Recently at a YOU Lead women’s leadership training, we had a panel of leaders answering questions submitted by attendees. Several past and upcoming posts address those and try to help answer them.
Today’s question: In a small church, how to you balance breaking down the generational barriers and providing opportunities to connect for specific groups like moms groups and widows support?
Moms Groups: I believe no matter what size church you are serving, this can be an issue for your women. Let’s take moms groups for instance: who better to minister to a mom than a mom who has raised children? This means that to minister to new moms, we must encourage the mom who may only be a few years down the road of motherhood to share her wisdom and what she has learned up to this point. For a mom of a teen, you would need someone who has raised teenagers and so on.
By doing this, you would naturally include women in various generations in the ministry, even if they only visit a few times throughout the year to share something specific. As always, we must teach the importance of using their experiences (good and bad) to minister to someone else. Take them to Titus 2:3-5 or 2 Corinthians 1:3-11 to show them what the Bible says about this topic!
Widows Groups: I don’t know about your church, but mine has widows of all ages! So even though we may think this only refers to older women, if you check your own church demographics I think you will see what I mean. Now, are there differences in whether you are a talking about a widow who was married 40-50 years and has retired, or those who are in their 20-30’s and were only married a few years. In the same way as we talked about moms groups, finding a widow a few years ahead of those who need ministry and ask them to invest in those widows will draw the generations together.
This holds true for almost any ministry where you are wanting to connect the generations of women through a variety of ministry needs and outreach opportunities.
How have you successfully connected your women in ministry?
Resources:
Top 10 for the Generations (category on this blog)
Leading Young Women (category on this blog)
