In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to
Women In The Church Ministry of The Presbyterian Church in America, c/o Second Presbyterian Church, 105 River Street, Greenville, SC 29601.
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‘Georgia’s eyes twinkled, and she could not stifle her grin. Her whole face betrayed her excitement. She was leading a devotion for the women on our committee.”Girls,” she announced with glee, “we are frapping cables!*”‘
// archivist@pcahistory.org
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for more information about all of the oral history interviews and their transcriptions.)
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38th General Assembly – A Woman’s Perspective!
The location was Nashville, a city filled with history and music, rebounding from a disastrous flood. The hosts were the nineteen churches of Nashville Presbytery who prepared for the PCA family with a concert of prayer and planning.
1, 311 commissioners filled the Convention Hall to deliberate and do the business of the church. To learn more of the discussion and actions of this Assembly, go to www.pcaac.org to find pictorial remembrances and the wide ranging issues that were before the commissioners.
Dr. Harry Reeder, pastor of the Briarwood Presbyterian Church, Birmingham, Alabama, was elected without opposition as Moderator. His superb and charitable leadership was noted by all.
Read this entire issue of Equip to Disciple in PDF (Acrobat Reader required)
The activities for wives of ruling and teaching elders were many:
- Specific times to gather for fellowship and prayer for the commissioners
- Selection from fifty-eight seminars ranging from godly grandparenting, how to understand and incorporate social networking into your ministry, the role of women as counselors, to looking at the minister and wife as they work in tandem in kingdom building.
- Bookstore time – meeting and greeting PCA women authors/seminar speakers
- Two days filled with programs designed to strengthen and encourage ministry marriages
- Relational opportunities to take tours ranging from an emphasis on mercy ministry to seeing sights of the Athens of the South; and time for being creative.
- A well planned and executed schedule for our children – one father wrote saying his children thought they were attending a great summer camp!
- Time to join other wives in the gallery to follow the discussion and debate on the Strategic Plan (see website listed above)
- The joy of family worship and the Indelible Grace hymn sing in the Ryman Auditorium added to our corporate fellowship.
Over 400 women attended Christian Education and Publications’ planned events. On Wednesday, they were given a beneficial glimpse filled with sweet transparency, into the challenges and opportunities of ministry and marriage. Darlene and Scotty Smith, Christ Community Church, Franklin, TN, along with Teresa Sugar, Director of Women’s Ministries, Christ Presbyterian Church, led us in testimony, strong teaching, and song. This was followed by a lovely luncheon planned by our Nashville hosts.
On Thursday morning, many of us enjoyed a time of refreshment, singing God’s praises and receiving outstanding teaching. Buddy Green, well known entertainer, and ruling PCA elder, brought his love for Jesus and the hymns of the church to encourage us in our Christian walk; Nancy Guthrie, noted author and Bible teacher, spoke to us on the hope and grace of being eternally yoked to the Solid Rock.
Many men, women, and children left Nashville and the 38th General Assembly of the PCA with a renewed appreciation for this city and for the servant hearts of so many who worked against great physical distractions to make us feel welcomed and cared for.
Now it is time to pray for and anticipate the 39th General Assembly, June 7- 10, 2011, in Virginia Beach, VA.
Training for Titus 2 Discipleship Group Leaders
Click the link below to download this abridged edition of Training for T2D Group Leaders. Note that the full version will soon be available as a part of the Women’s Ministry Training and Resource Guide.
Let Me Be a Woman
By Tara Barthel and Amy Laverman
The phrase “let me be a woman” provocatively incites preconceived ideas of what kind of woman one is to be. The onslaught of feminist culture brazenly takes hold of our daughters and persuasively tells them, “Why shouldn’t you use your gifts and be rewarded? You deserve pleasure, prestige, money, and power!” Third-wave raunch feminism assaults us daily. This tsunami confronting our covenant children is such that without the faithful proclamation of God’s design for male and female role relationships, we will fail in discipling the next generation.
The need to talk about biblical womanhood roused two women in a small PCA church in Billings, Montana, to develop and offer a summer Sunday school class for teen girls. Years ago, older women had taught Tara Barthel and Amy Laverman the joy and freedom of biblical womanhood, and this past summer, they did the same for thirteen young ladies ages 12-22. Together, they delved into the rich theology of “equal but different” and the proactive beauty of “helper,” all while enjoying deep conversations over fancy coffee with creamers to help set the mood.
“I learned far more from these young women than I could ever imagine they learned from me,” Tara says in reflecting on the class. “It’s one thing to believe these theological truths in theory. It’s another thing entirely to actually live them out in a world that rejects and scorns such ideas and ideals.”
Using the core CEP Women in the Church materials as a springboard for their class content and discussions, Tara and Amy challenged the girls to think biblically. “And they met the challenge,” Amy explains. “Even at their young ages, the theology of what God says about biblical womanhood and manhood resonated and made an impact. Their eyes were glued on us as we taught. They pushed back when concepts were hard to grasp or difficult to accept as biblical truth. And week after week, they not only came back wanting more; they brought along new friends, too.”
When Amy was in her late teens, her pastor’s wife started a discipleship study with several young women in the church. She led the group through a rigorous, in-depth study of womanhood and marriage. “It was a pivotal time in my life. I longed for Christian friends so I joined the group, but the challenge of reading difficult books containing biblical truths, like Bible commentaries and Puritan writings, turned my gaze away from the allure of the world only to then see a glorious God with a glorious purpose, authority, and mission for my life,” reflects Amy. That watershed class for Amy propelled her on a trajectory of living out her helper design.
“I started learning about biblical manhood and womanhood pretty much as soon as I was saved by God as a teenager,” Tara explains. “Thankfully, God put me in a church where servant leadership gave me a sweet introduction to the blessing of submitting to ecclesiastical authority. Male headship was a gift to me-for the first time in my life, I had fatherly protection and fatherly care.”
“But I also had to wrestle with some hard questions as I continued to grow in grace and mature in the Lord,” Tara continues. “I didn’t have a family that would take care of me until a suitor would come along a la Jane Austen and move me from one home to the next. If I didn’t work, I wouldn’t eat. So I sought counsel from wise, spiritually-mature men and women as to what biblical womanhood would mean in my specific life situation.”
“Thankfully, I learned that God’s Word is sufficient! And real-life may look a little different for each person-for me it meant learning about things like piety and domesticity at the very same time I was earning my law degree and MBA-but God’s principles remain the same,” Tara continues. “Because of the patient love and generational discipleship I received through relationships in my local church, I learned to delight in getting to be the girl! Even when I was still single, I began to learn how to encourage and support the leaders in my life. I no longer wanted to live up to the feminist ideals that indoctrinated me during my 1970’s childhood. Instead, my heart was turned toward Christ, his Kingdom, his Bride, my home, and my opportunity to serve my community and the world-as a woman.”
Generational Discipling
At Rocky Mountain Community Church, generational discipleship is a priority. “It takes a church to raise a child,” says one pastor, “not to overstep the bounds of parents but to come alongside and assist parents as they bring up their children in a greater love for God and others.” Over the years, RMCC has provided activities and classes for parents and teens, as well as discipleship relationships between adults and young adults. One parent commented, “It’s so important for my girls to have relationships with other women in the church. The more they are connected to our covenant family through authentic relationships, the more likely they are to work through issues of faith, unbelief, temptations and trials right here, in our church family.”
This generational emphasis spurred Tara and Amy to be even more deliberate in discipling young women in their church.
To do so, they first sought counsel from their husbands and pastors as to the possibility of offering a class for young women during the summer weeks. Then, modeling the very principles they taught in the class, Tara and Amy asked the pastors to oversee both an introductory meeting and a conclusion meeting at the close of the class. The parents of class participants were strongly urged to attend, but everyone in the covenant family was invited-single, married, young, and old.
“I was so happy that the pastors wanted everyone in the church be invited to learn more about this important topic,” explains Tara. “We had some new, adult-convert, believers in our women’s study this spring and they were very interested in learning more about what the Bible says about manhood and womanhood, authority and submission. And even my husband, Fred, is trying to be more proactive in using biblical terms as he encourages and leads our two daughters.”
At the first church-wide meeting, only a small group of people showed up. But by the end of the summer, even more people were interested in the topic. The girls themselves asked for more studies and mentoring relationships, and the parents of the girls asked for future training as well. One mother said, “It’s not enough to talk to our girls about the worldly, idolatrous desires in their hearts and how they have to repent. They know a lot of that truth already. What they need to hear is the glorious calling and purpose God has for them. This will give them a vision for the mission God has planned for their lives.”
“This is our goal,” both Tara and Amy agree, “not to argue or become bogged down in the details of daily living, because each of these girls are faced with a unique, complex future that God’s Word will guide them through. Instead, we hope to show them what proactive devotion looks like. We strive to hold forth God’s Word with winsome humility and blessed happiness, with the hope that these young ladies will see in our lives a cheerful, intentional desire to help our leaders-in the church, home, and community.”
By all accounts, this inaugural summer biblical womanhood class was a huge success. Even the young ladies who didn’t agree with the principles taught in the class kept coming back. “We really tried to be safe, humble, friends to them,” Tara explains. “We wanted to teach these principles, of course. But more so, we were just thrilled to be invited into their hearts and lives. We wanted them to know that we loved them and we were committed to them.”
Tara and Amy shared a comfortable method of co-teaching, and the girls were engaged and vulnerable in their participation. They did the hard work of looking at Genesis 1-3, and then reflected on their redemption in Christ and its ramifications. Head-nodding and easy agreement was not accepted. Hard questions were encouraged. Even “embarrassing” and “unmentionable” topics like sexual temptations were discussed with candor. Without hesitation, they talked about the virtues of biblical womanhood and the beauty of words that sound so demeaning in our culture.
Most of all, they reveled the intoxicating beauty and purity of the Lord Jesus who, though we have not seen him, we love him … “and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” (1 Peter 1:8). In the final class, Amy and Tara were thrilled when the girls enthusiastically said, “We wish this class would never end!”
Connecting Your Local Church to Denominational Opportunities
Please be aware of the following dates, events, and information as you plan your ministry year. Pass these on to the various ministries within your local church that would profit from these training and resource opportunities.
2010 Events
PCA 38th General Assembly – Nashville, TN – June 29 -July 2
Encourage your high school students to attend CEP’s summer youth leadership conference, YXL (Youth Excelling in Leadership).
- West – Southwest-Glorieta, NM – June 20-27
- Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, GA – July 5 – 10
- Northeast – Refreshing Mountain Camp, PA – July 11-15
Covenant Family Conference, Ridge Haven PCA Conference Center, Brevard, NC – July 19-23
Director of Women’s Ministry Retreat, Park Cities Presbyterian, Dallas,TX: This opportunity is for full/part time paid DOWMs. – September 27-29
Keenagers, A Conference for Adults over 50, Ridge Haven PCA Conference Center, Brevard, NC – October 11-15, Week One
Keenagers, A Conference for Adults over 50, Ridge Haven PCA Conference Center, Brevard, NC — October 18-22, Week Two
Growing the Church through Youth and Children’s Ministries – Philadelphia, PA – October 23
PCA Global Missions Conference – Chattanooga, TN – November 5-7
2011 Events
Growing the Church through Youth and Children’s Ministries – St. Louis, MO, Covenant Theological Seminary – January 18 – 20
Don’t miss the Women in the Church Leadership Conference, Atlanta Hilton – Keep checking CEP’ s website as plans are being finalized – February 24-26.
Growing the Church through Youth and Children’s Ministries – Orlando, FL – March
2010 WIC Love Gift Update
I love this picture of Ellie Bennett! And I think you will too. Please let me tell you why…
As you know by now, we are thrilled to be the recipients of the 2010 Women in the Church Love Gift. At the 2010 Women in the Church Leadership Conference, I had the opportunity to share a talk entitled, Everyone Loves a Good Story. Here’s an excerpt from the end of that talk.
“MNA Special Needs Ministries came about through the power of the Gospel at work in the lives of God’s Covenant people, engaged in relationship with each other, empowered by the Holy Spirit, whose paths were plowed before them by Providence. And it will continue to grow in the same way. MNA Special Needs Ministries isn’t my ministry-it’s God’s-and it happens through people like you. We’re here to engage, educate, equip and encourage you. But the real ministry happens when Faithful Followers of Christ our Savior become the hands and feet of Jesus to others. Making the Gospel-the good news of the coming of the kingdom-accessible to all, in word and deed, happens when you:
- visit the mom of a newborn with Down’s.
- share the Gospel with your neighbor who has MS.
- build a ramp to the front door of your church.
- reach out to that parent who is struggling with caring for their child with autism.
- modify your Sunday School curriculum so that a boy who has cerebral palsy can know Jesus.
- faithfully visit that woman with dementia in the nursing home, year after year, validating the image of God in her, honoring “what’s left not what’s lost.”[1]
Everyone loves a good story…go to the CEP website for the rest of the story!
And by God’s grace, everyone in this room who knows Christ as Savior and experiences the reign of God in them has one. Not just a good story-a great story. Whether you get to tell it from a podium or around your kitchen table-it has eternal significance either way. He created every one of us-complete with our abilities and disabilities-as people with a purpose, not objects with an objective. We have lives that are meant to be lived with active, vibrant love for and faith in Him-that pours over, with intentionality, into our walk alongside of others.
Where would God have you be? Be a Faithful Follower of Christ our Savior-asking, seeking, knocking-believing in faith that God will answer, show, and open the doors. Then, by faith, He will reign in you more and more, and bring His kingdom through you day by day. So that, together, we can look back years from now, and say with God-glorifying praise, “Look at what God did-because His people were there.”
Afterwards, a collection of women stood in line for an hour to talk with me-either about their passion for special needs ministry in the Church, their family members with disabilities, or both. Anne Wickholm was one the latter. You see, her oldest granddaughter, Ellie, was born with multiple heart defects and severe cerebral palsy. And the day I gave that talk at WIC LT would have been Ellie’s 10th birthday-if the Lord had not taken her home to be with Him 16 months earlier. Anne then gave a generous financial gift because “members of my family that have (she also has another granddaughter who has autism) or have had special needs…have given me a heart to make it possible for people with special needs to be incorporated into the church family and church life to the extent possible. My donation is in honor of Ellie on the occasion of what would have been her 10th birthday.”
MNA Special Needs Ministries exists to make the Gospel accessible to little girls like Ellie and their families. It’s really that simple. Your gifts-to the 2010 WIC Love Gift for MNA Special Needs Ministries-or to support MNA Special Needs Ministries directly-make a world of difference. Will you join us? So that, together, we can say, “Look at what God did-because His people were there.”
Stephanie O. Hubach
MNA Special Needs Ministries Director
This year, there are two GREAT opportunities to give:
To give to MNA Special Needs Ministries:
online: www.pca-mna.org/specialneeds
by mail: MNA Special Needs Ministries
1700 North Brown Road, Suite 102
Lawrenceville, GA 30043
To give or learn about the 2010 WIC Love Gift please go to:
www.pca-mna.org/specialneeds or to equip.pcacep.org/2010-women-in-the-church-love-gift.html
“Making the Gospel-the good news of the coming of the kingdom-accessible to all, in word and deed”
[1] Kim Asch, “Memory Keepers,” The Hill, Volume XVIII, No. 1, Winter/Spring 2004, pg. 19.