Women

Click here to read about the history and the purpose of the WIC Love Gift

“Making the Gospel-the good news of the coming of the Kingdom-accessible to all, in word and deed.”

Jesus Christ beautifully models for us how to relate to people with special needs: with dignity, grace, truth, genuine hospitality, mercy, justice and faithfulness. When we learn to see people with disabilities through Jesus’ eyes, we end up seeing all people-including ourselves-more accurately as a result. Focusing on both our shared value as God’s image bearers and our common need for grace motivates us to make the Gospel more accessible to people with special needs. Whether this happens through community outreach, church inclusion, mercy ministry, or adapted discipleship-in God’s kindness-the Gospel ends up becoming more deeply meaningful and accessible to those of us with less-noticeable-disabilities as well. All of us need the good news of the coming of the Kingdom. All of us need to experience the Gospel every day in word and deed. And that is, at the core, what MNA Special Needs Ministries is all about: Equipping and encouraging PCA churches to make the Gospel accessible to all, in word and deed.

How will the 2010 Women in the Church (WIC) Love Gift help?

Your generous gifts will enable us to provide the following:

• The Gospel and Disability Educational Gift Packs: Practical resources for developing special needs ministries that are built on sound biblical principles rooted in Reformed theology. They will be distributed to 500 PCA churches.
• Trainer Development: Equipping trainers who will work one-on-one with local PCA congregations and help them to develop self-sustaining local disability ministries and network with similar ministries in their geographic regions.
• Luke 14 Matching Grants: Made available to PCA churches that are starting new initiatives to serve individuals and families touched by disability in their local congregations or their communities. “Go out…and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled” (Luke 14:23).

Watch the 2010 Love Gift Video:

Use the following links as resources for this year’s WIC Love Gift:

Love Gift Bulletin Insert (Acrobat Reader Required)

Love Gift Program Information (Acrobat Reader Required) – Information and ideas to use along with the Love Gift video.

Order the Love Gift Bulletin Inserts – Get these inserts free to distribute in your church.

Order the Love Gift DVD – Get a free copy of the DVD to show in your church.

The “Rest of the Story…” – Follow up and get to know the families and congregations featured in the Love Gift video.

MNA Special Needs Ministries Website

Please make your check payable to:

2010 WIC Love Gift and mail to: Women in the Church
Christian Education and Publications
1700 N. Brown Road, Suite 102
Lawrenceville, GA
www.pcacep.org

From the earliest days of the PCA, women cared for and supported our new denomination through the annual Women in the Church Love Gift Offering.

To date, $2,983,710 has been given as God has used women in the church to love and support the ministries of the PCA.

Listed below are the needs/projects from PCA Committees and Agencies coupled with the response of God’s people.

The purpose of the annual WIC Love Gift is to promote denominational connectionalism and demonstrate our corporate helper-design as women in the church. The gift rotates annually among all the PCA Committees and Agencies.

Showing the annual WIC Love Gift in your church does several things: It educates the people in the pew, promotes unity and greater understanding of the PCA and provides good opportunities for monies to be appropriately channeled to specific ministry needs.

Women in the Church Love Gift History

Year – Committee/Agency	Amount
2010 – Mission to North America – Special Needs Ministries	$122,000
2009 – Administrative Committee	$45,000
2008 – Christian Education and Publications – Children’s and Youth Ministries	$80,900
2007 – PCA Retirement and Benefits, Inc. – Survivor Assistance Service	$92,000
2006 – Mission to the World – Street Child Ministries	$200,000
2005 – Covenant College – Art Equipment	$55,000
2004 – Mission to North America – Advance and Strengthen ESL ministries throughout the PCA	$78,000
2003 – Reformed University Ministries – Establish and sustain RUF across the United States of America	$78,600
2002 – Christian Education and Publications Children’s Ministry	$83,000
2001 – Ridge Haven – Renovate and remodel facilities, add playground, and update grounds	$72,420
2000 – Mission to the World – Develop mercy ministry manual and commnity health ministry in Port Elizabeth, South Africa	$108,350
1999 – Covenant Theological Seminary Uniting Hearts in Ministry Scholarship	$104,984
1998 – Mission to North America Multicultural Church Planting	$118,853
1997 – Christian Education and Publications Youth Ministries Department	$111,000
1996 – Office of the Stated Clerk Office Equipment	$90,027
1995 – Mission to the World – Scholarships for missionary kids to attend Covenatn College	$135,576
1994 – Covenant College – Establish a visiting lecturer program	$83,500
1993 – Mission to North America – Church planting partnership fund	$129,000
1992 – Christian Education and Publications – Expand the WIC Ministry	$104,000
1991 – Insurance, Annuities, and Relief Widow’s Ministry	$96,000
1990 – Mission to the World – Missionary retreats	$100,700
1989 – Ridge Haven – Establish and Office of Development	$125,000
1988 – Mission to North America – New York City church planting project	$128,000
1987 – Christian Education and Publications – Expand WIC Ministry	$74,000
1986 – Covenant Seminary – Expand the Family Nurture Project	$100,000
1985 – Office of the Stated Clerk – Equip and staff PCA Archives	$56,000
1984 – Covenant College – Refurbish lobby	$60,000
1983 – Mission to the World – Develop family life audio visuals in Spanish for Ecuador	$40,600
1982 – Mission to North America – Facilities for PCA center in Manhattan	$60,400
1981 – Christian Education and Publications – Purchase audio visual equipment and materials	$34,000
1980 – Ridge Haven – Equip the kitchen	$40,000
1979 – Mission to the World – Build churches in Ecuador and Mexico	$40,000
1978 – Mission to North America – Purchase mobile chapels	$38,000
1977 – Christian Education and Publications – Publish a Youth Ministries Manual	$31,400
1976 – Mission to the World – Support the Tuberculosis Clinic in Korea	$29,400
1975 – Mission to North America – Produce and broadcast media spots	$20,000
1974 – Help the General Assembly permanent committee equip their offices	$18,000

The 2009 Women in the Church Love Gift
benefiting the PCA Administrative Committee (AC)
Connecting PCA people, churches, and ministries

It is not too late to promote the 2009 Love Gift! Donations for the 2009 Love Gift recipient, the Administration Committee will be collected until May 2010. To order a DVD/video and bulletin inserts for your church (free of charge), contact the CEP Bookstore at 1.800.283.1357 or www.pcaac.org/lovegift. Read this article to find out more about the WIC Love Gift.

Help the AC serve you better! Your 2009 Love Gift will enable the Administrative Committee to serve you more effectively and strengthen the PCA in several areas.
Click to download PDF version of bulletin insert		Digital Publications Many of the useful official publications produced in the past by the Administrative Committee cannot be conveniently accessed. Your Love Gift will help by making them available in searchable digital form.
		New PCA Digest The Digest, a handy reference guide, is a valuable aid to our church leaders and members wanting to know more about PCA positions on different issues, but it has not been updated for ten years. Your Love Gift will help to produce a new edition.
		Historical Center Improvements The Historical Center helps us and our children know how God has worked in the past and so equips us better for ministry in our day. Your Love Gift will help by providing funds for new shelving, furniture, and updated technology to care for the valuable historical records that have been entrusted to us.

Several years ago, Jane Patete asked Tara Barthel, a speaker who has had the great privilege of serving thousands of PCA women at retreats and conferences over the years, to share some of her hospitality experiences. To those of you who know Tara, you know to read this with a smile!!!

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.”)

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.)

Don’t elevate your speaker above her audience.

I can’t tell you how counterpro-ductive 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.”

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).

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.

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.

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.)

I hope these ideas help the ministry of your event to be even more effective! It is such an honor and a joy to serve you.