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: We are planning a ladies retreat for a couple months from now. After considerable thought and prayer we chose as our topic: prayer. Three ladies have been preparing, writing, and studying prayer to speak and teach. Now the issue! Our pastor has been leading us through a sermon series on Discipleship, which is awesome. One of the ladies who is registered to attend phoned me. It is heavy on her heart for our topic to be Discipleship. We’ve been in prayer and are not sure if we should shift gears at this point and yet, I’m sure discipleship is very important. Should I ask the team and speakers to consider the switch, or maybe do a mix of prayer and discipleship?
I see several things to consider here:
- How many have prayed and felt led to teach on prayer?
- How many have asked to change the topic to discipleship?
- Since prayer is a big part of discipleship, can you help women see how it fits into the discipleship process?
- Could you add a session on the overall process of discipleship in addition to the prayer sessions? Perhaps you could follow up the retreat with various classes on topics of discipleship – serving, spiritual disciplines, evangelism, Bible study, etc.
- Most importantly, what is God telling you as a planning team?
You want to hear from women what their needs are and find a way to meet those needs, and even as you are in the midst of your planning and moving forward, you want to be open to the leadership of the Holy Spirit even if He scraps your original plan to present a more powerful plan!
As you pray as a team and consider these things, God will direct and help you find the best way to minister to and teach these women who attend the retreat.
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