Why We Need It!

When I think about women’s ministry, I don’t think about it as a “ladies’ club.” I don’t think about women getting together to complain about their husbands. I don’t think about cutting coupons or having spa nights.

I don’t think about any of these things because that’s not what women’s ministry is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be a place where women can come to safely talk about Jesus, His love, and how he changes everything. It’s supposed to be a safe place where we can talk about the grace of God and how it impacts things like infertility, divorce, singleness, poverty, cultural expectations, sexuality, and sometimes even menstruation or menopause (because seriously, we need to talk about these sometimes). It’s supposed to be about community that’s made possible by the ties of redemptive love.

Women will always need relationships with other women. I need godly role models who can speak into my life, who have walked the hard road and can guide me through things I’ve never experienced. I will never stop needing these women.

In her newsletter, Just Between Us, Jill Briscoe once said,

After all, who but a mother can fully empathize with a young woman who has suffered a miscarriage or struggled with being shut up with small children all day long? Who but a woman can sympathize with mercurial monthly emotions or PMS or the changes that come unbidden when we hit 50?! What a wide open door our very sex affords us. We can walk right into the hearts and lives of half the human race and present Christ, all because we are female.

We need other women to show us how the gospel informs our womanhood, not the other way around. We need women who can show us how to be children of God, and what that means in a world where our personhood is under attack.

That kind of discipleship happens when we remove the façade and get real about our ordinary, everyday lives.

We Are Better Together!

The honest truth is that we were made for relationships. Fashioned after the triune God, we bear the weight of community in our very DNA.  I still have some growing up to do, and I’m confident I can’t do that without the help other women. You can’t either. And you know what? There are women who need you too.

Commit to community, where you are, with what you have. It won’t be easy, but there’s a doily-loving girly-girl standing right beside a bonfire-enthusiast tomboy, and they both need us to speak the gospel in their language. Women in the church need each other. And that’s what women’s ministry is all about.

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