I am very grateful to Faye Reynolds for sitting down with me to shave some of the wonderful work coming out of the Gifted and Called work of Women in Focus. I would also like to thank Mary and Dave Holte, who suggested this topic several months ago.
The programme has its foundations in the American Baptist Women’s program “Real Women, Real Leaders” in 2000. It was believed that a pilot programme could be started and it would prime the churches to catch onto the ideas and “do it on their own.” The idea of “Gifted and Called” was that women could clearly and biblically encourage women to affirm their giftedness and live out a God-inspired calling with passion. The churches found it a challenge to create individual courses in each church.
Mary Holte is credited by Faye for seeing this need to train facilitators and teams that would be available throughout Western Canada. Mary has oriented over a dozen women currently engaged in four teams; 1 in BC, 2 in Alberta and 1 in the Heartland. The Heartland is looking for 1 more team.
There have been over 20 sermons in churches from rural to suburban to city venues. Some courses have had less than 10 women, one have 50, but there is a rough average of 20 people. Each gathering begins Friday night and goes all day Saturday.
The work is expanding to re-frame the course as Gifted, Called and Experienced. You can discover more about this wonderful, creative and affirming ministry by look at the Women in Focus website (www.womeninfocus.org) or by emailing Faye at freynolds@cbwc.ca .
Please pray for safety in travel for the teams and for openness on the part of church families as we grow in this area of our life together. I want to thank Faye and Mary for this work and declare my affirmation of this ministry in our family of faith.
Warmly,
In Christ,
Jeremy Bell