What Women Need!
I have always told my daughters, “Every woman needs a few girlfriends to do life with.” I am certainly not alone in this sentiment. You don’t have to look very hard on the internet to find countless women’s organizations, women’s advocacy groups, and Christian women ministries. Women need women – to learn with, to laugh with, to cry with, and to pray with! But more importantly, women need God and they need Truth! If you check out the different “Christian” women’s ministries (both from within a particular church or independent like Proverbs 9:10), you will find purpose and vision statements that are vastly different and fall over the theological map. Some of the ministries are deep rooted in Scripture and some are barely recognizable as Christian. So how can we know if a woman’s ministry is Biblically sound or not? It all starts with the leadership. We have made a checklist of things to look for in the leadership of a women’s ministry. This list could easily be applied to any ministry.
#1 – Leaders are dedicated to and diligent in studying and knowing God’s Word – Everything flows from the top. If the women leading a women’s ministry are not students of the Word, dedicated to studying and growing in their faith, you can’t expect much growth to occur from the women they serve.
Joshua 1:8 – This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.
Psalm 119:10 – 11 – With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your commandments! I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 – All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
We cannot be effective ministers of God if we do not know His Word! Scripture should be at the center of every women’s ministry. How can a leader feed others unless she is being fed on a regular basis? How can a leader communicate the full Gospel message if she does not know it herself? How can a leader help women recognize the difference between true and false teaching unless she herself knows it? Studying scripture hones discernment. We will be better equipped to understand what God’s purpose for our ministry is and better equipped to disciple women. When leadership is growing spiritually, the natural fallout is that those under will, also.
#2 – Leaders use every opportunity to teach Truth to the women they serve.
Luke 6:40 – A disciple is not greater than his teacher, but everyone when fully trained will be like his teacher.
Titus 2:1, 3-5 – You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine. Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the Word of God.
2 Timothy 2:2 – You have heard me teach things that have been confirmed by many reliable witnesses. Now teach these truths to other trustworthy people who will be able to pass them on to others.
While it is a good thing to bring women together for fun and fellowship, women’s ministries need to always have the purpose of pouring truth into the lives of women. There are a many secular women’s groups doing good things. However, Christian women ministries have the one thing they don’t –the Truth that brings life! It is not enough to just bring women together for events or to get them involved in programs or activities. While these things are important, they will not save them, nor will they help them in their sanctification. Leaders need to be intentionally and actively seeking ways to impart the truth to the women they serve. They need to give the Gospel message at every opportunity.
#3 – Leaders set the bar high for the women they serve.
Proverbs 7:2-3 – Keep my commandments and live, and my teaching as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; Write them on the tablet of your heart.
Romans 15:4 – For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.
2Timothy 2:15 – Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth.
There is an epidemic of “Christian” material out there aimed at dumbing women down. Authors will take one line of scripture and turn it into a 2 hour study. Instead of a Bible Study, it becomes a feel-good session aimed at telling women how fabulous they are and validating wherever they are emotionally, without helping them to grow spiritually. Many women’s ministries fall into this trap. They buy into the lie that women are purely emotional beings at the mercy of their hormones who aren’t intelligent enough to go deep into the Word of God. They are more about the fun and fellowship then they are about discipleship. God created women to feel and to think. Leaders should be encouraging their ladies to hunger not only for the presence of God, but also for knowledge of God.
There are a lot of excellent studies and books out there for sure. Leaders need to equip their women to discern the difference between the good ones and the bad ones. They should be challenging and pushing our women to grow, not settling for the water-downed, if not heretical, books, studies, and movies out there that cause them to mistake their feelings and experiences as truth. Women need to be challenged to be intellectual beings that question and study the Word of God for the truth. A Jesus we create who conforms to our emotions and feelings has no transforming power; only the true Jesus from Scripture has that kind of power.
#4 – Leaders protect the women they serve
2Timothy 3:6-7 – They (godless people) are the kind who worm their way into homes and gain control over weak-willed women, who are loaded down with sins and swayed by all kinds of evil desires, always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth.
All you have to do is go on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter to see all of the bad, and heretical, theology that is infecting the culture. Just recently, I saw several memes: “Be brave. God gives His hardest battles to His bravest soldiers.” “God want to give you the desires of your heart.” “Be the kind of woman that when you get up in the morning, the devil says, ‘Oh, crap, she’s up.” “You were given this life because you are strong enough to live it.” “God will never leave you empty. He will replace everything you lost.” These kind of pull your boot straps up, I am woman hear me roar, one-liners are not only wrong theologically, they can be destructive. They dishonor our Sovereign God, they leave us ill-equipped to deal with the devastations of life, and they have us counting more on our own strength than on God’s. There is just enough of a slither of truth in them to make them appear credible; but that is exactly makes them dangerous. The verse above in 2Timothy tells of the dangers of falling prey to this stuff. It would be better to never learn anything, then to learn lies! Leaders need to denounce the lies being fed to the ladies they serve and replace it with the Truth of Scripture.
Conclusion
Having been involved with women’s ministry for many years, there are few things that have been more rewarding. I have loved all the girlfriends I have been blessed enough to do life with! Understand, I am certainly not saying that our women’s ministries shouldn’t fun events and programs. Who doesn’t love to sit around and laugh with a bunch of ladies?! But there needs a balance. Leaders should be leveraging the programs and events of their ministry with what is truly needed by the ladies they serve. Having said that, imparting scripture and truth should never just be a part of that balance – it should be the base of everything we do!
