c. 1998 Religion News Service
LANDOVER, Md. _ Sitting, singing and laughing with a crowd of more than 16,000 women at the US Airways Arena here, Carol Hammel said she was getting just the break she’d long awaited.
Attracted like many others to the Women of Faith conference’s theme,”Bring Back the Joy,”she said she was there to relax for a change.”Women are busy,”said Hammel, 52, of Camp Springs, Md., an office manager for a surgical practice.”They work hard. … You just need a refreshing.” With jokes about shopping, hormonal changes and burning maternity clothes, women got just that. And they also had a chance to open their Bibles to verses that spoke to their needs and to wipe away tears they had waited too long to cry. For some, it was a time to reorder their priorities, putting faith a bit higher on their too long”to do”lists.”We have come here this weekend hopefully, first of all, to clean out our closets to make sure that we have room for what God wants to hang in there,”said songwriter Gloria Gaither, walking around a stage bedecked with flower boxes and purple carpet.
Women’s conferences like Women of Faith and Chosen Women: The Lord Reigns _ which brought 20,000 to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., last May _ are filling arenas by filling a need in evangelical women of the ’90s. Like their secular counterparts, these women find themselves stretched by a set of demands that includes the new reality of balancing careers with the more traditional chores of caring for a family.
Unlike such groups as Promise Keepers _ to which they are often compared and where men gather to address their spiritual challenges especially with regard to their families _ the women’s conferences focus less on admonishment and more on encouragement.”We feel like women need kind of a different message than men do,”said Christie Barnes, executive director of Women of Faith, in a recent interview.”We feel like women don’t really need to be admonished to be more accountable and responsible. … They really need to have a message of encouragement and to be uplifted.” Catherine Guerard of Falls Church, Va., for example, said she came to the conference for new insights on her”walk with the Lord.” Guerard, an employee at a Washington think tank, said women are so busy with work and other activities that it is hard for them to find time to work on the spiritual side of their lives.”Because we are juggling so many different things, I think that we have more difficulty in focusing our faith,”said Guerard, 39.”Many of us will take all the help we can get.” Through emotional anecdotes _ such as keynote speaker Sheila Walsh’s testimony of how she went from being a co-host on Pat Robertson’s”700 Club”to the throes of clinical depression to the happy existence of young motherhood _ women share experiences of anger, disappointment and forgiveness.”My motto is: Life is tough, but God is faithful,”Walsh told the audience, who listened attentively as she spoke for 45 minutes before giving her a standing ovation.
Women of Faith _ which grew from seven conferences in 1996 to 29 scheduled events this year _ is sponsored by New Life Clinics, a Christian mental health care group based in Plano, Texas, but Barnes said the therapeutic benefits of the conference are not planned.”It’s just a natural kind of thing that comes out of women being able to laugh and cry and release some feelings or things that they’ve been holding inside of themselves,”she said.
Nancy Eiesland, who teaches at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, said she sees the evangelical women’s conferences as a way to help women deal with what’s known as the”second shift,”family life responsibilities that pile on top of the duties of the workplace.”Women of Faith and those various other … groups are often talking about the experience of trying to figure out how to manage the second shift of their lives in a context of vast overwork for themselves as well as for their spouses,”said Eiesland, an assistant professor of sociology of religion.
At the Chosen Women rally last year, for example, speaker Bunny Wilson referred to the juggling done by many women, but said”bad acting”children, husbands or bosses can’t be used as excuses to avoid doing what God wants them to do.”God is my defense. He’s my refuge. He’s my rock. He’s my salvation,”she preached.”And he’s that in my marriage. He’ll be that in your jobs and in your churches if you will let him be.” Joanne Herdrich, public relations director for Chosen Women, said women who gathered at the Rose Bowl found the meeting to be a stress reliever.”I think one thing that helps relieve stress is to have your priorities right,”she said.”Sometimes when life gets away from us … we don’t have a chance to step back and reflect on the bigger picture and this is definitely an opportunity to do that.” Women’s conferences also seem to fill a gap for some women whose churches may be faced with aging women’s groups and working women who are too busy to commit to numerous church activities.
But representatives of Women of Faith and Chosen Women said they hope their conferences will boost women’s ministries in local congregations.”We see ourselves as a tool to help the women who are in the churches get a sense of direction and motivation,”Herdrich said.”We don’t have any Chosen Women small groups because we don’t want to pull away from what women are already involved (with) in their local church.” Barnes said conference officials have received reports of women who”go back and are just on fire to get something going in their church.”For those churches with local ministries, she said, the conference is meant to be a”booster shot of joy”to rejuvenate existing activities.
Rebecca Jenkins, chairwoman of the National Association of Evangelicals’ women’s commission, said she believes the conferences enhance rather than hurt denominational women’s ministries. For example, she said, they offer”big name speakers”individual denominational groups may not be able to afford.”There’s just real excitement when a group of Christian women … especially of various faiths, join together and come together for a purpose of seeing healing for the hurting and offering hope to the helpless and so I think they’re a very good thing,”she said.
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The Rev. Martha Cruz, a deputy general director of Church Women United, said the spiritual renewal embraced by the groups fits into the more general interest in spirituality across the country. Her New York-based organization includes Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox women who often work on local mission projects across ecumenical lines.”There’s a real search for spirituality,”she said.”The time is opportune right now for not just Church Women United and not just Chosen Women or Women of Faith but for the church as a whole. It’s a kairos (decisive) moment.” Even as Promise Keepers, the evangelical men’s movement, is putting in place a radically different kind of organization, including laying off its paid staff, officials for the women’s conferences are looking to their own futures and the role they might play in continuing the development of women’s spirituality.
Herdrich said Women of Faith originally planned just one event, last year’s meeting in Pasadena. But now is has planned a second _ scheduled for May 29 and 30 in Fresno, Calif. _ because of the large response to the first conference.”We don’t have a goal of making a lasting organization that continues on and on,”she said.
Women of Faith, on the other hand, has 28 events scheduled for 1999 and expects to continue beyond then.”We’re already talking about the year 2000,”said Barnes.”If we continue to offer people a different experience every year, then we feel like they’ll keep wanting to come year after year.”
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