About 50 women’s ministry leaders who gathered at Tall Timbers Baptist Conference Center one recent Saturday learned that their goal was to “bring women to a place where their lives can be transformed,” said Deb Douglas of First Baptist Bossier City.
WOODWORTH – About 50 women’s ministry leaders who gathered at Tall Timbers Baptist Conference Center one recent Saturday learned that their goal was to “bring women to a place where their lives can be transformed,” said Deb Douglas of First Baptist Bossier City.
“We’re not accomplishing anything for Christ if we’re not seeing lives changed,” Douglas said in the first general session of the Women’s Enrichment Leader Training June 6. “God didn’t call us to be comfortable. He called us to lead women to live out Matthew 27:37-39 – Love the Lord with all your heart, soul, mind and body. It’s an all-consuming love.
“And to love others likewise,” the women’s ministry leader reminded her listeners. “That becomes our purpose: [To find the answers to] how to live that out, how to provide an environment in which women are growing.”
Douglas spoke of a sea of senior adult women who populate casinos mid-week, bused in on low-cost private charters arranged as an “outing” by the casinos for the women who look lost and lonely as they sit in front of slot machines, mindlessly plunking in coin after coin.
Douglas also spoke of women over age 45. They’re the largest group of new users of pornography on the internet, she said.
“Have you taught the women in your church what IS good? Douglas challenged her listeners.
-It’s good to not just know the Word of God, but to be the Word in the lives of others.
-It’s good to pursue holiness. “We’ll never get there but we should always be in that direction,” Douglas said.
-It’s good to be a homemaker who maintains a home based on Jesus, who draws others into her life.
The keynote speaker directed her listeners to Philippians 4:8-9: Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable – if there is any moral excellence and if there is any praise, dwell on these things. Do what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.
Douglas urged her listeners to be on both sides of a mentoring relationship, to continually be in a state of learning and teaching.
The day-long event included four break-out sessions: a balanced focus of women’s enrichment ministries and Woman’s Missionary Union in a church; sharing what women in each church are doing; discovering and mentoring new leaders, especially in their 20s and 30s.
Women’s Enrichment Leader Training was a Cooperative Program-supported event sponsored by the Louisiana Baptist Convention’s Women’s Missions and Ministries department. Jan