Building a Healthy Women’s Ministry
Women’s ministries can provide local churches with a significant opportunity to disciple women and help them grow spiritually. Healthy women’s ministries can do a great deal of good in the lives of the women involved. Unfortunately, women’s ministries can sometimes become spiritually shallow, ineffective, and in some cases can even detract from the overall mission of the church. If churches wish to have targeted women’s ministries, it is important that they organize them in healthy ways. Having led and participated in various women’s ministries over the last fifteen years, I’d suggest three important priorities to keep in mind when seeking to shape a healthy women’s ministry in your church:
1. Make the Word central
God’s Word must be central in women’s discipleship. One of our primary goals in women’s ministry should be to help women become better students of the Bible. The tendency of many women’s Bible studies is to focus solely on application or simply what the Bible narrowly says about us and our immediate circumstances. Application is an important step to understanding God’s Word, but when it is the sole focus of our study, we miss the fullness of God’s character and purposes as He has revealed them in His Word.
“Application is an important step to understanding God’s Word, but when it is the sole focus of our study, we miss the fullness of God’s character and purposes as He has revealed them in His Word. ”
Our church strives to have a Word-filled women’s ministry by offering a bi-monthly inductive Bible study on a book of the Bible. The time spent in the study is focused on walking step by step through a passage of Scripture. Our goal is to help women learn how to better study the Bible so that they can better benefit from the Word in their private devotional time with the Lord. By learning how to understand, interpret, and apply the text, we hope women will discover tools that can help them as lifelong learners.
Other ministries to women such as women’s conferences or special seminars and classes for women should also focus on offering women the Word of God. We must resist the temptation to merely offer women practical homemaking tips, or seven steps to a better marriage, or emotionally charged self-help talks. Women don’t need fluff, or flowery messages, or overly emotional appeals. They need to meet Christ in the pages of Scripture.
2. Raise the spiritual and theological bar for women
Our women’s ministries should excite in women a desire for the things of God. We must help women understand their role in God’s Kingdom and show them how to bear fruit for His glory. Women should be expected to be able to discuss spiritual and theological matters. They should have spiritually rich friendships in the church that deepen their fellowship with God.
“Our women’s ministries should excite in women a desire for the things of God. We must help women understand their role in God’s Kingdom and show them how to bear fruit for His glory. Women should be expected to be able to discuss spiritual and theological matters.”
A practical way to raise the spiritual and theological bar for women in the church is to cultivate a culture of reading. At women’s events, we can resource women with the best books available that will help women grow spiritually and theologically. In addition, give a great deal of attention to the books in your church’s bookstall and promote spiritually rich books regularly at church gatherings. Perhaps one of the most effective ways to promote a culture of reading is to have women who read model a rich reading life to others. In James Clear’s book Atomic Habits, he discusses the role of community in developing habits. By surrounding yourself with people who embody the habits you want to adopt, you will often find yourself steadily taking on those same habits. If you want to become a runner, spend time with runners. If you want to become a reader, immerse yourself in a community of readers.
Another way to raise the spiritual and theological bar for women is to have periodic women’s theology nights or to have groups of women working through a theologically rich text together. Walk through Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Life or your church’s confession of faith with a group of women. Challenge women to read, reflect upon, and discuss theology. Seek to cultivate a culture that is interested in and alive to theology.
3. Cultivate disciple-makers
Mark Dever defines discipling as “deliberately doing spiritual good to someone so that he or she will be more like Christ.”[1] The church needs more women who are simply committed to doing good to other women and helping them become more like Christ. Many women feel intimidated by the idea of “discipleship” and they think that they are not equipped to disciple someone else or that they don’t have the time to do it. If this is true of many of the women in your church, consider taking them through a book like Dever’s Discipling and help them understand what discipling is and what it is not. There are few things more wholesome and praiseworthy than an older woman meeting with a younger woman to help her grow in the faith. It’s important that women understand the vital role this kind of discipleship plays in the church and that they be equipped and encouraged to do it.
We want our women’s ministries to serve the ministry and mission of the local church. we want them to honor Christ, build up women in the faith, and contribute to the flourishing of the whole church body. Let us work and pray to make the women’s ministries in our churches bear much fruit to God’s glory.
[1] Discipling by Mark Dever