Characteristics of Godly Leaders: Not Quarrelsome

1 Timothy 3:2-3, speaks about the qualifications of overseers.  What does this mean to us as ministry leaders?  In 1 Timothy 3:3, Paul addresses quarrelsomeness.

Can I be honest with you, I love to debate.   I actually enjoy it.  I’m one of those people who can have my beliefs/opinions challenged and find debate a great way to learn.  I’ve changed my mind, held firmer to my beliefs, or walked away at least with a better understanding of how other people view topics.

My love of conversation and debate, however, can often be misinterpreted as quarrelling.  I’ve been accused of being argumentative, divisive, confrontational, and angry/upset.  99.5% of the time, I’m not.  I’m actually enjoying the process.  Over time, I have had to learn that how others perceive me is worth consideration.  I’m learning to temper my love of a good debate in order to protect relationships (personal and professional) and to make sure that my integrity is not questionable.

Now, after sharing that my intentions were not intended to be quarrelsome but often perceived that way… imagine what others think of you when you are intentionally quarrelsome.

Do you know that person?  The person who has some sort of a negative response no matter what you say or do.  Who argues about everything, can’t be agreeable; my mom would call them a “Contrary Mary”.  I remember once, as I finished assisting a gentleman, stating “Have a good day!”, and he curtly replied:

“Don’t tell me what kind of day to have!”

2 Timothy 2:24-26 reads:

And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will.   (NIV)

There is so much in those words.  A quarrelsome person isn’t kind, they can’t teach because of arrogance, they are not patient, they don’t correct with gentleness but are often demanding, and they can be so caught up in being right/heard/followed that they are ensnared by pride… they end up doing more harm than good.

James 4:1 questions:

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?  (NIV)

The scripture in James is eye opening in that it puts the blame for quarreling not on the other person, but instead on ourselves.  It’s easy to justify our quarrelsome nature by trying to put all of the weight on another person.   But, an argumentative nature says more about who we are on the inside.  Matthew 12:34 tells us that “the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”

If you find that you are constantly engaged in quarrels, arguments, controversies, and confrontations… as a Leader, it may benefit you to ask God to examine your heart and open your eyes to what your heart is full of.

 

Preach the Gospel to Yourself

During my trip to The Gospel Coalition Conference this year, I had an opportunity to meet with a mentor via Serge.org .   This mentoring session was very fruitful for me personally, but I also wanted to share more about something that was repeated a few times throughout the conference.

It was a reminder to us as leaders that we must preach the Gospel to ourselves daily.  But why?

Through my Serge.org mentor, I was introduced to the idea that leaders can get so caught up in the success and failure model in regards to ministry that we can forget the Gospel.

Have you ever said or thought:

Well, I must be doing a good job because God has blessed our ministry with success.

God must be blessing our work, because He has been providing for our needs.

The Lord’s blessing must be on our ministry, because we have seen an increase in numbers.

I must be doing something wrong, I just can’t seem to get any momentum on this project.

The Lord’s favor must not be on this ministry, because we are not growing… we are shrinking.

What is the problem with these thoughts?

They are works based, not faith based.  They imply that success or failure is a result of God being pleased or displeased with something we are doing.   Scripture says that the Lord’s favor falls on righteous and the unrighteous alike, that he raises the sun on the good and evil each day (Matt 5:45,46).

When we run our ministry under the measure of success and failure based on our perception of God’s favor; we are suggesting that we (individually, as a team, as a church) are doing something that God will reward, or God will withhold from.

There is no freedom when you are bound up measuring your ministry by success and failure.  That is a worldly measurement.  Instead our freedom lies in that we are adopted children of God, before we are leaders.  We have His favor because He has given it to us according to His goodness, regardless of how well we run our ministry.  He loves us.  Plain and simple.

When we love Him, and seek to do His will…

When our eyes are set on Him, and our Hearts are in tune to His heart…

When we become His hands and feet…

We serve and we serve well, whether we are serving one woman or one thousand.

When we allow ourselves to get trapped in the success failure model, when things are going well… we feel good.  We feel in God’s favor, we feel as if we are pleasing Him, we feel joy and hopeful.   On the other hand, when our ministry is in a valley and we feel like a failure, then we don’t feel good at all.  We feel like we have disappointed God, or that we are doing something wrong that He wouldn’t reward our work and ministry.  We can even take on guilt that others are not being blessed because of our failure.

We can get so buy sharing the Gospel to others, that we can forget the Gospel is meant for us.  The Freedom of the Cross is a gift for us, too.  So, as much as we need to share the Gospel with others and we can do this through our ministry (in fact, it should be our primary goal)…

… we must share the Gospel with ourselves every morning.

The success or failure of my ministry work has nothing to do with God’s love for me or approval.

His love for me existed before I was in my mother’s womb, and will exist through eternity.  Nothing can separate that.

Ministry work is the icing on the cake, where we celebrate the Gospel with others.

Your Presence Is Requested

In 2005, my family relocated to the Treasure Coast. We knew absolutely no one in the area.  I knew the most important thing we could do, to begin to foster community, is find our home church.  I made a list of things that I felt were important for our family in our search process.  One of the things that was important to me was that the church have an active Women’s Ministry.  Why?

*  There would be fellowship opportunities where I would meet Christian Women, building up a local tribe of friends.

*  There was a high chance that an active Women’s Ministry would go on retreats or to conferences (which I love).

*  There would be a ministry where I could eventually serve, as I rooted myself into our new home.

My next step, was to hit the internet.  Truth is, there are a lot of churches in the Treasure Coast.  It would be impossible to visit them all, and frankly I didn’t want to waste time visiting a church that was missing the elements that were important to our family.  I visited church websites, looking at what type of Children’s Ministry they offered.  Since I knew we would be into Youth Group before too long, I looked into that as well.  I also looked for what type of Women’s Ministry was offered. Some church websites had none of this info, some had a basic listing of the types of ministries offered at their church, and others were a bit more extensive.

I used this method to weed out a lot of churches.  To be very blunt, if you didn’t have these three ministries in your church… we were not even going to bother to visit.  In fact, our current home church didn’t make the cut when we first moved here.  It was a couple of years later before we would visit the church.  They were having a women’s brunch that month.  If it wasn’t for actually being in the building, I would have never known.  We may have never ended up there.

It’s been twelve years, social media has come a long way.  Our web presence is even more important today than it was then.  People use our church websites to learn a lot about our churches, the ministries we offer, and how they relate to community.  Potential visitors can watch recorded services and find out if they like the music, Pastor’s message, etc. before they walk through the doors.

In our digital age the concept of “coming in and experiencing it for yourself” is almost obsolete.  In fact, many churches today have been tested by visitors it will never knew existed because they checked out the service through a livestream on Sunday morning.  Our ability to measure guest responses to our church is impaired, because visitors are watching us through a two way mirror. We can’t see the guests, but they are watching and watching closely.

Not only is it important that your church has a website, for visitors to learn more about your church… but it is also vital that it includes information about the various ministries that exist within the church.

When the Women’s Ministry Council started, we utilized the internet to help us locate the churches in our area that had a Women’s Ministry.  We searched through the site for mentions of a Women’s Ministry or at least Women’s Bible Studies.  Three years in, our #1 question we are asked is always:  “How come I didn’t know this existed before?”.   If your church doesn’t have a website, or the website doesn’t mention  your Women’s Ministry … that might be the reason why.  As a small start up ministry, with zero budget, we couldn’t afford to pay for a mass mailing and hope for the best.  We had a search strategy that helped us zero in our target.

Potential members may be crossing your church off the list based on the lack of information on your website.  The photos on the site, the content, and even the church calendar tell the story of your church.

Once you have added your Women’s Ministry to the church site, then you need to look at how information requests are funneled to the Women’s Ministry team.  This is usually the second reason why local churches with Women’s Ministries have not learned about our group.  After we would determine a church had a Women’s Ministry our next step was to reach out via email and postal mail.   Not only do guests in your church need a way to reach out to the Women’s Ministry for information, but so do the people within the body.  We need to make sure the information is making it to the right people.

I can’t tell you the number of WM Leaders who I speak with, who I personally addressed the mailing to their church, who never received it.  The email didn’t get forwarded on, or the invitation was never passed on.  A clear pathway of communication means that people requesting information about your Women’s Ministry have a direct way to reach YOU as the leader, or that those who receive general inquiries know to pass on the requests appropriately.  I also suggest letting that person know that you would prefer they pass on all inquires and you can filter through them.

As a Women’s Ministry leader, if you didn’t receive our mailing… I wonder what other information you may have missed out on?  Understand that it is not that the information is being purposefully kept from you.  Churches receive a lot of email and mail, from all sorts of organizations and businesses.  Someone is sorting through all of that mail, tasked with weeding out the junk mail.  A simple conversation can help this staff member or volunteer understand how you want your ministry mail handled.

Some key points to consider…

* Does your church have a website?  If your church doesn’t have a website… anyone who may be trying to find a local church might be missing out on what you have to offer.

* Does your church mention your Women’s Ministry on the site?  At minimum, it should be included in the list of ministries.

* Does your church have a clear path of information that funnels requests, mailings, and information to the Women’s Ministry leader?   Where does your mail go? Can you get an email address at the church that can be shared on the website and automatically forwarded to you?

* If you do not have an official “Women’s Ministry” ask your church office what happens to materials sent in address to Women’s Ministry leaders.  You never know what amazing things your church or women could be missing out on.

Be Still and Know

He says, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.”  

– Psalm 46:10 NIV

Quite often in leadership we find ourselves always on the go, moving forward, advance our Kingdom work.  We can spend hours scouring the internet tracking the trends of Women’s Ministries across the country.  We can invest our time and money in books to better ourselves as leaders.  We can even meet quarterly with Women’s Ministry leaders in our community to create a council of leaders who share their wisdom and experience.  Movement, growth, and study is a beautiful thing.  It’s not always the best thing.  There are times, even we as leaders, need to find stillness and listen to the voice of God.

We may need to stop the online searches, put down the books, and pick up the Word and let it speak life into our personal walk, families, and our ministry.  What if the Lord doesn’t want your ministry to follow the ministry trends but instead innovate a new way to minister to women?  Have you considered that the Lord may be trying to take your ministry focus off solely serving the women in your church and instead opening the doors to the women in your community?  Or, has your ministry taken priority in your life over your family commitments and relationships; and it’s time to add more people to the team or reevaluate your ministry goals?

If we are too busy listening to other voices, we can disrupt our ability to hear the Holy Spirit speaking.  There is a season to work and toil, but there is also a season to be still and listen. A time to be still and know that He is God, and He will order our steps.

Diversity and Unification

In April, our local Women’s Ministry Councils will begin the start of what we hope is an ongoing conversation toward understanding the value of diversity in our lives and our ministries; as well as the role the Church should play in unification among God’s people.

We recognize that not all of our readers and Facebook friends are local, but that doesn’t mean that we do not want you involved in this conversation.  In fact, we’d love to see these conversations starting in your ministries too.

As we prepare for this important conversation, over the next several weeks WMC is going to share resources with our Women’s Ministry Leaders and teams.  These resources are ones that we are using for research and preparation, recommended reading, and tools that you can use not only for your own growth but for facilitating change in your church.

All of our churches in attendance at our April meeting will receive a copy of Trillia  J. Newbell’s book UNITED from Moody Publishers.  If you are not local or will not be attending that meeting, this is a great book to start with.

http://www.trillianewbell.com/books/united-captured-gods-vision-diversity/

When the Lord Moves, We Move Too.

2017 is here, and the Women’s Ministry Council has some exciting things to share.

* We Are Moving –  It has been almost 3 years since we started the Women’s Ministry Council.  We have grown in numbers and in purpose.  We have also outgrown our meeting location at Panera Bread.  The Lord however is providing a answer to that need.  Please keep an eye out for this important announcement in the comings months.   Prayerfully, the location will be ready for us by our April meeting.

* We Are Growing – When the ministry grows, so does our leader team.  We are excited to announce that Trish Jones has joined the WMC Leadership Team.  Trish will be an integral part of our team, bringing her experience and expertise to our website content, editorial review, and more.

* We Are Preparing To Expand –  Three years ago we shared the vision for the Women’s Ministry Council to become a ministry that can be duplicated in other regions.  We have 2 potential leaders who would like to start a WMC in their area.  The leadership team will be using 2017 to create the logistics of this program, with an anticipated roll out in 2018.

* We Are Thinking Big – In addition to the development of our group expansion, we have some beautiful things on our horizon…. such as….

~   Women’s Ministry Leader Mission Trip with One Child Matters

~   Intensive Workshop on How to Study the Bible for Yourself

~   One Day Women’s Ministry Leader/Team Conference

~   and so much more!

The WMC Team can not begin to express how much we are blessed by this ministry.  Serving our local leaders is an honor and a privilege.

Lord, let this ministry be all that you have called it to be.  Let us serve you, each other, our church, and our community well.   Amen.

Women’s Ministry Road Trip

Women’s Ministry Road Trip by Gena McCown, Co-Founder

The kids at our churches gather for a weeklong VBS, or go off to a fun camp during summer breaks.  Our youth groups go on missions trips, off to camps, and weekend Christian concerts held by big amusement parks.  Dare I ask… what about us?

Yes, there are a lot of great Women’s Conferences that we can shuttle off to.  We may have a two hour luncheon every other month too.  But, have you ever gotten in the car with a group of women from your church and taken off on an adventure?  On a non structured, registration not required, sleep in until 10am if you like… full of fun, food, and fellowship… adventure?  Or, have you ever considered taking your Women’s Ministry on a women only mission trip to minister to women rescued from the sex trafficking industry?

Why not?

Rent a cottage on the beach or in the mountains for a weeklong retreat with your women’s small group.

Have a sleepover when the men are away camping or hunting, and have a great time bonding with the leaders from your Women’s Ministry team.

This fall, rent a bus, take off to Washington D.C. and check out the new Museum of the Bible .  Then, go sight seeing or visit museums.  Eat good food.  Shop. Laugh.

Plan a Women’s Ministry trip to the next Acquire the Fire, Night of Joy, or Hillsong Concert.

Organize a mission trip for the Women’s Ministry, either within the US or outside.

Buy group tickets to a Food Festival or even a local carnival/fair and eat funnel cake and get stuck at the top of the Ferris Wheel together.

The women we are serving are not targets or projects, but real women who desire to laugh until their sides hurt.  They want to have memories to put in their scrapbooks, ticket stubs to collect, and moments to look forward to on their calendars where they can simply enjoy life with their sisters.

Do you have any fun or out of the box ideas that were successful in your Women’s Ministry?  We’d love to hear about these ideas!  Comment here, or consider writing a piece for our site on your event and how you coordinated it.

Change in the Air {2017 is Coming}

The year is coming to an end.  You have prayerfully considered whether or not the Lord is calling you to remain in Women’s Ministry.   As a team you have reviewed the past year’s successes and failures, and you have tapped into the women in your church for their opinions and perspectives.  The next step is to take all of that information and look forward to 2017.

Start with the Pastor

Before making any major changes or vision shifts in the ministry, this is a great time to check in with the Pastor(s).  If the WM goal is to be supportive of the church vision, consider that just as you may be exploring a vision shift … so may the church leaders.  The needs of our church and the community we serve may have changed over the last year.  The Lord may be pressing a new mission on the hearts of the leaders.

If the church mission isn’t changing or shifting, share with the Pastor what changes you may be considering.  Seeking his input will be helpful as you try to narrow the new vision.  Does this new direction fit within the mission of the church, does he support these potential changes or new direction, and questions along those lines will help you engage his support.

Don’t Forget Your Team

As the WM Leader, we spend quite a bit of time researching Women’s Ministry ideas and directing the team and volunteers.  We invest in our team as we develop their leadership skills, and in ourselves as we read books and look to leaders in our ministry field for inspiration.  When change is on the horizon, and the Lord is stirring something in us, it can be quite easy to internalize those thoughts.  However, even though we are the leader, we must not forget that we are part of the team.  When your team members feel left out of the process, changes catch them off guard, and they may question their value to the team.

Instead of walking into your normally scheduled WM team meeting and dropping a bombshell full of unexpected changes, bring the WM team into the fold.  Invite the team members into the process by including them in the early stages instead of waiting until you have made a slew of decisions.  At the onset, ask the team members to be praying with you about potential changes.  Need information?  Ask team members to help with the research or read books along with you.  Talk to other leaders about what has been working within their ministries.  Make the process a team effort and you will find the changes that results are exciting for the entire team, instead of surprising.  When the team is excited with you, it is a much easier to spread the excitement throughout the women in the church.

One Change at a Time

Most people are resistant to big changes.  The familiar becomes unfamiliar, the predictable becomes unpredictable, what they have always known becomes the unknown.  After the team has come to an agreement on what kind of changes the new year will bring, we should be careful to not implement all of the changes at one time.  Create a priority list of what changes can be made that won’t affect the body directly (such as team structure or position changes), followed by the program changes that are most important to least.  Take each change one at a time, allowing the women to acclimate to the change before adding in a new one.

Some changes are easier than others.  If you want to stop bringing in paid speakers and use the testimonies from the women in your church at your brunches, that is an easier shift.  If you have been holding brunches every month and you want to cut out brunches entirely, that would be a little harder.  In a change like this, it may be better to begin reducing the number over time than eliminating completely.   If you want to switch from packaged bible studies to leader led expository studies, there should be a process in place before making such a shift.  A plan that includes finding these leaders, helping develop their study and teaching skills, and the over time moving from one study style to another.

What is the Point of the Change

When you begin to remove aspects of your ministry program, what are you replacing it with?  This is not necessarily about quantity of programs and offerings, but can also take into consideration quality.  Having the ability to articulate the reason behind the changes to the women of the church will help transition through the changes more effectively.  When your team members not only understand and support the changes, they are part of the changes and will help defend those changes when criticism arises.

If you are lessening the number of small groups being offered, why?  Are you attempting to reestablish more intentional groups?  Are you going to implement a new group model that focuses more on mentoring?  If you are cutting out brunches, why?  Why does it need to be cut, and what is it being replaced with?  Are fellowship events being cut out completely or simply going in a new direction that would foster closer relationships?

I wouldn’t recommend making ministry changes without being able to explain the necessity of those changes.  The Lord will not prompt you to make a change without a reason.  Laura Masoner often reminds me that the Lord isn’t going to pull you away FROM without also pointing us in the direction of what He wants us to go TO.  Change for the sake of change isn’t really justifiable.  Change for the sake of improvement will always have a defense.

 

Survey Says {Women’s Ministry Success}

Survey Says… {Women’s Ministry Success} by Gena McCown, Co-Founder

How do we determine that our ministry efforts are successful?   From a Biblical standpoint, there are some great litmus questions we can ask:

• Have our events been Gospel Centered?
• Are our programs Disciple Making?
• Have we improved Bible Literacy in our women?
• Has there been a growth in the Prayer Life of our women?
• Do our events/programs fit within our Mission Statement/Verse?

From a practical standpoint, some other areas that we can look at are:

• Attendance:  has there been an increase, decline, or no change in the number of women attending?
• Faces:  are we serving the same women repeatedly, a revolving door of new faces, or a healthy mixture of returning regulars and new faces at each event?
• Community:  do the women of our church invite their friends and family to our events, or are we only serving the women in our church?
• Outreach:  how many outreach opportunities have we participated in as a ministry?
• Event Types:  which of our events have the greatest attendance versus low attendance?
• Bible Studies/Small Groups:  have we seen an increase of new small group leaders, small group attendances, or shift into more in-depth small group materials/studies?
• Funding:  do we have a budget deficit or surplus?

Besides reviewing these two aspects of our ministry, we can also utlize surveys to help us understand our ministry results better.  There are 2 types of surveys you can use in your ministry work to tap into the thoughts of the women you serve.

Per Event Survey:

This is a short survey presented at the end of an event where the women can provide feed back on that specific event.   Surveys like this are great for when you have a guest speaker, a retreat or workshop, etc.  It provides insight into the particulars of the event, allowing you to see what the women valued most or how the speaker resonated with the women.  A highly praised speaker is one you would invite back, if they didn’t seem to care about the decorations you know that you can skimp on that next go around, if they didn’t like the location then you don’t return, etc.  I like to include a space for comments where women can share specific thoughts about that event/speaker that are not in the questions.  There are several event surveys on the internet via sites like pinterest, women’s ministry tool box, womensministry.net, etc that have downloadable surveys available.  Or, you can write your own.

End of Year Survey:

End of Year Surveys are a great way to get a general overview of the response to your ministry work.  You can not expect your women to remember every speaker you have hosted over the course of the year.  Grading individual speakers is better suited for the per event survey (I learned this the hard way).  End of Year Surveys tend to include simple agree/disagree questions, such as:

• WM at Church offers a wide variety of Bible Study and Small Groups.
• WM at Church brunches are held at just the right frequency.
• WM at Church events are well publicized and I feel informed.

These surveys also allow you to offer up an opportunity to ask more personal or opinion based questions, such as:

• List three ways you believe WM at Church could better support our women?
• If you are not in a small group, please share why?
• Would you be interested in one on one discipleship/mentoring?
• Are you interested in serving with the Women’s Ministry team?

Just as in the event survey, I do recommend leaving some space for comments and suggestions.   This is also a great opportunity to begin connecting people together by including questions about hosting a small group in your home (but not teaching), leading a small group, starting a community interest group (Christian Photographers, Sewing Groups, etc), and specifics that can connect the women to serving in the church.

You can send out the surveys in one of two ways, a good old fashioned paper survey or via one of the many (and often free) internet survey sites (such as Survey Monkey).

Why I value paper surveys:

• They are accessible to everyone in your body, not just those who have a computer or are computer friendly.  It allows our older generations to speak their opinions.
• They allow space to expound upon your answers in the margins.  For example, you may agree that there is a great variety of small groups but perhaps you’d  like to see more expository options available.  Paper surveys give space to make notations as you fill out the survey.
• When someone has a paper in hand, they are more apt to complete it and return it.   Especially if they are completing the survey at the end of the event, or at the last WM event for the year.  You will see your highest return by having surveys filled out on site.
• NEGATIVE:  You will have compile all of the data yourself, reading and counting every single survey.  The larger your ministry, the more tedious this will become.

Why I value internet surveys:

• You do not have to be a math whiz to compile the data.  These online survey sites will often create charts/graphs with your data, thus making the review of the results easier for everyone.  You will have a great summary sheet to share with your Pastor, Minsitry Oversight Committees, and to go with your budget requests for the Financial Committee.
• Online surveys are quick and easy and you do not need to try and interpret handwriting.  This makes the entire process easier for both sides, the person taking the survey and the person responsible for processing it.  Additionally, paper free surveys are environmentally friendly.
• Most people will complete the survey when it shows up in their email box, but you do take the risk of the survey ending up in someone’s junk folder or buried in a slew of other emails and forgotten.  If you send out an online survey, make sure to mention it at your current event or social media sites to ensure the women know to look for the survey.
• NEGATIVE:   The oldest generation of your church will be less likely to respond to the online survey.  There are sometimes limitations on the number of questions you can ask (if it’s a free service) or on how much they can type in the “comments” section.  Which means you may get a less in depth analysis.

My final thoughts on surveys comes to the subject of anonymity.  On the one hand, people will feel more freedom in their responses if they are allowed to remain anonymous.  On the other otherhand, anonymity can often give someone a platform for passive agressive attacks.  In other words, people are more apt to say something critical anonymously than they would if they had to say it to your face or attach their name to it.

If you choose to go anonymously, be prepared for a heavier dose of criticism.  Don’t ask questions you are not prepared to hear the answers to, or read comments that are less than helpful.  Some women will respond with their genuine concerns in this format, since many women don’t handle confrontation very well.  Especially if they are friends with the WM team members.  You will need to pray for discernment as you read the responses to determine if it is constructive criticism or destructive criticism.  You will also lose the opportunity to allow women to express interest in serving/leading as part of the survey.  Which means you would need to handle that separately.

If you choose to have the women include their name in the survey, be prepared for a lot of sunshine and roses and minimal open criticism of the ministry work.  When we have to sign our name to something, we are often more generous and graceful with our opinions.  It’s that part of women which is sensitive to the hearts of others.  We don’t want to hurt feelings or criticize someone we consider a friend.  However, this gives the women you are serving an opportunity to express their hearts.  If someone is willing to post a criticism with their name attached to it, you now have important information in your hands.  First, you know that this issue was important to the person who wrote it.  Second, you now have the opportunity to speak directly to the person about it.  This is a great opportunity to hear ideas or suggestions to improve the ministry, or at least create a conversation where you can explain to the person why the ministry made that decision or had that event.

Of course, there is also the option to let the women decide if they want to answer anonymously or not.  Even the online ones will give you the option for this choice as you set up the survey.

The End… or is it???

At the end of the year, we reflect back on the past twelve months.  This reflection period helps us to determine what was working in our lives and what wasn’t.  We will make resolutions about our hopes for the new year.  Things we want to change.  New adventures we want to take.  Big decisions that need to be made, and small ones too.  We look to make our bodies healthier, and our minds stronger.  Some people will choose to leave a job that is not fulfilling, others will dedicate themselves to trying harder to land the next promotion.

The end of the year isn’t really the end, but rather the beginning.

The end of a chapter that leads us to the next step in our journey.  The end of a book is an opportunity to start a new adventure.  As long as we wake up on this side of heaven, there is still a place for our gifts and talents in this world.

What does this mean to Women’s Ministry?

It means that it is time for you and your team to reevaluate your ministry work, determining what events and programs stay and which should go.  But, it is also a time for self reflection.

* Are you still called to be the Women’s Ministry Leader?  (Or, other position title)

* Are you still called to serve on the Women’s Ministry Team, at all?

* Is the Lord calling you to a new ministry, or a season of rest?

There are times where we are called to step down from authority positions, but not necessarily to leave the team.  Your heart might still be dedicated to Women’s Ministry, but you are in a season that lacks the time to dedicate to the leadership position.  You can step down permanently or even select an interim leader and take a leave of absence.   However, there are times the Lord has a new place for your gifts and talents, and it may be time to leave the ministry altogether.  It is important to pray for discernment so that you know which is the path the Lord would have you take.  Keep in mind that the Lord may also call you to a season of rest.  I once had a friend tell me that the Lord won’t move you until He has somewhere for you to go.    I’ve learned that is not always the case.  Sometimes we are called into a desert period, where we have left what we knew… but we are not ready to go to the promise land yet.  The Lord may move you to a season of rest, where your priority is your direction relationship with Him; a season of growth and maturity to prepare you for the next leg in your journey.

If you have been feeling as if the Lord is moving you out of Women’s Ministry, then there are some other questions you should consider for the new year.

* Have I begun training my replacement?

* Have I made my team or Pastors’ aware of my intentions?

* Do I have people praying over me, my decision, and the ministry?

* If the Lord is calling  you to a specific ministry, have you reached out to their leadership team and expressed your interest in joining their work?

* If the Lord is calling you to a season of rest, have you prayed for clarity on what that looks like and shared this with those who will keep you accountable?

If you know in your heart that your season with Women’s Ministry is coming to a close, the greatest gift you can leave your team and church is a team that is going to function well in your absence and in the transition period.  Giving advance notice of your intention to step down, identifying and developing your replacement, and assuring your church leaders that you will be available to the new leader in an advisory role during the transition can make the process move smoothly. 

Final considerations, should you determine it is time to leave your role in the Women’s Ministry:

* How will you handle your exit?  Will you step away completely or ease out over a period of time?

* How am I going to handle team members coming to me with WM issues, now that I am not the leader?

* How will I handle members of the church coming to me with WM issues, now that I am not the leader?

Something I like to remind WM Leaders is that they leave a legacy.  Some women don’t like change, and when a new leader steps up it usually brings change along with it.  If you feel called to leave, then you have a responsibility to support the leader.  Whether you choose to step away complete or ease out, make sure that you are encouraging the women you serve with (church leaders, church members) to take their concerns to the new leader and not to you.  Or, you can reassure them that all changes take time to get accustomed to and to be patient.  Being supportive of the new season allows you to leave a legacy that includes exiting with grace.