March 2015

I'm in the middle of going through some type of excuses that are used to avoid women's ministry participation in our local churches. This page covers need excuses. And when I say "need", I mean what women want. It's the excuse for women not participating because their needs are not being met. Remember, finding what the excuses are all about will help our women's leaders become better aware of what our women face.

Need Excuses (or lack of things desired)

Need Excuses are those relating to what a lady expects or does not expect from their women’s ministry meetings and activities. It is all about their “need”. It's about their desire for something different than what is in place currently.

For instance, you may have some who want just Bible studies and prayer times. Others may be fully involved in Bible studies through other ministries in your church or through personal studies, and these women may just want a time of fellowship and relaxation among other sisters in Christ. Others may need childcare to attend. There may be some who think everything should be project oriented.

For women with these excuses, it is sometimes about what they think a women's ministry program looks like to them.

You are never going to be able to combat all of the “need” excuses out there, but that does not mean that there might not be some areas that you can concentrate on and improve for your ladies.

You may want to tweak a few things in your meetings to accommodate some of these needs. There may be room in your program to fill some of them. For instance, there may be a need for childcare. It might take some work, but maybe it is something to look into having for mothers who would like to attend.

Maybe you will want to rearrange a few things and provide more opportunities for Bible study and prayer. Everything doesn’t have to be done during that one monthly women’s meeting that a lot of churches have. There might be other times and places to implement some of the things in small ways that your ladies may want or “need”.

Over time the women will change in your church. At some points you may have a lot of young mothers. At other points you may have a lot of senior age women. Still another point you may have an evenly divided group in ages. And then there is the range of single, married, divorced, and widowed women. Those statistics in your church will change. And at times you will have a lot of hurting and abused women. You may have a lot of women who deal with addictions of some kind. Face it, time marches on and your women's ministry program has to change to meet the current needs at the time.

You of course can't meet all of the needs that arise, but you do have to do some investigating, planning, and praying to figure out what your women's ministry program looks at any moment in time and what that program needs to focus on to be a blessing and grow women in their faith.

Survey your women from time to time to get feedback on what they need or expect from their women’s ministry activities. You can’t really combat the excuses for needs and expectations unless you know what those needs and expectations are.

Copyright ©2015 Julia Bettencourt

Find all parts to this series in the Dealing with Excuses Index.

See more along this line in the Setbacks and Growth Index.

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