Why have women-only events?

– Women may suffer gender-related violence, and need a safe place to grow.
– Women often are still ‘underdogs’ in society and the church, and so need special encouragement to spread their wings.
– Women often crave talking to each other in a deeper way.
– Women often are better able to establish connections without men being around.
– There are some topics that are of particular interest to women.

But women are also often pressed for time, and don’t want to attend low-priority events. So think of the needs of your community.
There are three sections below with ideas and resources in each category of relating, one-to-one, and events:

Relating

Relationship building is the core of all our ministries.
These following activities will be ones that are repeated regularly, because we must spend time regularly with someone else to build up trust and a shared history. They are best supplemented by 1-1 discipleship.

Different groups will have different starting points, depending on their interests and how familiar they are with each other.  Know your group and what you want to achieve in it, so you can choose the appropriate activities.

What is your group mix?
  • Women from church
  • Outside women, with personal connections to women in church
  • Women with connections to church ministries
  • Women responding to advertised services or special events
What is your purpose?
  • Getting to know one another, building connections, hearing each other’s stories
  • Practical,  Emotional or Spiritual support to each other
  • Teaching skills, or dealing with specific issues
  • Working groups for other ministries
  • Presenting the gospel
  • Basic or advanced Christian teaching

Relationship building is the core of all our ministries.

These following activities will be ones that are repeated regularly, because we must spend time regularly with someone else to build up trust and a shared history. They are best supplemented by 1-1 discipleship.

Different groups will different starting points, depending on their interests and how familiar they are with each other.  Know your group and what you want to achieve in it, so you can choose the appropriate activities.

What is your group mix?
  • Women from church
  • Outside women, with personal connections to women in church
  • Women with connections to church ministries
  • Women responding to advertised services or special events
What is your purpose?
  • Getting to know one another, building connections, hearing each other’s stories
  • Practical,  Emotional or Spiritual support to each other
  • Teaching skills, or dealing with specific issues
  • Working groups for other ministries
  • Presenting the gospel
  • Basic or advanced Christian teaching

Some ideas for group activities:

  • Connect groups (Homegroups / cell groups / small groups / life groups) just for women, with discipleship material
  • Special group meetings for women with topics of particular interest to women (see below)
  • Interest groups: Art, crafts, music, gardening, book clubs, cooking, language learning, dancing, scrapbooking.
    See for example the event resources (run sheets, mc plan, examples etc) for “Woven – A night of colour“
  • Exercise (Walking, pilates, sports teams)
  • Cafe visits (of course!)
  • BBQs, picnics
  • Community help: Graffiti removal, working bees
  • Alpha or Discovery groups
  • Facebook messenger or other social media groups
  • Bible study (day time, weekends or evenings)
  • Prayer walks
  • Prayer journalling

Church ministries that are often undertaken by women could be done intentionally as a women’s ministry group activity… These include meals for the sick or stressed, mainly music, toy library, food parcels, church hospitality.

Ideas and Topics specifically for groups of women

These can be done with one speaker or more, visiting speakers or interviewing a regular attendee.  Allow a good amount of time afterwards for people to discuss and compare their own experiences, and elaborate on what resonated with each person.

  • Struggles in handling life transitions: working, motherhood, menopause, empty nest, retirement
  • Discerning when to change jobs and other decision making, taking into account issues that women particularly encounter
  • Sex, sexuality, gender
  • Balancing looking after ourselves and caring for others
  • Power issues in society; gaining, empowering and sharing power, losing and giving up power
  • Singleness, marriage, divorce, widowhood

Other topics that often have a different spin for women

  • Faith stories
  • Perceiving and dealing with grief / anger
  • Building hope and resilience
  • Forgiveness, accountability and justice
  • Supporting and being supported: Mental health issues and physical disabilities
  • Thankfulness
  • Interacting with those different from us
  • Helpful disciplines
  • Training / equipping for other ministries

One-to-one

While discipleship activities include those contained in the Relating and Events tabs, this tab contains ideas and resources for one-to-one discipling or mentoring.

Women are more likely to miss out on discipleship / mentoring opportunities, because male leaders will often be cautious of having regular 1-1 meetings with women in the church – and many churches still only have males in leadership.

One-to-one mentoring is particularly useful for:

  • Leaders, who may be isolated by people’s expectations, and face pressures that are less able to be discussed in a group setting
  • Mature Christians, who are often in informal leadership, and may be concerned that knowledge of their own faith struggles will cause others to stumble
  • Individuals who do not fit into any of the natural groupings within the church
  • People who are isolated due to illness or other factors

How to begin mentoring or 1-1 guidance relationships

These can be formal, with a planned approach (see worksheet below) or informal.
Formal mentoring can be set up by the church leadership team, where leaders or potential leaders are paired with more experienced leaders in the church or from another church.  The Baptist Women’s Board have finished trialling a programme for this purpose, “Tuakana-Teina”, and are happy to guide churches into doing this.  See this page on this website for further details.
1-1 informal discipleship naturally occurs when one person builds respect of another after observing them for a time, and then approaches them for guidance.  This can be one-off, or it could develop into an ongoing thing.
Or it can occur in the other direction, where a mature Christian approaches a newer Christian and offers to teach them skills, introduce them to a new ministry, or just hang out with them.
It can also be set up as part of a programme. For example, if people are invited to fill in a form which invites them to sign up for a chat with a complimentary coffee at a local cafe.

Activities

  • Talking about how our work / ministry is progressing, any issues or roadblocks
  • Conversations with planned or unplanned topics
  • Reading and discussing the Bible together
  • Reading and discussing a book on theology
  • Prayer journal keeping, with discussions
  • Action plans and reporting back – appropriate if there is a goal in mind
  • Pray!

Discussion questions / topics

These questions can be asked by mentor or mentee, so they are phrased ‘we’, but they don’t have to be one followed by the other.

  • What spiritual disciplines do we connect with most?
  • What does our prayer life look like at its best? What methods did we use at what time?
  • How do we act when we’re upset at how things have gone in our life?
  • Are we ever angry at God?
  • How do we remember to follow Jesus faithfully through the day?
  • When and how do we feel attacked?
  • How do we fight temptations?
  • How is the best way to hold each other to account?
  • Whose life story has affected us the most?
  • What steps are useful for improving our walk with God
  • What is a significant event in our Christian walk?
  • How do we share our faith with others?

Mentoring planning worksheet

Fill out a worksheet with the following questions:

  1. Goals for mentoring relationship – what do you want to work on?
  2. What my mentor/mentee can expect from me
  3. What I expect from my mentor/mentee
  4. Duration and frequency of meetings
  5. We will assess progress by reflecting on…
  6. Questions I could ask…
  7. Questions I might be asked…