“How can we attract younger women to our mission society?” This is a question I have heard frequently enough to make me realize that traditional women’s mission societies are seeing attendance lag and the generation gap widen.
When the question is addressed to me, it usually makes me uneasy-because at the tender age of nineteen, as a young bride, I was one of those who abandoned the WMS.
I remember the tearful frustration as I explained to my new husband, a member of our church’s pastoral staff, why I was not going to go to any more women’s meetings.
Five years later the frustration was resurrected when, as a dutiful pastor’s wife in a large inner-city congregation, I attempted to make regular visits to the Scatter Sunshine Sewing Circle. Here the older women undertook handwork and boasted about their grandchildren.
Somehow, sitting in the inner city on the edge of the drug and hippie center, during the era when race riots were destroying whole blocks of Chicago’s West Side, while students burned campuses and my contemporaries were being jailed for resisting service in the Vietnam war-somehow, the Scatter Sunshine Sewing Circle seemed highly irrelevant.
“How can we attract younger women to our mission society?” my questioner, the national president of a denominational WMS, asks as we sit together on a terrace in the warm California sunshine.
Is she aware of my checkered past?
“Oh, yes,” she replies openly. “That’s why my board felt you would be one of the women most qualified to answer the question.”
I’ve given much thought to the issue since that day. While I am sure many women’s missionary societies are thriving, I am also sure there has been a shift in the thinking process of the modern church women. It affects not just the WMS but how a woman sees every ministry of the church. What is the nature of that shift? And how does it affect women’s lay involvement in the church?
The younger church woman has been profoundly influenced by the secular feminist movement even when she does not agree with it. The working woman, through various exposures, is developing an executive capacity. She brings home a paycheck, makes decisions as to how to budget family funds, is learning to prioritize her time and involvements. She is often developing self-esteem on the job, and she is beginning to give input to significant areas within the church as well.
The woman who chooses to stay at home has been pushed by current feminist diatribe to a defensive position regarding her home involvement. She has been forced to determine exactly the positive implications of her choice.
It has been years since I have heard a woman say, “Oh, I’m just a housewife.” The woman forced by secular pressure to explain why she stays home has proudly discovered that she is a systems manager, an operations coordinator, a truly Proverbs 31 woman. She too, almost despite herself, is developing an executive mentality.
Strangely enough, this understanding of a woman’s capabilities was recognized and called out by the earliest women’s societies. The problem is not that women’s missionary societies have an insignificant involvement in the church; it is that they are perceived to be insignificant by today’s younger women.
The church woman of the eighties, with her developing executive mentality and her emerging self-esteem, is insisting on investing wisely, giving her time and abilities where they will be most effective. It is not that she is uninterested in missions. Often she is keenly concerned about outreach-not just across the seas, but also across the street. Her mindset is not just missions for missions’ sake; she is less inclined to fill a church hole simply because a church hole exists. But she is mightily concerned with her own development as a potential missionary within her sphere of society-and she is learning to plug her abilities into the socket that will most effectively maximize them.
“Why do we have to have a speaker for every meeting?” she will ask. “I’m lectured-to enough in church. I want one-to-one involvement with missions.”
“Isn’t missions a concern of the whole church? Why a separate meeting for the women?” she wonders. “Apart from prayer items and perhaps a little more knowledge of the world’s geography, what will this meeting accomplish in my life and those about me?”
A survey of fifteen churches, nine of which represented larger denominations and six of which were independent, showed that those who continued to have a traditional type of women’s missionary society were experiencing poor attendance, especially among the younger women.
This does not mean, however, that women’s ministries are dying. On the contrary, many women’s groups are mushrooming, but it’s because they understand the new mentality of today’s women.
One of the fastest growing ministries among lay women is the weekend retreat ministry. Many of these are sponsored by a local church, but the largest are cross-denominational and draw from regional areas.
One outstanding example is Women for Christ based in Wheaton, Illinois. Beginning with a group of 700 in 1979, Women for Christ now reaches some 2,500 women at its annual winter retreat. The retreat features a major speaker as well as mini-sessions focusing on topics such as reaching and influencing one’s community, problems of singles, working with the deaf, keeping a prayer journal, and other subjects directly associated with mature Christian living.
In addition, friendship groups are organized for further discipleship and to introduce new women to Women for Christ.
The Canadian counterpart is Women Alive. Starting the group in 1973, in Barrie, Ontario, Nell Maxwell hoped to see 500 women attend the first conference. To her surprise, within three weeks all the reservations were taken and more women were asking to come. Over 1,200 women came, and six months later 2,000 attended a similar conference in Waterloo.
Out of the retreat ministry has grown a Bible study program-which cooperates heavily with the local church-and a tape ministry, and in its ten years of existence Women Alive has reached over 60,000 women in Canada.
Other far-reaching women’s ministries include Bible Study Fellowship, based in San Antonio, Texas, and Women’s Aglow, which has 1,800 chapters in thirty-nine countries.
Another form of lay women’s ministry on the upswing is happening within the local church. Women’s ministry is often a whole division within the church, comparable to the Christian education department or the music ministry. Examples of this type of ministry can be found all across the country: Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Irmo, South Carolina; The Church of the Open Door in Elyria, Ohio; and First Church of the Nazarene in Englewood, Colorado.
Elmbrook Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has a multi-pronged women’s ministry. Spearheaded by Jill Briscoe, a Thursday morning Bible study reaches 400 to 500 women, a mom’s ministry is directed to the needs of young mothers, and a professional ministry-Life after Work-addresses the problems of working women. In addition two overnight retreats are held in the spring, and one-day retreats are offered in the fall and summer.
Why do these lay ministries draw such phenomenal participation when so many traditional women’s missionary societies are floundering? Carol Beals, founder and executive director of Women for Christ, offers her view: “We try to emphasize who God is, how magnificent he is, and how much he loves each individual. The goal is not to make women feel important in themselves but to make them aware of their intrinsic value and worth to God, and then to realize that they can each be uniquely useful to God. It gives women a wonderful sense of self-worth and purpose, and encourages them to desire spiritual growth and to be involved in reaching out to others.
“One career woman told me after a coffee, ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever heard anyone tell me that I am useful and worthwhile for something other than bringing a paycheck home.’ “
In light of these trends, what do we do about the older, more traditional ministries? Or, to return to our original question: How can we attract younger women to our women’s missionary society?
Before any fruitful discussion can happen, a basic attitudinal law must be passed: no generational finger-pointing. The older women are not dull and behind the times. The younger women are not self-serving and uninterested in the church. We are simply facing one of the shifts that occurs when time marches on.
Perhaps the question should be: Should the traditional women’s missionary society attempt to attract younger women? There are many, many women who find its traditional form to be secure and their involvement satisfactory. Do they really need to change when so much of the world around them is changing in rapidly confusing leaps and bounds? If a fixed system is important to them, must they be forced to embrace forms they find uncomfortable?
True, if no change occurs, many groups will have to be content with diminishing numbers. They will also have to allow for emerging systems with a different personality of mission involvement.
If the question of involving younger women is a serious question, however, then the first issue to be faced is the shift in the mental outlook of today’s younger women.
If I were attempting to attract these younger women, I would try to develop a mission group that really educated me on the issues in missions today. I’d want college-level information about trends in world evangelization, cross-cultural dynamics, the emerging cutting edge of mission activity. I’d try to understand the future conflict between missions and Third-World cultures. I would like to be part of the brainstorming on how the church is going to respond to world need, what tools it is going to use, and what new ideas it is going to require even if my ideas go no further than the group who brainstorms with me. Participation in this kind of mental activity makes me more fully understand the dilemma of missions in the world.
I also want some type of firsthand involvement that I am convinced is a significant use of my time. Rolling bandages may have seemed significant to one generation, but it no longer seems significant to mine. I would much rather have a missionary family in my home, talking around my dinner table, sharing the intimate trials and joys of their service than to listen to another missionary lecture with accompanying slides.
In conclusion, here are three suggestions I’ve found helpful in addressing the question of attracting younger women to a particular organization, whether a missions society or any other group. First, make an honest and careful diagnosis of your women’s group. Is it vibrantly alive, or is it barely existing? You may even conclude that it is terminally ill!
Then see if you can, in a sentence or two, state the purpose for your existence. Is that purpose valid, and does it fit with the needs of the women within your church and the area in which you live? Does it offer women a significant place of growth and outreach both to their community and their world?
And finally, do the programs being offered fulfill that purpose? Are they quality programs that challenge and stretch the mind, emotions, and will-programs that aim at spiritual growth and maturity?
I believe that when you answer these questions, you will be well on your way to attracting not only the younger women but all the women of your church to an exciting and effective venture of faith.
-Karen Mains
West Chicago, Illinois
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