Recently at a YOU Lead women’s leadership training, we had a panel answering questions submitted by attendees. Several past and upcoming posts address those and try to help answer them. Click here to read older Women’s Ministry Questions Posts.
Today’s question is: Our women are not comfortable with sharing Jesus outside of church circles. What do you suggest for helping us TRAIN and to live more intentionally to reach other women with the Gospel?
Ok, how many leaders reading this blog have ever had this problem? I bet almost all of you! Since Jesus left the Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20) for his followers to take part in it must have been very important. But why then is it so hard?
As leaders, I am sure many of us also struggle with this. If we only share within our church circles, how can we win the lost to “make disciples”? So if it’s important, what is the problem? Perhaps it is that many of our evangelism approaches are “male and in your face” oriented. Many women prefer a relational approach. So how do we do that?
A friend of mine who is a women’s minister at a large church in Texas, Linda Lesniewski , asked that question and discovered a great process. She called it “Bedazzled: His Story Her Way”. What she did was invite women to participate for several weeks to discover their stories, make a piece of jewelry that represented their life stories, then see how they could use their stories to connect with other women. Where in the past she only had a very small group attend an evangelism training of any kind, she now had a class FULL of women.
Some had to delve back into their past to see where God was in the midst of their lives. At times they had to deal with some pretty tough issues. As they designed what type of jewelry they would make, they chose charms and beads that represented each milestone of their lives.
As they concluded their time, they then discovered how to watch for opportunities to share their “God” stories with women they ran in to on a daily basis. They were actually watching for opportunities and ready with a way to connect to build a relationship as they sought to share what God had done in their own lives.
By November of this year, you will have a chance to read some of Linda’s story and this process in our revised edition of Transformed Lives will be released.
Watch for future Q/A posts!
Helpful Resources:
Women Reaching Women
Transformed Lives
HeartCall
Share Jesus Without Fear
