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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.

Tennessee Valley is a PresWIC council that understands the theological and covenantal purpose of women’s ministry. Co-chairman Sandy Hartley says, “Our mission is clear: to train and equip presbytery and local women’s leadership, Bible study leaders, and Directors of Women’s Ministries. We train leaders to train and equip others. We encourage these leaders to come to our annual Leadership Training Conference (LT) hosted by CEP for this purpose.”

Cathy Wilson, Women’s Ministry Advisory Sub-Committee Representative for the Mid-America Region, introduces Tennessee Valley PresWIC, comprised of churches from Tennessee and Georgia. Note their purpose and planning that models connectedness among their churches.

Hearing at LT about the Big Picture of who we are as God’s Church, His presence in His people, and as such our purpose and privilege to glorify Him in this world as He extends His Kingdom, was a fabulous foundation for the Mid-America region to then begin discussing who we are and brainstorming what that meant for our women–as a denomination, as a region, as PresWICs and as local church bodies. It was a thrill to watch Tennessee Valley with its rich history and with its diversity of churches, ages, and backgrounds come together as a PresWIC with this big picture in view. During a break at LT, they planned out how they would transfer this vision to the women “back home.” The newer, younger members and their ideas were assimilated into the vision of those on whose shoulders they stand. As an outsider looking in, it was encouraging to see Titus 2 ministry at work, as well as women understanding and living their creation design in God’s body. Because every group is a mix of personalities and views, this is not a smooth road. However, through prayer and an understanding of the big picture and a focus on God’s glory, this group of women are connecting their churches and women in new ways so that God’s church might work connectively to glorify Him and make Him known.

The Tennessee Valley PresWIC was formed soon after the PCA became a denomination in 1973. Like many, the PresWIC had a strong beginning, but weakened with time until there was very little or no PresWIC activity. In 1998, a Tennessee Valley Presbytery CE Chairman called the denominational office (CEP) asking for help in getting a presbytery-wide women’s ministry going again. A steering committee was formed from local church leadership. Martha Lovelady, representing the steering committee, “cast a vision” of being “Christian women united in the Lord” at their first presbytery event, a luncheon. That day, she became a spiritual mother to many who “caught” the vision. So, TN Valley was brought back to life to become a thriving body of Christian women, united in purpose to glorify God in its ministry to women.

This year still finds Tennessee Valley leadership functioning under its mission statement to train and equip local WIC leadership. The annual CEP Leadership Training Conference is a priority to this team. Excited to share what they learned, the program committee applied the 2008 LT training to the purpose of their spring event. “Your Piece of the Big Picture” was a variation of the “Big Picture” theme of the Leadership Training Conference. In her devotional, Sandy Hartley, co-chairman, gave an understanding of women’s ministries placed under three “umbrellas of protection.”

The denominational level of care and concern. The General Assembly placed us under the pro-tection of PCA’s Christian Education and Publications where the office of Coordinator of Women’s Ministries exists. This keeps us all running on the same track.

The protection of the presbytery. Tennessee Valley women know that they have the backing of funds and prayers of their elders. They want a member of presbytery to be present at each meeting. Also “being involved at the presbytery level with women keeps us connected to each other.”

The third level is “the local church session with the teaching and ruling elders giving their protection to the women’s ministry in the church.”

Sandy stated, “I am thankful that we have umbrellas of a denomination, presbytery and local church that provide sound doctrine to our people in our women’s ministries.” What a wonderful overview of the big picture!

A take away idea for PresWICs and local churches!

In order to enhance living covenantally, each church in the Tennessee Valley Presbytery was given a survey sheet to fill out and return to the PresWIC council so that they can compile information on demographics, ministries, Bible studies, and resources to use at their fall meeting. The purpose of this Women’s Ministry Connections Guide is “to be a resource of encouragement through connecting women’s ministries and their leaders.” It should be a helpful tool for knowing the different pieces of Tennessee Valley within the Big Picture!