled with a standing ovation for their families’ service to God and our country’s security.
Joni Erickson Tada addressed the conference via video and brought encouraging words to those who have known suffering and the Lord’s faithfulness in sustaining them through difficult times. Nancy Guthrie (above, fourth from left) who had experienced the pain of losing two children was able to meet with many of the mothers present with similar experiences. A fitting climax of the Saturday evening event was remembering Georgia Settle, now with the Lord, who served as the first coordinator of women’s ministry with CEP and the PCA. Her husband Paul, a former coordinator of CEP, was welcomed. He brought a brief message and prayer for the conference.
Brian Habig concluded the conference in the Sunday morning worship with a message from Romans 8 entitled “Home.” The morning message drew together the “consummation perspective,” in a most effective way- the theme and the variations on that theme went throughout the conference. Habig, a former RUF minister, presently serves as pastor of Downtown Presbyterian Church in Greenville, South Carolina.
Another of the highlights of the conference was giving the participants an opportunity to see the more than 50 exhibits, featuring a variety of “Christian” ministries in the church, and other church related ministries. They also had an opportunity to see and purchase the many training resources and study materials that were available from CEP. One of the participants remarked, “I have never seen so many good resources relating to women’s ministry in one place.”
CEP Coordinator Charles Dunahoo said before the conference, “We have carefully designed the entire conference around the theme Amazing Grace 360- focusing on God’s grace, not from an ‘easy believism’ concept of grace, but from a biblical historical redemptive focus on Christ and his sufficiency. The conference highlighted, “The whole Gospel, the Whole life, and the Whole World.” As the conference ended, Dunahoo said “God allowed us to experience that purpose in even greater measures than anticipated.”
Jane Patete, CEP’s women’s ministry coordinator said, “Our prayer was for the Triune God to be lifted before the conference in teaching, fellowship, prayer, and singing the songs of the Kingdom, and that we all would be reminded of his redeeming grace and equipped to live and serve as the citizens of His Kingdom.” As the conference closed, she remarked, “God answered our prayer, to Him be the glory.” DVDs of Nancy Guthrie’s sessions, along with audio of the entire conference, are available from the CEP Bookstore.