Over the summer, I was meeting with a friend of mine who is a senior in college. She asked me where my passion for women’s ministry came from. The question took me by surprise. I don’t think anyone had ever asked me that before. So I sat there, in the most darling dessert place, trying to figure out just how I got to be so passionate about ministering to women.
When I first came to this town I found instant community with a group of young, single people. Over the years, those people moved away or went to other churches. After two years here, I was left with no friends. I’m not exaggerating. I would pass my weekends alone at home. It was also during this time that I participated in a mentor-training class at my church. In that class, I got to know some women I would not have met otherwise and I began seeing possibilities for relationship in places where I might not have looked two years earlier. I was getting friendly with women who were older than me, who were married, who were my age but had kids—none of my new friends were like me.
The mentor-training class did not solve the problem of my empty social calendar, but it did shine light on a lie I’d been believing—that I could only be friends with people like me. We women are so good at isolating ourselves. We excel at comparing ourselves to other women and thinking, “I could never be friends with her because…”
What I dream for women’s ministry to be is an opportunity for us to take down some of the walls we create. Titus 2 tells us that women’s ministry should include all generations. There’s great benefit in having a group of girlfriends who get the season of life you’re in, but there’s also benefit in learning from a woman a few seasons ahead, or in reaching out to a younger woman.
Fast-forward to this weekend. I had all kinds of fun things to do and, not once, was I with another single thirty-something woman. Friday night, my late-twenties-married-with-a-kid friend and I had a low-key night on the town. Saturday morning, my house roared with laughter as a “think tank” of women from church sat around my living room. There was a grandmother, moms in their thirties, moms in their twenties, a twenty-something single friend and my aforementioned college friend. It was life-giving to talk with them about women’s ministry at our new church, and to swoon with them as my handsome neighbor pressure-washed his house.
The night was topped off with a 40th birthday party for a friend, joyfully celebrated by a bunch of women who all remembered The Love Boat and Mary Lou Retton. As I sat at that table, I was so thankful to be there. I was so thankful I wasn’t sitting at home thinking, “I could never be friends with them…they drive minivans and have kids.”
There really is more that unites us than divides us—especially if we are in the body of Christ. No one should feel like she has to do life by herself. My passion for women’s ministry is to help us find relationships that build, encourage and strengthen us and, most of all, to keep us from isolating ourselves.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
9 years ago
