Every year, we take a survey of the women who attend or participate in the Women’s Ministry Council. Our goal is to evaluate and learn what we have done well, what needs improvement, and is there anything we are missing. This year, our survey confirmed something we have known was a need, and brought a new issue to the front as well.
A Known Need:
As we have grown to reach women online, beyond our own backyards, a common question would arise from our live training events.
“Will this be recorded?”
There are so many women who have wanted to attend a live Saturday morning training, but are not in reasonable driving distance. We recognized that we needed to find a way to provide our services to women who couldn’t attend live. The original WMC model was to try and encourage local leaders to start a WMC in their own city/county. That model never took hold, and we needed a solution. We began researching the best way to provide this service, to record the meetings or even Facebook live them.
A Changing Schedule:
The survey also brought to our attention that several of our longstanding local attendees had not been able to attend recent meetings due to changes in their availability. Their lives had changed, their kids were growing, their work schedules were different, and their commitment/activities at their church were (and should be) a priority.
Even though the women still wanted to attend, and benefited from our online postings, they just didn’t have the margin to attend the Saturday morning meetings like they once did.
On Solution to Two Problems:
For the last seven years we have attempted to create a balance between our live training events and online support articles and resources. As we looked at this two issues, we realized that by solving the first one (will this be recorded) we could actually resolve the second one. Recording the trainings would allow our long distance followers to benefit from the training, as well as allow our local ladies to watch the training on a date and time that was a better fit to their schedules.
WMC Goes Digitial:
In 2020, the Women’s Ministry Council is going to move to a complete only format. Our leadership team is still working out the details on exactly what that will look like. The result will provide a more flexible opportunity to learn from more ministry leaders, address more topics, and break it up into bite sized modules.
Part of the research process is looking for the format that allows us to provide these modules with 1) high quality video/audio and 2) maintain our commitment to keeping WMC trainings free.
We are excited to see how this will continue to bless leaders in 2020, we appreciate your prayer as we walk through this process. As we have more information available, it will be announced here and on our FB page.
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