Something New for Women
An Interview with Kathy Bruce
May 2002
The 2001 US National Conference established a new Women's Ministry Leadership Team. This new ministry emerged from the Women's Missionary Fellowship, which saw the need to broaden their work beyond missions. There are six areas of focus, missions being one of them.
Bishop Paul Hirschy asked Kathy Bruce to consider chairing the Women's Ministry team. Kathy has directed women's ministries at Emmanuel Community Church in Fort Wayne, Ind., where Kathy's husband, Bob, is associate pastor.
Last August, Kathy began assembling the Women's Ministry Leadership Team, and they've been determining where to start in launching this new ministry for UB women. Here, Kathy discusses what's been happening and what lies ahead.
How did you get started in developing this new thing called Women's Ministries?
Bishop Hirschy called me last July to see if I would do this. In August, I said "Yes."
In September, I attended a summit for women's leaders at The Cove, the Billy Graham retreat in Asheville, N. C. I sat one-on-one with Jill Briscoe and talked with her about thinking globally and working with women in ministry. It was an incredible experience. She gave me a good idea of how big I need to think. I'm used to thinking right here at Emmanuel, which involves several hundred women, but that's different from working with women spread from California to New York in many different settings.
I began praying about the kind of people I was looking for--people who would be cutting-edge in their thinking, innovative, excited, and with a lot of experience in women's ministries. As I made one call, the next person was pointed out to me, one call leading to another. Not one person said no. Every single person I approached agreed to pray, and came back within days with a "yes." That was very confirming to me.
I knew one person well and was acquainted with two others. The rest, I didn't meet until we came together the first time.
Although the original task force identified six areas of ministry, I went after people, not necessarily persons with a specific area of giftedness. But as I got to know them, I discovered that we had a lady for each area. Valerie Reynolds has a passion for evangelism, Nancy Fritz has a passion for prayer, Annette Sites has a passion for discipleship. The way it came together was definitely a God-thing. There's a lot, a lot, of talent among the women on the leadership team.
Where did the team start?
We've had three meetings, one of them a conference call. Initially, the team met to develop goals and a mission statement. I did not tell them at the time that that work had been done by the task force that came out of Women's Missionary Fellowship. That group had the foresight to see that it was time to broaden women's ministries beyond missions into these new areas. Interestingly, the mission statement and goals we developed were almost identical to what those visionaries prepared for us.
After identifying the areas we wanted to focus on, we started developing goals. Most of us are very task-oriented. Very quickly, the various ladies grabbed on to something and started seeing it happen. Each lady is sold out to her area. For instance, Nancy Fritz can't talk enough about prayer. She's always sending us things. She sent us a prayer last week that she has been praying for each of us on the team.
At this point, a number of things are in place. We developed a brochure and a website. We plan to attend conference meetings. The email list is growing, with over 70 names. We have developed a database of contact people in each church. I assigned everyone 30-40 churches to contact one-to-one to collect data, which they forward to Annette Sites, who is making a central address file.
Already, we've had good feedback from our phone conversations. The website has produced much excitement. We've had contacts from Honduras, Canada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. People say, "Wow, I didn't know you were there! This is an answer to prayer!"
One woman wanted to start a ministry with the elderly in her church and asked what resources we could offer her. I forwarded that email to everybody on our team, and they all sent me answers to how they would tackle it. I compiled the responses and sent a reply to the lady. If she's asking that question, other people might be asking it, so we can put things like that on the website.
Our big goal this year is just to let people know we're here and that we're getting organized. We'll set up a table at the annual conferences meeting this summer, starting in May with Mid-Atlantic Conference. We'll use it to hand out the brochure and meet some people face-to-face. We hope to have some resources at the table to recommend.
What do you see happening down the road? What's the vision that is emerging from your group?
Our vision is to get some training into the churches and begin encouraging women.
This summer, all of the women on the Leadership Team will receive the training in the women's track of Sonlife. The first group will go at the beginning of May, and the rest of the team will go in mid-August. The women's track is the fastest-growing part of Sonlife right now. I have already received the Sonlife youth training, and will take the women's training in August.
I'm hoping the Sonlife training will get us all started with a similar foundation of strategy. We need to pull together in our approach. We will then take what we learn and get it into our churches. We hope to line up conference meetings or leadership days, or possibly separate retreats for women, during which we can take those strategies to the local conferences and do some teaching, encouraging, and relationship-building.
I recently learned that a large percentage of our churches are not only under 100 in attendance, but under 50. I was not aware of that. Having been there, I remember how persons in those churches wear many hats. It's really draining if you don't have some encouragement. In a multi-staff situation like Emmanuel, we receive encouragement all the time and there are other people to come alongside you. But in a church of 50, you carry a lot of responsibility for getting things started.
We need to get physically present with women to encourage and help them. That may involve retreats or events at conference times. I look forward to establishing events that the ladies will look forward to, where they'll say, "The women are gathering, and I want to be there." We can then begin to find out where they itch and how we can help meet needs.
The women will encourage each other if we can get them all together. So, pulling together women who are spread across the denomination, and feeding them good resources and encouragement--that is the big challenge I really want to go after. A major difficulty will be networking with remote churches, or churches in which we don't have a connection through the internet.
What has Emmanuel done in women's ministry?
When people think of Emmanuel, they think of discipleship or Bible training. Our big focus is getting people into the Word, so discipleship has been at the core of our women's ministries. When I came on board, we began building ministries for women that addressed the categories of Win, Build, and Equip, which come out of Sonlife. Everything was aimed at one of those categories.
In Win, we had Crisis Pregnancy come do baby showers for women. We have a halfway house for women in Fort Wayne called Wings of Hope; we've sent people to teach women how to write resumes, to balance a checkbook, to cook, and do other things. We had a fair of women's ministry options that reach out to the community. We've brought missions and outreach opportunities to the women and helped encourage them to go out and get or stay involved in those types of things.
One of my favorites is a food distribution place in Fort Wayne, where we give them food and clothing, and--the part I've enjoyed doing--share the gospel with them. One time a guy came up to me wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt, and with spikes around both wrists and his neck and shoes. I shared the gospel with him, and discovered that he was, in fact, a Christian who was ministering to gang members. It was a stretching moment for me.
In Build, we not only do discipleship, but we have Bible study for the graduates of the discipleship program. We run special classes for women who are unequally yoked, and we've done some supportive things for single parents and their kids. We constantly run a women-only class in the evening or on Sunday morning in which we tackle some intimate issues for women and other women's interests.
In Equip, we've done different kinds of training--training as wives and mothers, and the 30-Day Gourmet training.
Where does Women's Missionary Fellowship
fit in this new ministry?
WMF is an equal part of the team. We're not eliminating WMF. In fact, I see WMF taking a turn toward bigger growth than it's ever had. I believe WMF will experience a revival in a sense, because of the current emphasis on volunteerism which President Bushis pushing and which has increased after September 11.
However, there is much more out there for women than missions. We want to grow from a missions-only focus to a more balanced emphasis which includes these other areas. Those areas just need to catch up with the WMF. I'm pleased that Donna Hollopeter will stay on the task force to give that attention. We don't want any conflict with Global Ministries.
I look forward to someday taking the women's ministry training to the mission fields. I've already told Gary Dilley that I'm going to Macau with him at some point. Some of our first contacts came from Haiti and Honduras, begging for help. If help and encouragement is needed there, we'll go. Nobody wants to limit it to the United States.
|
