From Onilla May's monthly newsletter The Whole Hearted Woman
Copyright 2005 by Onilla May. All rights reserved.

God has created so many beautiful women with so many wonderful abilities, gifts, and talents! He has placed them in His church. Women are creative in so many ways it is astonishing! Yet often the church leadership fails to inspire, encourage, and release all this talent and benefit from it to the fullest extent. Spiritual maturity in leadership is used by the Spirit to produce unity in the church, and having the experience of real unity causes creativity to flourish in an exciting way! I have seen it! But good things don't happen by accident. They are carefully planned and prayed over!

"Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace." Ephesians 4:3

Most of the disappointments that happen to us in the church are not the result of some diabolical plan, but simply the LACK of any kind of plan. Plainly put, organization is highly underrated! Especially when it comes to getting women involved in ministry. And the ultimate goal is not mere involvement, but the advancement of the kingdom of heaven. So we always ask ourselves how our ministry is advancing the kingdom and evaluate it on that basis.

"...try to excel in gifts that build up the church."

I Corinthians 14:12

Even with lots of available talent, recruiting the right women to be involved at a certain level of your women's ministry can be daunting. If your church is very small, chances are you know with some assurance the various talents and spiritual gift of each woman. However, if you have a church where new people are constantly being added, you may need a system for evaluating the gifts and talents of the women.

Many years ago we developed a system to obtain useful information about each woman and it proved invaluable in recruiting them to do what they love to do and what they are good at doing. I must say it increased the numbers who were joyfully involved in an astonishing way!

We began by creating a Women's Ministry Interest Survey form that includes all the information we need about each woman. It includes a list of thirteen general areas of interest such as Artistic, Clerical, Hospitality, Leader, People Oriented, and Teacher. Under each interest area there are detailed sub-descriptions. For example, under People Oriented there are interests to mark such as telephoning, hospital visitation, public speaking, evangelism training, greeting, and many more. Marking any of the descriptions indicates whether this is an interest or experience, or both. All kinds of additional information can be collected such as educational background, religious training, and spiritual gift.

When all this detailed information is collected, the Resource Committee meets together over coffee and warm fellowship and transfers it to a categorized file system that can be on index cards or on a computer system designed for it. This system is filed two ways, by name and by interest category. So if you have a new woman you would like to get involved, you can find her under her name with references to each general interest category she checked. On the other hand, if you have a need for someone with a specific ability or talent, you simply look in the file for the interest category. There is an index card for each area of general interest marked by the person. For instance, if you checked that you are interested in planning programs, have journalism experience, and like to act, you would have four cards with your name on them. The first card would have your name as the title and be filed under your name alphabetically with your particular interests listed. Then your name would be added to the list on three different cards under the categories of Creative Thinker, Creative Writer, and Drama.

More details on this system can be found in Linda R. McGinn's excellent book, Resource Guide for Women's Ministries, Broadman Press. The best part is that your church now has great information about each woman who gave it voluntarily, and with it tacit permission to ask her to use her talents in a particular context. May God bless your women' ministry with unity through the Spirit and a flood of amazing creativity!

Check back each week for more Women's Ministry Team Building ideas. Sign up for our free Treasures of Encouragement monthly ezine. It will alert you to new material on the site.

Onilla May
Women's Ministries Consultant, Speaker, Writer - Leaderskills International, Inc.
"Helping Churches Develop Women's Ministries with Life-changing Impact."

6609 Showhorse Court
Colorado Springs, CO 80922
Phone: 719-591-8620
Email: onilla@pcisys.net