I was new to the women's ministry staff at Grace Church in Minnesota when I began to ask myself the question, “What exactly should we be doing in women’s ministries?” As I prayed and directed my question to the Lord, the answer came from Titus 2:3-5. “Teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live…to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the Word of God.” All of our past efforts to create a mentoring structure for women's ministries at our church had assumed the need for one-on-one relationships between older and younger women. I knew that our young women did not have time for one more “deep” relationship, but I also knew that they wanted and needed direction from older, wiser women who could be spiritual mothers.
About that time I saw an article detailing the numbers of young Americans who are online daily and a mentoring idea began to formulate in my mind. I realized that a small number of mature women could effectively influence the young women in our church using the internet as a connection tool. I know that a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is the beginning of the answer to any problem life can produce. Christ’s leadership in our lives is the solution that I wanted to bring to the cyberspace audience of young women in my church and beyond. At the time, we called it Wise Web Women.
I want to share this mentoring model with other women’s ministry leaders who might like to duplicate this idea in their own churches. Every congregation has older women who can be mentors - women who know how to drink in the freshness of His presence daily, in the good times and in the hard places of life. They only need to be convinced that their life experience of faithful living is relevant and of value to the young women around them.
The qualifications for the older women I sought were spelled out in the Titus passage. I began by making a list of the mature women I knew in the church whose example of Christian living was well known to everyone. They were invited to a meeting where I challenged them to offer themselves as solution-oriented writers for an initial mentoring period of six months.
What topics would they choose? I wanted the content of their messages to be Spirit-driven, so in the beginning, I didn’t give them specific direction. I only asked them to write from their hearts as they prayed for guidance and ideas. During our second year, they began to deliberately write about the specific topics mentioned in the Titus passage.
Many of the mature women were already internet savvy, and in a short time I had five mentors committed to writing a devotional message to younger women on a weekly basis. One woman, who lives in Florida for six months out of the year, was able to participate because distance was not an issue with the computer. A young woman who had been a newspaper reporter before becoming a stay-at-home mom, heard about the ministry and offered to become a reporter for some elderly women who could not write well, or who were not as comfortable with computer use. Right now there are eight writers in the mentoring group.
There is a surprise side benefit for the families of the older women who are doing the writing. The messages they have created to share with others have become a written spiritual legacy that their own families cherish.
Young women today experience their greatest felt needs in the relationships that affect their everyday lives. They want to know how to handle the challenges of married life. Children continue to have even the smartest women scratching their heads at times wondering, “Now what should I do?” Women in the workplace and at home need to know exactly how to be sexually pure in a culture that does not reinforce the value of that biblical message. One young woman at Grace Church wrote, I am so excited to read these messages. This is something that I have desired, mentoring from older women! These topics are the very ones I have been looking for guidance on. Thanks for all you do, and may you and all the writers know that they make a difference.
Another young woman was able to ask some specific questions anonymously about an entanglement at work with a married man. Some women ask for prayer while others are in need of direct resources in the church or community. At Grace Church, younger women call, write and seek out the mentoring writers they have come to know through Wise Web Women.
An important part of making this mentoring model work at Grace Church revolved around creative promotion. Surprisingly enough, the women’s restrooms have become a great place for distributing information. The Wise Web Women promotional piece was regularly displayed near a lovely floral arrangement just inside the door of each women’s restroom in the church. The promotional logo and design for the ministry were created in-house and are printed on both sides of cardstock paper. There was a picture and e-mail address for each writer, as well as a brief description of the ministry. Women were invited to join the group at no cost. Those who joined received a fresh message each weekday from one of the mentoring writers. Best of all is the fact that this ministry idea fit around everyone’s time constraints because a computer is easily accessible.
The result of these relationships between older and younger women, no matter how they are accomplished, is summed up in Titus 2:5, “…so that no one will malign the Word of God.” This modern mentoring model provides a structure and form that works for today’s overburdened and stretched women of every age who still need and want the spiritual mothering that encourages them to hold fast to the Word of God.
This model is one that can work well in any women’s group to maximize the time and effectiveness of mentoring in the lives of today’s busy women. When older women are teaching younger women how to live in and through the real stuff of life, the church becomes more healthy and godly families and homes are enriched. Mentoring strengthens our foundations.
Setting Up an Internet Mentoring Model
- Pray for the connections that will need to come together as you begin.
- Get the approval required from your church leadership.
- Commit yourself to leadership and management, or find someone else who will closely monitor the project from the start.
- Choose a name for your ministry and consider the purchase of the name as a domain.
- Familiarize yourself with the template you will use to develop the mentoring group online.
- Make a list of the mature role models in your church; invite them to a meeting and explain the idea in detail.
- Develop your promotional plan, make a logo, and create a handout that will invite women in the church to join the online group.
- Continue to pray as you manage the group. Consider having a get-together periodically where the mentoring writers and those receiving the messages can meet in person.
~ By Marion Lorence
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