The ICOC Women’s Service Team convened on March 20, 2012 in South Florida, during the combined service team meetings of the elders, evangelists and teachers. This was our first meeting since Budapest, where the proposal was passed that changed the format of our women’s committee.

This committee now consists of the wives of the elders’ and evangelists’ committees and is co-chaired by Robin Williams and Jeanie Shaw.

Our first task was to go over the plans for the women’s portion of the World Discipleship Summit. This promises to be an inspirational time together, as we expect over 8,000 women together under one roof. The remainder of our time together was spent discussing how our committee might best serve the sisters around the world.

We first identified several keys areas among the sisters which we believe could be enhanced by our committee’s focus. These areas became our subcommittees and include:

1) Curriculum for Women (chaired by Linda Brumley) This subcommittee will gather various series of lessons being taught to sisters in churches throughout the world.

2) Leadership Training (chaired by Tammy Fleming) This subcommittee will collect the classes and venues being used for raising up future leaders for both full time ministry and small groups.

3) Children’s Ministry (chaired by Lena Wooten) This group will gather “best practices” of children’s programs being used throughout our family of churches.

4) Single Women (chaired by Pat Brush) This subcommittee will solicit practices that are particularly helping feed, mature and reach out to single sisters among us.

5) Women Today (chaired by Jeanie Shaw) This subcommittee will continue to gather new material and continue to publish articles, lessons, inspirational stories, spiritual blogs, as well as a ‘Dear Lydia’ advice section for the women’s section on Disciples Today.

The committee concluded that the 2012 goal for each of these subcommittees would be to gather “best practices” in these areas- with what is already being done throughout our churches. Not wanting to ‘reinvent the wheel’, we realize that many helpful resources are already available and being used throughout our churches. However, we often don’t know what valuable resources our sister churches are using and therefore don’t benefit as we could. We believe we can better share these tools – which will prayerfully result in the maturing and multiplying of sisters worldwide.

With that in mind, we are eager to move forward with our plan to collect the current and valuable practices and find ways to better nurture and fortify the women and children in our churches – as well as more effectively reach out to the women in the world.

Recently, we were graciously asked by the ICOC Teachers Service Team to recommend several sisters to serve in two specific ways – on the Teachers Service Team (which is currently composed of men) and on the Disciples Academy Board, which is preparing a curriculum for our ministry training. After contacting a number of qualified women, Kay McKean and Deb Anton agreed to join the Teachers Service Team and Robin Williams and Terrie Fontenot agreed to sit on the Disciples Academy board. We appreciate this opportunity to help the needs of the sisters be addressed more thoroughly.

Our next meeting will take place during the Delegates’ section of the World Discipleship Summit.

Respectfully submitted,

ICOC Women’s Service Team