Training women in our churches

It was a real pleasure to hear about the women’s ministry at Charlotte Chapel in Edinburgh during a recent FIEC Pastors’ Network Conference. Part of that ministry involves a rich training course I’d love to see adapted and imitated in many more churches. I asked the Women’s Ministry Coordinator, Rachel Sloan to explain how the course started, what it looks like and what resources she makes use of:

The Women's Ministry Training Group arose out of seeing the need to train and equip women to grow and develop the gifts and abilities God has given them for service.  Christian women have a vital role to play in the local church.  When we are welcomed into God's family he gives his gifts to us to point others to Jesus.  But, sometimes, it can feel hard to use those gifts.  We don't always feel equipped to tell others about Jesus or to encourage one other to keep going in our faith.  The aim of this group was to give confidence to those considering how to serve for the first time and to encourage and further equip those already serving.  

We started back in June 2014 and have completed 10 sessions over the past year.  The group initially included younger women who showed leadership potential and a few who were serving but would benefit from being better equipped.  One thing that has stood out from the group is that in church life we can often give roles to individuals who are keen and show leadership gifts without ensuring they have the necessary skills to lead.  One real benefit of the group has been to equip these women with skills they need to lead with confidence.  

Outline of the Women in Ministry Training Course (adapted from the Women's Ministry Course)

1. Women’s Ministry: What is women’s ministry and why do we need it?

2. Understanding the Bible: How do we understanding the Bible? What basics should we all know about the Bible?

3. Sharing the Bible: What are the different ways we can share the Bible with others? How do you prep a Bible talk? How do you lead a bible study?

4. One-to-one discipleship: What is one-to-one discipleship? Why should we do it? What are the essential elements?

5. Women and evangelism: How do I share the gospel? How do I create opportunities?

6. Pastoral Care: What is Pastoral care? What are the tools for pastoral care?

7. Pastoral Care - Mental Health: Different conditions. How to support those with depression, self-harm and eating disorders

8. Pastoral Care - Sexuality: Why do we need to talk about this? What does the Bible say about sexuality? What are the struggles women can face?

9. Supporting those who are married: What is God’s pattern for marriage? What are the challenges of marriage?

10. Supporting singles: What does the Bible teach about singleness? How can we celebrate singleness? The challenges of singleness. Godly dating, welcoming the divorced, valuing widows.

Further Resources

• How to Read the Bible for all it’s Worth - Gordon Fee & Douglas Stuart

• Dig Deeper: Tools to unearth the Bible's treasure - Nigel Beynon & Andrew Sach

• Everything you want to know about the Bible - Peter Downey and Ben Shaw

• God’s Big Picture - Vaughan Roberts

• Jesus Storybook Bible - Sally Lloyd-Jones

• www.thegoodbook.co.uk/commentaries

• Leading better Bible Studies: Karen and Rod Morris

• Iron Sharpens Iron: Orlando Saer

• Expositional Preaching: David Helm

• One-to-one: Sophie De Witt

• One-to-one Bible Reading: David Helm

• How People Change: Timothy S Lane and Paul David Tripp

• Everyday Church - Tim Chester

• Questioning Evangelism - Randy Newman

• Instruments in the Redeemer’s Hands - Paul Tripp

• Relationships: A mess worth making - Timothy Lane and Paul Tripp

• CCEF books in general - http://www.ccef.org/resources

• Walking with God through pain and suffering - Timothy Keller

• Depression: Looking up from the stubborn darkness - Edward Welch

• I’m not supposed to feel like this - Chris Williams

• A Thorn in my Mind - Cathy Wield

• Shame Interrupted - Edward Welch

• A New Name - Emma Scrivener

• http://www.mind.org.uk/

• Helping women escape the fantasy trap - Helen Throne

• Is God anti-gay? - Sam Allberry

• The Plausibility Problem - Ed Shaw

• Captured by a Better Vision - Tim Chester

• Sex is not the problem (lust is) - Joshua Harris

• Pure - Linda Marshall

• livingout.org

• Loving my (LBGT) neighbour - Glenn Stanton

• Marriage Matters: Extraordinary Change - Winston Smith

• The Meaning of Marriage - Timothy Keller

• When your husband is addicted to porn - Vicki Tiede

• Sexual Detox: A guide for guys who are sick of porn - Tim Challies

• What did you expect - Paul David Tripp

• “God’s Design For Women” by Sharon James has chapters on singleness, marriage & motherhood.

• “Just The Two Of Us” by Eleanor Margesson & Sue McGowan – a Christian take on infertility from two couples who have experienced it in different ways.

• “I’ll Hold You In Heaven” by Jack Halford – a book for people who have experienced miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion.

• The Miscarriage Association http://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/ has excellent resources for those who have experienced a miscarriage.

• http://www.christianpost.com/news/miscarriages-hope-amid-darkness-63488/ - An excellent article in the Christian Post about miscarriages and hope.

• “God’s Design For Women” by Sharon James

• Disciplines of a Godly Woman - Barbara Hughes

• The Heart of Singleness - Andrea Trevenna

• Redeeming Singleness - Barry Danylak

For more information and ideas you can check out their website and blog dedicated to the ministry among women at the church:  http://womenatcharlotte.blogspot.co.uk/

Training elders

At the FIEC Leaders’ Conference last year I interviewed Andy Weatherley about the ways he was training up men to become elders in his church as part of a wider training program. In essence it’s about getting together to read through some cherry-picked resources and then to work through a questionnaire in a 1-to-1 setting. Simple, but effective.

I asked him to jot down the details:

We’ve taken about 4 guys through the process so far and another 3 on the way at the moment. It works well as an intense reading group - we meet in the pub for 2 hours once a month to discuss each of the below. It really helps us to see what their heart is all about. The material we cover is:

“Ministry and character” - Tim Keller

“A display of God’s glory” - Mark Dever

“The Pastor as Counsellor”  - David Powlinson

Ministry - Public and Private (How Christ Changes Us)- Lane 

and Tripp

Supremacy of God in preaching – John Piper 

Attached is our questionnaire for prospective elders too. Questions nicked from all over the place. The questionnaire is a one-on-one thing at the end of the process - I’ve only done this with 3 guys so far but it’s so helpful to expose heart sins before we get them on leadership. I also get new elders to do Strengthsfinder and the Keirsey personality test so we understand what their strengths are and how we might interact as a team. Alongside that they sit in on elders meetings for a year before being voted on by the church. 

Glimpsing God's patience and my impatience

Last Sunday I was preaching at my home church and was given a free choice of passage and theme. I decided to explore the theme of God’s patience in Scripture.

As I explained at the start I had three reasons: 

1. There’s an intriguing comment in 2 Peter 3:15 Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. 

That made me go looking for the theme in Paul and you start to realise it is everywhere – most obviously in Romans 2-3, Romans 9, 1 Tim 1. Romans 3:25 is especially striking because there Paul characterises the whole time before the coming of Christ as a period of God’s forebearance/patience. And that of course is the message of OT in large measure: God is slow to anger and abounding in love – before the flood (1 Pet 3:20), throughout Israel’s history (just read Ezekiel 20) and towards the nations (remember Jonah’s fear was that God would deal with nations just like he’s dealt with his people: slow to anger, showing mercy). And, as 2 Pet 3 makes clear, the Lord’s patience endures today for the same reasons: God’s patience, we might say, is his saving power of self-restraint. 

Biblically then it’s a big theme that holds together what we often struggle to hold together: God’s wrath and his love, OT and NT.

2. Ask anyone on the street and they won’t think of God as patient. They assume he is quick to judge, grudgingly merciful. Probably many of us think we live on the verge of exhausting God’s patience or fear that he is mildly irritated with us most of the time. Apologetically then it’s an important theme. God isn’t the capricious and quick-tempered God that Richard Dawkins finds in the OT. 

3. I am painfully aware of my own impatience. I am impatient with many things and people for no good reason. And when I suffer or experience opposition I am quick to annoyance and abounding in irritation. But just maybe reflecting on God’s patience might help…

Pastorally then, some help to be had here.

For the rest of the sermon I was greatly helped by two authors: Spurgeon who showed me God’s patience in a sermon from 1886 called “God's Longsuffering: An Appeal to the Conscience,” and the non-Christian author David Foster Wallace who showed me my impatience for what much of it is: rank self-centredness.

So, some excerpts from Spurgeon first:

 First, let us admire the longsuffering of God.  Admire the longsuffering of God as to peculiar sins. Look, brethren, they make images of wood or stone, and they say, "these are God," and they set up these things in the place of him that made the heavens and the earth. How does he endure to see reasonable beings bowing down before idols, before fetishes, before the basest objects? How does he bear that men should even worship emblems of impurity, and say that these are God? How does he bear it—he that sitteth in the heavens, in whose hand our breath is, and whose are all our ways? 

Others, even in this country, blaspheme God. What an amount of profanity is poured out before God in this city! One can scarcely walk the streets to-day without hearing horrible language. An oath has often chilled me to the marrow—an oath which was not excused by any special circumstance, but rolled out of the man's mouth as a customary thing. We have to-day some among us that might match the devil in blasphemy, so foully do they talk. And oh, how is it that God bears it when they dare imprecate his curse upon their bodies and their souls? O Father, how dost thou bear it? How dost thou endure these profane persons, who insult thee to thy face? Besides, there are those who use fair speech, and yet blaspheme most intolerably. Men of education and of science are often worse than the common folk because they blaspheme with fearful deliberation, and solemnly speak against God, and against his Son, and against the precious blood, and against the Holy Ghost. How is it that the Thrice-holy One bears with them? Oh, wondrous longsuffering of a Gracious God! 

And then there are others who wallow in unmentionable impurity and uncleanness. No, I will not attempt any description, nor would I wish to take your thoughts to those things whereof men may blush to think, though they blush not to do them. The moon sees a world of foulness, fornication, and adultery: and yet, O God, thou bearest it! This great blot upon the face of the world, this huge city of London reeks in its filthiness, and yet thou holdest thy peace! And then, when I turn my thoughts another way, to the oppression of the poor, to the grinding down of those who, with the hardest labor, can scarcely earn bread enough to keep body and soul together, how does the Just God permit it? When I mark the oppression of man by man—for among wild beasts there is none that equals the cruelty of man to man—how doth the All-merciful bear it? Methinks the sword of the Lord must often rattle in its scabbard, and he must force it down, and say, "Sword of the Lord, rest and be quiet!"I will not go further, because the list is endless. The wonder is that a Gracious God should continue to bear all this!  

Think of the sin involved in false teaching. I stood one day at the foot of Pilate's staircase, in Rome, and saw the poor creatures go up and down, on their knees, on what they are taught was the very staircase on which the Lord Jesus Christ stood before Pilate. I noticed sundry priests looking on, and I felt morally certain that they knew it to be an imposture. I thought that if the Lord would lend me his thunderbolts about five minutes, I would make a wonderful clearance thereabouts: but he did nothing of the kind. God is not in haste as we are. Sometimes it does suggest itself to a hot spirit to wish for speedy dealing with iniquity: but the Lord is patient and pitiful.

Especially notice, next, that this longsuffering of God is seen in peculiar persons...  Some manifest the longsuffering of God very wonderfully in the length of time in which they have been spared to sin. Many men are provoked by one offense, and think themselves miracles of patience if they forget it. But many have provoked God fifty, sixty, seventy, perhaps eighty years. You could not stand eighty minutes of provocation, and yet the Lord has put up with you throughout a lifetime. You tottered into this house to-night. You might have tottered more if you had remembered the weight of sin that creases to you. Yet the mercy of God spares you. Still, with outstretched arms, infinite mercy bids you come and receive at the hand of God your pardon bought with the blood of Jesus Christ. This longsuffering of God is marvellous.

Second, David Foster Wallace (from an address to American College Students, with some mild language, available online):

There happen to be whole, large parts of adult American life that nobody talks about in commencement speeches. One such part involves boredom, routine and petty frustration. The parents and older folks here will know all too well what I’m talking about.

By way of example, let’s say it’s an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there’s no food at home. You haven’t had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It’s the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it’s pretty much the last place you want to be but you can’t just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store’s confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren’t enough check-out lanes open even though it’s the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can’t take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

But anyway, you finally get to the checkout line’s front, and you pay for your food, and you get told to “Have a nice day” in a voice that is the absolute voice of death. Then you have to take your creepy, flimsy, plastic bags of groceries in your cart with the one crazy wheel that pulls maddeningly to the left, all the way out through the crowded, bumpy, littery parking lot, and then you have to drive all the way home through slow, heavy, SUV-intensive, rush-hour traffic, et cetera et cetera.

Everyone here has done this, of course. But it hasn’t yet been part of you graduates’ actual life routine, day after week after month after year.

But it will be. And many more dreary, annoying, seemingly meaningless routines besides. But that is not the point. The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing is gonna come in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don’t make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I’m gonna be pissed and miserable every time I have to shop. Because my natural default setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me. About MY hungriness and MY fatigue and MY desire to just get home, and it’s going to seem for all the world like everybody else is just in my way. And who are all these people in my way? And look at how repulsive most of them are, and how stupid and cow-like and dead-eyed and nonhuman they seem in the checkout line, or at how annoying and rude it is that people are talking loudly on cell phones in the middle of the line. And look at how deeply and personally unfair this is…

…If I choose to think this way in a store and on the freeway, fine. Lots of us do. Except thinking this way tends to be so easy and automatic that it doesn’t have to be a choice. It is my natural default setting. It’s the automatic way that I experience the boring, frustrating, crowded parts of adult life when I’m operating on the automatic, unconscious belief that I am the centre of the world, and that my immediate needs and feelings are what should determine the world’s priorities.