“Knowing God” will be the theme for the annual Pastors’ Wives Conference of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Pastors’ Conference, with several noted pastors’ wives to share ways God has strengthened them in their life experiences.
INDIANAPOLIS (BP) – “Knowing God” will be the theme for the annual Pastors’ Wives Conference of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Pastors’ Conference, with several noted pastors’ wives to share ways God has strengthened them in their life experiences.
The 8:30 a.m.-noon session on Monday, June 9, in the Indiana Convention Center’s Sagamore Ballrooms 1-3 is free of charge and no registration is necessary. Doors open at 8 a.m.
Donna Gaines, wife of Steve Gaines, pastor of the Memphis-area Bellevue Baptist Church, will be the main speaker, with praise and worship to be led by Kim and Suzanne Noblitt of First Baptist Church in Springdale, Ark.
The session is designed to support women married to men in ministry, to provide a forum for sharing challenges unique to women in such roles and to allow women with many years of experience to share what they have learned with younger women.
Susie Hawkins, wife of O.S. Hawkins, president of GuideStone Financial Resources in Dallas, will lead a discussion on “Hot Topics for Pastor’s Wives,” collecting questions from the audience at the beginning of the program as well as those submitted to www.contagiousjoy4him.com, a website launched last summer by the group to connect Southern Baptist ministers’ wives with other SBC women who are serving God.
Panelists are being selected to reflect various sizes of churches and different ages of women.
“The Pastors Wives Conference is designed to provide a time of spiritual refreshment and fellowship among the ministry wives in our convention,” said Hawkins, one of the initial event’s organizers.
‘How to Love a Leader’
INDIANAPOLIS (BP) – “How to Love a Leader” will be the theme of the 53rd annual Ministers’ Wives Luncheon Tuesday, June 10, in Indianapolis.
Gary Chapman, author of “The Five Love Languages,” will be the guest speaker at the noon luncheon open to all women who are married to Southern Baptist ministers.
Liz Traylor, president of this year’s luncheon, said she chose the theme “because we’re in an election year to choose a leader for our nation, there are thousands of books on leadership out there, and when my husband is asked for suggestions for pastor search committees, they say, ‘We want a leader.’” Traylor’s husband Ted is pastor of Olive Baptist Church in Pensacola, Fla.
“I got to thinking that all of us as ministers’ wives are married to ministers who are leaders,” Liz Traylor told Baptist Press. “Those leaders have some unique needs, and they have such a huge burden that they carry as leaders.”
As she prayed about what needed to be discussed at the luncheon, Traylor said the idea of how to love a leader kept crossing her mind. Then she thought of Chapman, who is a leader in his own right at his church, Calvary Baptist in Winston-Salem, N.C., and through his speaking engagements across the country.
“I thought he might be the perfect person to teach us how to love a leader with his unique insight,” Traylor said, adding Chapman will provide information that wives need to have as they face the spiritual and earthly battles that accompany most ministries.
“We need to be inspired and encouraged,” she said. “This is something that [ministers’ wives] will truly benefit from besides getting a great meal and a fun time visiting with fellow ministers’ wives.”
The SBC Ministers’ Wives’ Luncheon dates back to 1955, when two Georgia pastors’ wives realized the importance of their state’s ministers’ wives’ conference and decided that the national convention would benefit from such an organization.
Always held on Tuesday during the SBC annual meeting, the luncheon is open to all wives of ministers – pastors, staff members, chaplains, missionaries and denominational workers.