Women’s Ministry in the Church: Tools for Leaders

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Colleen Searcy
Hello, hi ladies. Man, to honor your time, we’re gonna go ahead and get started. And so, feel free to come on in and find a seat. It’s just freezing in here. I’m joking. I’m hot all the time. I’m hot all the time, and so it feels warm in here. We’re just gonna be best friends and slightly sweaty together. Okay, welcome. This is the women’s ministry breakout, and we’re going to introduce ourselves in just a minute. But I want to start by saying how happy we are to see your face as we’ve been praying for you, and we already love you and respect you because in some form or facet, you’re doing the hard work of women’s ministry and ministering to. You don’t have to have a formal women’s ministry in your church, but we do have to minister to women. Like we have to, and you’re doing it in some way and in some capacity, and it’s hard and meaningful work. And so we already just love you. I want to give you a roadmap. It was challenging to go. We have 45 minutes to talk about women’s ministry, and we’re coming from different churches, different areas of the country. Our women are dealing with some of the same challenges and many different challenges, healing from different wounds. So, where do you, what do you land on in 45 minutes? Well, Karen and I landed on three big rocks that we’re going to try to cover in 45 minutes. And the first is where to begin when building a women’s ministry. Where do you begin? We’re going to tackle that. The second big rock we’re going to tackle is spaces to create for both discipleship and community. Women need both. We need to be formed, and we need to be found, so to speak. Formed in discipleship to Jesus, but also seen. So spaces to create for discipleship and community. And then the third big rock is how to encourage volunteer leadership. Yes, can I get a witness? Right. All right. So those are the three big rocks we’re going to land on. Let me go ahead and introduce myself, and then I’m going to hand it over to Karen. But my name is Colleen Cersey, and my my day job is I am on staff at the Village Church, which is in the Dallas area. My title is Adult Discipleship Minister, but my focus is on women’s ministry. I have been the director of women’s ministry at another church in the Dallas area, and I’m going to talk about both. Yeah, so I lead and teach our women’s Bible study at the Village. I helped form our women’s ministry rhythms there at the Village, and kind of my side hustle, my side ministry is called Meet Me in the Bible, and I publish a Bible study series through Crossway called Meet Me in the Bible, and it’s a very doable five-step framework to help anyone learn how to read their Bible. It is also meant to be a resource for women in the local church who have the gift of teaching and want to teach their women, and they want to do the teaching, but they would like to have a workbook to work from. And so, if that interests you, you can go check out Meet Me in the Bible at the Crossway Booth booth in a little bit. But that’s a little bit about me. I want you to meet my friend Karen.

Karen Pourcho
Okay, my name is Karen Porscheau, and I’m just delighted to be here. It is so fun to be in a room with so many women that all have a passion to see ministry done for women, by women with women-it’s just-it’s just all there. So this is a room of a lot of like-minded people. I can already tell. I serve as director of women’s ministry and on the directional team at College Park Church, which is here in Indianapolis. So about a year ago, we lost our pastor, and he is now TGC’s president. So that that might tell you why I might be on the stage is because he knows me. But anyway, it’s just a pleasure to serve in that church with that body. So today we’re going to share, like Colleen said, from our experiences, and and they’re both different. For instance, before I was in women’s ministry, I was a teaching director of a large parachurch Bible study that, if I said the name of many of you would know, both Missouri and here in Indiana. So that was I was in that Bible study lane, and then all of a sudden I was into the church world, and there was a lot of things I didn’t know about. And so we’ll talk about that in just a minute, but right now I want to for you to hear from Colleen because she was actually on the ground starting a women’s ministry just from scratch. So Colleen, tell us about that process. How did that work for you?

Colleen Searcy
I would love to have a special honor. Today, because one of the women that was with me as I started the women’s ministry from scratch is actually here, Caitlin, and so it’s just a delight. So I’m going to look at you a lot as we’re talking about this. But yeah, a few years ago, probably I say a few. It feels like two. Does this happen to y’all? But it was actually 10. Man, life goes by really, really fast in the Dallas area. I was called by a pastor. The church was growing rapidly, and they did not have anything formal for women at that point. So he gave me a shout and said, “Hey, would you come and be our women’s minister and build a women’s ministry from the ground up, and that was terrifying and so exciting. And he really meant it. He he really let me build the plane in the air, so to speak. And so I just wanted to share that experience with you. I the first thing I did was seek counsel from other women’s ministers, and y’all, I emailed women who had never heard of me, had knew had no idea who I was, but I had heard of them and knew they were effective in their jobs. And I reached out to them and said, “Would would you be willing to have an hour phone call with me? And I asked them questions like, “If you were starting from scratch, I mean, just hypothetically, if you were building a women’s ministry from scratch, what would you go back and do differently? And this precious women’s minister got me in contact with several other women’s ministers, and so I started with a lot of really great counsel. That’s a great place to start-just counsel from other women who have been in similar positions that that you are in. One of the things all of those women shared with me is the first thing you want to do if you’re building from scratch or if you’re going in to a new position, establish trust with the women of your church. Establish trust with the women of your church. One of the most effective ways to establish trust is to do a ton of listening. Listen and then listen some more and then listen some more. And so, as I thought about that, I was in this new church to me, and I went to my pastor and I said, “Okay, I would like names of the pillars of the church. Who are the women that have been here for 30 years? Who who are the women that everybody goes to for counsel? Who are the the women that are starting things that have taken initiative? And I had a list of women, and I just started having lots and lots of coffee dates and lunch dates. And two of the questions that I asked each of those women that were super helpful in knowing where to start was: I would ask, “What already exists that ministers to you? What already exists that ministers to you, because that was going to let me know what I needed to either keep fanning the flame of, or or I didn’t even have to touch it. It was already existing, right? Okay, that’s working. I don’t need to recreate that. What exists that already ministers to you? Another question was, what do you think is the greatest need for the women of this church? What do you think is the greatest need for the women of this church? And then one of the other questions I asked is, what feels missing? So what’s going great? What are the needs of the women here? And listen, it was so it worked twofold. Like I was building relationships with the women of the church, I was gathering helpful information, and I was establishing trust. But there were I took women to coffee that were 75 and women to coffee that were 25 and just joined the church, and it was so interesting how their how much their answers overlapped, and so listening-just doing a lot of listening-it communicates to your women. I I need your insight, and I value your feedback. You’ve been here. You’ve got the pulse of this church, and I need to learn from you. And it’s a great place to start establishing trust by listening.

Colleen Searcy
But you also get a whole lot of very helpful information. So establish trust, and then number two, when you’re building a women’s ministry from scratch, is determine a vision statement for your ministry. Determine a vision statement. We’ve all done a puzzle at some point, right? And when I I don’t love puzzles, I I’m just not patient enough. But my mom loves them, and so when she does them, I always see that box propped up there, right? The the the end picture and. She’s always looking at that end picture as she builds the boundaries, right? The corners, and then fills in. That’s that’s how you should build, right? This is a picture of where I’m heading. I’m building this, so you want to determine a vision statement before you just go in and start start doing things, adding things. So, how did I determine a mission a vision statement? I did two things. I started with the mission statement of our church because women’s ministry is an extension of the church, so we should be fulfilling the mission of the church we’re a part of. So you plug into the mission statement of the church, and I’m going to read it to you in just a minute, just to give you an example, but you start there when you’re determining a vision statement. Plug into the mission statement of your church, and then you take all of that information you’ve gathered. What feels missing? What do you feel like the the needs of the women are for this church? You take that information, and this is a really academic word. But then you mush those two things together. That’s what I did. I mushed them together. The mission statement of the church and what our women needed. The feedback that I had received. So I’m going to give you an example. The here I’m going to read you the mission statement of our church. The mission statement was: We seek to help people in places encounter Jesus through reaching, teaching, training, and sending. Okay, so listen for those words in just a little bit. We seek to help people encounter Jesus through reaching, teaching, training, and sending. What I found, if as I did all of my interviews, the what felt missing to the women at the church was an undistracted space to dive deeply into the Word of God alongside other women. That is what every single person, regardless of their age or how many years they had been there, said we need an undistracted space to go to dive deeply into God’s word alongside other women and home groups or life groups. No, they all had different names. Those were those are the lifeblood of this church, or the lifeblood of the village, and those are wonderful. But I found so many women saying, “But I host it, or I’m serving food at my home group, and I’m watching my children and the tender topics of women can’t surface, and we can’t stay there because we’ve got men in the room too. So we need an undistracted space to dive deeply into the Word of God alongside other women. So here’s my vision statement. I mushed them together, and it sounded like this: Our women’s ministry exists to reach, care for, and train women through rhythmic Bible study and a gather event, in order to send equipped disciples into neighborhoods, homes, workplaces, and the nations.

Karen Pourcho
So, Colleen, once you got to that vision statement, yeah. Okay, then what was the next thing, like boots on the ground, that that you did? How did you decide what was the next thing?

Colleen Searcy
Yeah. So I started Bible study because that was the missing piece, as far as the well, it wasn’t the only missing piece, but it was the need that was the most felt. And so I started with Bible study, and I recruited people like Caitlin. She was on my lead team. We together recruited small group leaders, and we got Bible study in place. Caitlin helped me design our curriculum, so we just we got started on that that piece. Small group leaders, everything we needed for Bible study, and we got that going, and we let that run for a semester. And then we decided, okay, now what’s the next missing piece? And for us, it was that care piece, that care team. So we started there.

Karen Pourcho
Okay.

Colleen Searcy
All right, Karen, what was it like for you at College Park?

Karen Pourcho
Well, mine was a little different. Our church was about 30 years old whenever I came on staff, and there was women’s ministry already happening. There was very good women’s ministry and Bible studies. There was a moms connection group, a widows group, and so forth. But the groups were hadn’t really been brought together. So a few months before I came on staff, they had like a part-time woman who was very capable, and she sort of started coordinating those things. So at least the the groups of women that were in leadership were beginning to talk to one another, but as I came on, like I said, I’d been in this Bible study lane, and there was so much I didn’t understand about the life of the church and everything. So one of the first things, like you said, was to build trust and to listen. I wanted to see where God was working, and so that’s what I was looking for, but I was also looking for holes, places where I didn’t see ministry happening, but there were women there. Okay, whatever that that might have been, age, stage, connections, cross generational spaces, besides. Bible study, and so I just leaned on the Lord for those things. But one thing I did get in with as I came on was that there was a women’s ministry council, and that can be so helpful for anyone as they are leading a women’s ministry is to have people that are very involved in it on a regular basis, giving you feedback. So the women’s ministry council that I inherited as I came on were the heads of these different kind of siloed, laned ministries that were already happening, and so I’d go into the meetings, and these women were were very dedicated and and extremely I don’t know devoted to what they were doing, but they kind of stayed in their lane and I realized that this group really wasn’t meeting what I was looking for. I was looking for kind of an issue solving or problem solving prayer supporting group that I could go to with. Oh, this is happening over here. What should we do about it? Or help me to think about what we should be doing a year and a half from now. Or or what are you hearing the women talk about? That’s what I was looking for. And this former group, they were so concerned about what was happening in their own ministries that they weren’t listening to others, and so what I did whenever the time came-oops, we are in trouble now. I’ll get him. Okay, is that what I did whenever that happened, and I saw what was happening, and I had a chance to kind of shutter that group down and and to pull together a different group, and I spent time in prayer, and I said, God, where about where in this church could I find seven about six or seven women that love you, that can help be this support group for the women’s ministry and a support group for me coming in, and so I was looking for women that were involved in women’s ministry, but they weren’t heading it up. They didn’t have the heavy responsibility of being leaders, but they they certainly knew what was going on. And I was looking for a diverse group, not only in their ages and in their stages, but also ethnically diverse and and could really show me the culture of the church, and so now that group is a group we meet for one full day about once a quarter, and when we do, we spend time in prayer for the ministries. We look ahead. We talk about big themes. There, this is the go-to text thread whenever there is a issue happening in ministries. These are the seven women that I go to, and and you know ask for their prayer support in many ways. So that has been just a real help for me. It’s having that women’s ministry council.

Colleen Searcy
I love the idea of a women’s ministry council. I’m thinking about that, Karen. That’s a good idea. Thank you.

Karen Pourcho
Also, before we move on from this topic, one thing I wanted to say is that there is a little book in the bookstore out there, and it’s called “A Short Guide to Women’s Ministry” by Nora Allison. Have anybody ever heard of this little book? It is published by I want to say Broadman, but that shows my old Southern Baptist roots. It’s B and H, and it is the book. I if I was going to write a book on women’s ministry, it’d be that book. And so, if you get a chance and you’re really looking for email templates and schedules and all those kinds of things, that book has it. It’s called a short guide to women’s ministry, and I’m not kidding. It’s a little bitty thing, but powerful. Uh huh. Nora Allison. Nora Allison. So, Colleen, how did you determine the spaces that you’re going to create for the women in your church for discipleship and community. Yeah, the discipleship

Colleen Searcy
and community. We want both spaces for discipleship and community. I’ve already talked about Bible study, but I want to. Here’s what I want to add. That that’s our primary discipleship space at the village. We have a women’s Bible study. We have a men’s Bible study. We take a like a three-legged stool approach to Bible study, where we have homework that you do on your own, and then we come together and we meet in small groups first, and we have small group discussion. You talk about your homework, and then we do large group teaching last. We do it that way because women and men, we the women’s Bible study happens at a different place on campus, and the men’s Bible study, but we’re all studying the same thing. But it’s so cool when women discuss their homework, and they they see how much they’ve learned before they ever even step into the teaching, and it just builds. So much confidence that God delights to reveal Himself to each individual through His Word, not just to the teacher. But we both, Karen, something we we found out we had in common is we both have a deep love for Bible study. But one of the things we talked about as we were preparing for this is so many layers of ministry happen in Bible study, especially when you have that small group space. First of all, in a gender-specific space, those tender topics can surface, and it’s in a safe place, and you have time to to handle those. Or you, a small group leader, can let me know, hey, this this topic surface. This is what Cheryl. This she’s shouldering this right now, and then we get to care for Cheryl. Just community happens in those small group spaces. One of the things we’re finding at the village is our widows. We’ve almost got like this organic widow ministry happening in Bible study because the women of their small group take care of the widows within their group, and then the Bible has a lot to say about how important it is to honor and take care of our widows. And so, we’ve got community forming. Some organic mentorship often happens within those Bible study spaces. You have an older woman that connects with the younger woman, and they start going to coffee, and so that is our primary discipleship space, and that’s why so many different layers can happen within that one ministry.

Karen Pourcho
But Colleen, you know how busy women are. We got so many things going on in our lives. I mean, you guys could all say I’m busy, right? So, but Colleen, how did you develop rhythms and cadences for your women that would fit in their lives?

Colleen Searcy
That’s such a good. That’s a good question. And the word I love there is rhythm. We’re juggling a lot, yes, all the time. Women are juggling a lot. Rhythms are really a gift to women. If you can create predictability for the women of your church, that is such a gift to them. So we fell into-we didn’t fall into-we purposely put in discipleship rhythms and event rhythms, and so our women are starting to catch on. They’re like, “Oh, Bible study starts the day after Labor Day, and then it starts again the day after MLK Day. Like every time, and all of our discipleship spaces start on the same day and end on the same day. So we have a training program. It’s theological formation. That’s another part of our discipleship rhythm. But it starts the same day Bible study does, and it ends the same day. Bible study does it just clears up so much confusion. We also have an event rhythm. We have an event at the end of July. It’s y’all. We do. We we’ve gone simple now. We’ve pulled back from fancy, and we do simple so that we can do it, and it’s sustainable. But at the end of July, we have a women’s breakfast, and we do it at the end of July because everybody’s coming back from vacation, and they get a direct invitation into our discipleship spaces at women’s breakfast. So, end of July women’s breakfast, women’s Bible study starts the day after Labor Day, and it runs through November. We have another event in December called Local Tables. I’m going to come back to that in just a minute. Why do we have local tables? We want women to find community, and then we invite them into a formational space, home group, women’s Bible study training program. So we have a July event, and then our discipleship rhythm. Then we have a December event, and then our discipleship rhythm, and then we have a May event, and we just we just keep it real streamlined like that. I’m gonna give one minute on local tables. I tried something new this year. It wasn’t my idea. I borrowed an idea. Borrow ideas from one another. That’s one of the best things about TGC women get phone numbers and bother each other. Hey, I don’t know if you remember me. What are y’all doing for your women’s event? And just borrow ideas. This is where local tables came from. The village is a big church, and one of the things that is challenging at the village when I interviewed a bunch of women, what feels missing? I don’t. I’m having such a hard time feeling like I belong here, like we’re just this mass of people walking around. And so I was like, we got to fix that. So instead of doing a women’s events where everybody comes to the church and you brush shoulders with lots of women and eat dessert and go home, I mean, more happens than that. But y’all know what I’m saying. We I flipped it and recruited 50 hostesses that were willing to host eight women at their dinner table, and so on one night in December, there are two to 300 women sitting around a dining room table in somebody’s house, and it it’s so y’all it’s so personable personal. I will tell you. Challenge is getting women there because that feels scary, right? Like going to someone’s house that maybe you haven’t met. But every time when people leave, they’re like, “I think that’s my favorite thing we do. But it’s personal, and you meet seven other women, and then you get an invitation into a discipleship space, and it gives women an opportunity to show hospitality too. So a July event discipleship, December event that’s local tables discipleship, and then a May event. And the May event’s like your women’s event. That’s a typical women’s event. Everybody come to the church and great worship. And so yeah, those are some of our rhythms. All right. So Karen already mentioned that Bible study feels paramount to you too, but tell tell us about Bible study. But tell us about the other events that you do at College Park.

Karen Pourcho
Okay, well, just to land a little bit more and beat the drum on Bible study because I really do believe it’s core. You know, of all the things we do, I would be hard pressed to find verses in the Bible that did some of the things that we, you know, give a specific reason why you do something. But Bible study, Isaiah 55, it’s saying that God’s word will not come back. Now, this will date you whether you say void or empty, but anyway, it is not going to come back. Something is going to happen when the pages of the Bible are turned, and women are in it, and so I know right here. You know, Colleen and I right now are from larger churches, and some of you are in smaller churches or medium size. But no matter what size church, or even if we’re talking about your college group or something, you can always do Bible study. And when women sit around and they talk about God’s word, something very sweet happens. I have a painting in my office, and I’ll get my mind get a little teary-eyed when I think about it. And that painting was made for me by my daughter whenever I took this job, and I asked her, and she did this beautifully. It’s a still life, and the still life is many things are in the painting that are meaningful to me, but there is the Bible is opened, and around it are some drinking vessels. Okay, there is a rugged pottery mug. Okay, sitting there, and there is an elegant cup and saucer from Europe, and there is this oh that the porcelain on it you can just see through that’s so so dainty and so delicate, and I wanted this to to represent women as they come together. So many different background stories. We can be in a Bible study with someone who is 20 years older than us, and someone who is 20 years younger than us, and there’s something about God’s word and the Holy Spirit, and it just draws our hearts together. So no matter what you do, I’d say Bible study. So I think of women’s ministry as a big funnel, and that that the cone of the funnel that you want everything eventually to go through is Bible study, and so my goal is, however we can do it, we are trying to get women through the funnel so that they end up in a strong Bible study where God’s word is going to transform their lives. Now, the top of that funnel, all the whole funnel is important, right? But the top of that funnel is our events, and these are the come one, come all, bring your friend. There’s a purpose for the events, so it could be a conference. We have a conference every other year. We have finally gotten off of cycling with TGC, which should be so helpful. So we have a conference. We have in the fall. We have something called Blessings Market, where the artisans of our church they come together and they have crafts that they they sell, but they agree to give all of their profits to one of our local ministries, and so it’s kind of come. But it’s one of those events where you can just bring your neighbor, bring your grandma, bring that person you’re trying to witness to at at work who would normally not go into a church. They would come to this, so that’s the top of the funnel. Bottom of the funnel is Bible study, and in the middle of that is where we have age stage connection groups. There’s just certain times I think in a woman’s life, where it’s helpful to have some handles to ministry, just you’re you’re a little bit more in need than you are in others. One of those are our new moms, I think, and so moms’ connections always been an important part at our church. Another, she talked about the widows, and we have a widows who now you can hear me.

Karen Pourcho
We we have a widows group that is is there as well. We also have a Titus two ministry that is very important, where it’s cross generational, and that’s our particular ministry. Modeled after Susan Hunt’s model, which if you’ve ever you want a tool, hers is called Titus Two Tools is the book, and that’s that’ll just be your roadmap and how to have a powerful Titus Two ministry. So there’s those different ages and stages that we have with the groups.

Colleen Searcy
So I have a question for you. When I met Karen two years ago at this conference, and I was new on staff at the village, and was building rhythms for our women’s ministry, and had a conversation with Karen, and I was like, I want to bring that up when we’re having our breakout because it was so helpful to me, but so I’m going to say something that I just I’m just going to say it. American church has not historically been great about including and ministering to and casting vision for single women, okay, it needs to be said, we’re doing better, but we need to keep doing better. I think of Mary and Martha in the Gospels, single women disciples of Jesus, living a full and fruitful and multiplying kind of life. And so I asked Karen. I’m going to ask you now. Will you share your vision for ministering to single women at College Park?

Karen Pourcho
Just like Colleen just said, there has been, I believe, a stereotype in our churches that women’s ministry is for those women that have the luxury of time to get involved at church, and so they think it’s the women that can come to the during the day things, or or they’ve got the time and money to be invested in something at a different time. But there’s a lot of women that check out. They don’t think that women’s ministry in the church is is for them because they don’t fit that fit that particular mold, and I think single women have felt that there’s kind of this idea that women’s ministry is for moms and wives, and if you’re a mom and wife, you fit in really, really well. And the truth of the matter is that women’s ministry-we all need to have a vision for every woman in our church, and how do we reach out and love every woman? Now, what I have found that if you’re a single young single woman, you don’t necessarily want to have this little organization that’s for young single women. Okay, they don’t like to be singled out necessarily. There are other spaces in our church. They’re going to minister to them. We have young adults ministry. They’re going to be in co-ed spaces. They’re going to be involved in different places. But these women, if we can get them involved in our Bible studies, are just going to be so helpful for us, women that are single are learning to live life where Christ is their sufficiency. If they are following the Lord, and I think they have so much to give us. So for the single women, I had one a younger woman one time just say, “I don’t want something special. I just want to be deployed. That’s such a good word, isn’t it? And so it’s it’s using these women in the different spaces, being able to hear from them. But I’ve also watched as women tend to age, and this can be in a lot of different you know not necessarily just singles. There’s kind of a withdrawal from the ministries of the church, and they they step back. Their worlds get a little bit smaller, possibly, and so what we’ve seen is we’ve developed a ministry for older single women that is called Sparrows, and love it or hate it-that’s the name for now. And so, but there, this includes our widows, but it also includes all women that are doing life alone as as they’re older, and so they have a time where they have a dinner after church on Sundays, where we help do part of the budget, part of it’s potluck, and they meet after church, and you can smell that food, and those women want to stay, and they want to come to that. And then we also have they have a game day once a month. They but the this group of women they’ve gotten so involved with each other, that they have developed other little ministries that they’re doing within the church, because they they want to be together. Now the the thing is though, we want them involved in the whole church as well. So every time they come together for a meal, or they come together for a game day. Their leader makes sure that there is information in front of them about how they can get involved in the church. So having these kind of handles into ministry has helped pull these women, and we’re seeing women we’ve just have not seen involved before in the life of the church. But our elders and our deacons are also taking note of these women, and they’re seeing women that are still facing the same issues that our widows are. They still have to figure out Social Security and Medicare, and who’s going to help them rake the leaves in their yard. And now our church leadership is is looking over them the same way that they do our widows, which has been a real blessing. But in these areas, it’s so helpful to have ministries put some handles on relationships that women may not otherwise pick or choose for themselves, but there is organically we want relationships to happen, but it helps us to kind of put some spaces together for them for it to happen.

Colleen Searcy
So some structure and predictability. That’s right. Some organic and some structure and predictability.

Karen Pourcho
Right.

Colleen Searcy
I’d love to hear about your calendar at College Park, and why you do it that way? Like, does Bible study run the same schedule as the Titus two women?

Karen Pourcho
This is a tip that I got from actually a woman that I met here. Her name was Mary Dilke. Someone organized for us. I’ve only met her that one time. I remember her name, but she had been the director of Women’s Ministry at Bethlehem Baptist, when John Piper was the the pastor there, and she gave me this wonderful advice. She says, “You have all these ministries starting out in the fall, and everything. Don’t have you know pick some to start other times of the year. So when we started our Titus two ministry, which rivals our Bible study, or is getting can get close to the some of the same numbers that they we start that in January. So after we’ve kicked off all those big things in the fall, then we spend time training and recruiting Titus two leaders, so that we have a January to December calendar for them, and that has really helped me out as far as it comes to just the all of the administration of that. And I say that with tongue in cheek because the person who does the real administrating is my assistant director, who’s sitting right over there.

Colleen Searcy
That’s a good idea. We’re all losing our minds in August because we’re starting everything in August. I know. I’m taking note. I’m taking note. Pros and cons. Pros and cons. I’m going to switch gears and just honor our time. I want to get to our third big rock, and that’s volunteer leadership. This is a big challenge. So, Karen, I hear from women all over the country, that it is hard to maintain faithful volunteer leadership. Will you tell me a little bit about how you encourage and recruit volunteers?

Karen Pourcho
Do whatever you can to make it easy for them to lead. Remove the distractions. Childcare is a big one of those. So as much as you can help with childcare, do it, and we could spend a whole session on child care. I would think because women’s ministry needs that as a partner, you know, symbiotic ministry as well. But make it easy for them to serve. Give them the resources that they need. You know, the leader books. Make sure they have them in advance for whatever’s coming up. If there’s a scripture book notebook that goes along with whatever study they’re doing, make sure they get that too to help them in their study. Just go above and beyond helping them with resources, encourage them. We put it into our budget to give small gifts to our leaders at the ends of their sessions, and I’m talking small. I’m talking 10 to $15 is kind of our price range. You can go even cheaper because the ministry that I used to be with had a no gifts policy, so there was never any gifts. But you know what we did? We gave Bible verses, and we sought the Lord for a time period and asked the Lord to give us a verse for a woman, and then we wrote it in a card and gave it to her. And those are some of the most memorable gifts I’ve ever received in church. So it doesn’t always have to cost something, but but give them some little appreciation gift, as well as we do surveys or evaluations at the end of different ministries as they close out, and we want those to be anonymous so that the assistant director and myself read those. But we are the only ones that are reading. Those raw, and then, but if there are some paragraphs or some sentences that are really encouraging to your leaders, email that to her or put it in a card. Let her know, hey, you’re making such a difference. This is what someone said. This is how God has used you, and that is just a great way to help them. And then just love on them and care for them the way that you want them to love and care for the women that they are serving. So that there is kind of a shepherding model where the women in your church are shepherded by the leaders, and then there is someone here that is also shepherding them. That’s too much for me to do for the leaders that we have at any one time serving at College Park Church, but I bore it like a burden until the Women’s Ministry Council came along, and so every woman on my Women’s Ministry Council, they each have a ministry that they serve. Now they’re not in leadership in that ministry, but they serve those leaders by calling them, making sure they’re okay, sending them cards, checking in with them. If it’s, I know that our Moms Connection Ladyship Women’s Ministry Council person, she will go to their meetings just to to see how she can help give advice and leadership. So we are making sure that every leader is cared for and shepherded.

Colleen Searcy
That’s really good. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, invest in the leaders. On the same, along the same lines, just how to keep faithful volunteer leadership, recruit, and keep. I would say casting vision. I’m going to go back to I’m a big vision person, but as you’re recruiting volunteer leadership, bring them into the very beginning stages. This is why one of the reasons, like Caitlin and I, will be lifelong friends, and it’s because we built a women’s ministry together. And so I didn’t come up with all of the ideas, and then recruit leaders, and then say, “Here are your tasks to go execute. Bring them in at the very beginning stages. They’re going to have ideas that are really good. They are going to think of things that I did not think of to the best that you can. Like a women’s ministry council, I call we we were the y’all were the women’s ministry lead team, different ages. Same like Karen said, just tried to get as much diversity on that lead team as possible. But we ideated together and we wandered together, and they helped build it. And I feel like that’s really important because I can’t remember who said this quote, but it’s not mine. But people will gladly execute what they help create. People will gladly execute what they help create, and so I found when you, as you’re recruiting volunteers, you’re inviting them into building something, and you cast vision for them. Read them your vision statement. Here’s what I want to build for the women of our church, but I need you to help me do it. Would you want to come? I’m inviting you to come. Bring your ideas, bring your feedback, and let’s build a space of regular Bible study rhythm, regular discipleship rhythm, so that we can send equipped women into their neighborhoods, workspaces, homes, and even into the nations. Do you want to do that with me, and then mean it? Like take some of their ideas and lay down some of yours and build it together, and you’ll find that women want to see it all the way through. They’re motivated because it’s their baby too. They’re not just doing the tasks that you don’t have time to do. They are valued members of a team. Does that make sense? That that’s super helpful. I think, man, that went by so fast, Karen. Really, it’s 344. Oh my goodness!

Karen Pourcho
We just want to recognize you. Thank you for choosing this breakout. We just know that you have a heart for women’s ministry, and so before I’m going to ask Colleen just to pray over you and your ministries and where the the lives that you are touching. But before I do that, I want to say that we’ll be up here for a few minutes afterwards. We wanted to have a Q and A that was in the books until we got to talking, and we realized we’re going to fill up all the time. So we’re up here and we are available. Would love to to meet with you and talk with you. So Colleen, would you pray for us? I would love

Colleen Searcy
to. All right, let’s bow our heads and pray. I’m going to borrow Paul’s words as I pray for you, Heavenly Father. According to the riches of Your glory, will You grant each of these women in this room strength and power through Your Spirit, so that Christ will dwell in each heart through faith, and that. Each woman in this room, being rooted and grounded in love, may have the strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. That each of these women will be filled with all the fullness of God as they go back to minister to the women of their church and their community, bless each one of them with favor as they do so, and we pray all of these things in the sweet name of Jesus. Amen.