Day #14 – Get Ready

Your assignment today is to prepare ahead for some type of ministry in God’s name.

Spend some time to consider your own  church and community. Think of ways you enjoy serving others. Consider how God has stirred your heart in days past about needs and opportunities to show His love to others. Now think of ways you can prepare ahead and be ready on a minute’s notice. A few examples:

- Prepare cookie dough and freeze it with a label, “ministry cookies.” Now when someone moves into your neighborhood, you can deliver steaming homemade cookies before the moving van drives away. You can take hot cookies to a homebound member or church member with a new baby. You’re ready.

- Make a huge pot of homemade soup. Serve some to your family, then freeze several containers, labeled “ministry soup.” When you learn that old Mr. James has the flu tomorrow, you’ll quickly deliver homemade soup to his door (and run!) You’re ready.

- If you’re a computer geek or scrapbooking diva, create pretty bookmarks  with a Scripture and the words, “Praying for you! Diana Davis” (substitute your name).  Make dozens of them. When you make a hospital visit, nursing home visit, bereaved visit, you’ve got a personal reminder to give them. You can give one to a teen headed off to college as a promise of your prayers. To a woman dealing with divorce or physical pain or personal problems.  You’re ready.

- If your ministry area involves visiting homebound or members in nursing home, consider ways you can prepare ahead for great effectiveness.  Keep their names and phonee contact information on your cell phone or a list in your car’s glovebox. If you have a few minutes and  you’re nearby, you can easily call and stop by. Keep a list of their birthdays, and consider purchasing cards ahead of time. Go ahead and prepare them for the entire year and mail on the appropriate day. If you stop by on their birthday with a lighted cupcake, keep candles and matches in your car. If you like the idea of a portable tea party, pack up a picnic basket with two teacups, two saucers and pretty napkins. Then you simply fill a thermos with hot water, grab a couple of cookies and serve her tea.  You’re ready.

- Perhaps you help with 25^th or 50^th wedding anniversary celebrations when they occur in marriages at your church. Gather gold or silver items, appropriate signs, reusable décor that may be used. Keep a card file of ideas used in the past, then loan them to families who are planning. You’re ready.

- Another example, as a pastor’s wife, I often was one of the first to arrive at members’ homes after a death occurred. I began to notice a pattern—many times, Janet (a deacon’s wife) had either already stopped by or came by while my husband and I were at the bereaved person’s home. She simply rang the doorbell, shoved a grocery sack into the arms of the person who answered the door, told them their church family was praying for them, said a one-sentence prayer asking God to comfort the family, and left. The grocery bag held these contents:

Paper  plates, napkins, plastic forks, Paper towels, toilet paper, a note of sympathy and prayer

Often a bereaved family has not expected or prepared for masses of family and friends to arrive, so those paper products were appreciated. Gather those items, put them in paper bags on a top shelf in your garage, and you’re ready.

You get the idea.  Get ready! Consider how God has called you to serve. Dream big about ways you can accomplish that task even  better by planning ahead. When you’re prepared, you’ll be watching for ways to use those preparation. You’ll be surprised to find that you’ll be doing lots more ministry with less  effort.

Assignment: Start getting ready today.

DAY #5 – Have tea with a widow.

Call a widow you know and invite her to tea. If you don’t know a widow personally, ask your pastor or pastor’s wife for a suggestion.

Whether she’s a long-time friend or just an acquaintance at church, let her know you’d enjoy just spending some time with her. Take her to a nearby coffee shop or invite her for tea in your living room.  Ask about her wellbeing, her family, her health. Listen carefully to hear concerns or needs. Promise to pray for her. If she’s a Christian friend, ask about how God has worked in her life in recent days. Begin a friendship as you sip your tea. Pray for her before you leave. Consider sitting by her in church occasionally or inviting her to your home for dinner with your family.  As you have tea with her in your home or at the local coffee shop,  pray silently to God, asking Him to allow you to be a blessing to His child.

As I consider the most important mentors in my life, some were widows. You may just receive a blessing in return!
“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27

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Find more ideas for deacon wives at Deacon Magazine (LifeWay) and Deacon wives—Fresh Ideas to Encourage Your Husband and the Church (B&H Publishing).

NEXT MONTH:  “31 Days to a Better Women’s Ministry”

Day #3 – FIND A NEED AND MEET IT.

Look carefully today at the people in your workplace or exercise class, your fellow believers in your church, the stranger who’s checking your groceries or checking out your library book…all the sea of people you encounter in your everyday life today. 

Ask God to show you one way you can help someone today. Be sure that you do it “in His name” – not just as a random good deed, but as a follower of God.

Warning: Showing God’s love through meeting a need might cost money, time or energy.  As His ambassador, however, we must develop a habit of watching and listening for His prompting. Start looking!

And don’t go to bed tonight until you’ve found some need, and met it.
“For this I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I might be bold enough in Him to speak as I should.” Ephesians 6:20

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Find more ideas for deacon wives at Deacon Magazine(LifeWay) and Deacon wives—Fresh Ideas to Encourage Your Husband and the Church (B&H Publishing).

NEXT MONTH:  “31 Days to a Better Women’s Ministry” 

Take a couple of minutes to watch this Youtube video I found. It’s by Shane Chapman, a sand artist.  It will put you in the true mood for a great Christmas celebration!

Do You Hear What I Hear – Sand Art

(By the way, on my computer the music doesn’t start for a minute.)

Praying your Christmas in full of JOY. Keep on shining…

Fresh Ideas

Creatively Thankful

By Diana Davis

Looking for creative ways for your church to celebrate Thanksgiving? Try one of these:

• 24-Hours of Thanks. Host a 24-hour prayer chain of thanksgiving to God. Church members sign up for a half-hour shift to pray in the church sanctuary or a special prayer room. Each person prays briefly with the previous pray-er, then spends time in thanksgiving prayer to God.   
• Senior Saints & Six-Year-Olds. A tech-savvy teen could work with a senior adult Bible class and the six-year-olds’ class to make a video clip to use on Sunday before Thanksgiving. Record each person, with head bowed or raised toward heaven, praying “I thank you God for ____.”  
• Turkey Smoking Party – A few men at one church smoked dozens of turkeys on Thanksgiving Eve. They invited church members and neighbors to bring their turkey to the church parking lot, where the cooks enjoyed hours of horseshoes and cornhole games while they lovingly prepared scrumptious birds. 
• Thankful Art Show.  Plan ahead to host a city-wide art exhibit at your church next Thanksgiving. Use the theme “Thankful…” and accept all mediums of art from all age groups. Begin by asking artists in your church to create a piece of art and help with planning. Anyone in the community can exhibit, and special invitations are sent to teachers and art students at nearby art studios, universities and schools. Artistically incorporate Scriptures in the display, and use easels, walls and small columns for art displays. Invite the community to view the exhibit during Thanksgiving week.     
• Sharing Thanksgiving. Assign members to deliver a homemade pie to each homebound member. Encourage members to plan family celebrations to include a single adult, university or seminary student, widow, widower, international student, immigrant and others who are far from home. (Psalm 68:6).
• Digital Thanks. Ask church members to use a digital camera or camera phone to take photos to complete this sentence: “I thank my God for…”.  Make a PowerPoint to use during Sunday worship. Viewing photos of pets, pals, pizza, and policemen will remind worshippers to thank God for them.   
• Picket Signs in Church. Elementary-age children’s Sunday School classes make picket-type signs, using large words or drawings to show their thanks to God. During worship, they march around the worship center during a song, holding their picket signs as a thanksgiving to God. 
• Blessing Baskets. Purchase baskets to provide one for each family in your church. Families put the blessing basket on their dining table and deposit notes of thanks to God each day. On Sunday before Thanksgiving, they bring their basket to the altar and offer thanks to God.  
• Wall of Thanks. One church created a huge “wall of thanks” by covering a foyer wall with paper during November.  Teens, children and adults used markers to draw and write words of thanks for God’s blessings. 

Don’t skip over Thanksgiving this year. Celebrate a focused time of giving thanks to our great God. Happy Thanksgiving!

©2009 Diana Davis. For more Thanksgiving ideas, see her book, Fresh Ideas (B&H Publishing, 2007) and blog www.keeponshining.com

You’re going to LOVE this story. It’s a follow-up on that last post about our daughter and son-in-law moving to Indianapolis. I’m just in awe of how God continues to put this all together. I pasted Autumn’s post on Facebook below. Enjoy!

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If you’ve got time, take a look at this videoclip my daughter sent me. Absolutely amazing!

Wait! Before you start it, grab a kleenix. Great illustration, huh?

http://www.flixxy.com/game-of-survival.htm

The second of Indiana Baptists’ Women’s Retreats was held this weekend, and this one had 500+ ladies attending!

Heather Payne was such a great blessing with her music and talks!

The retreat was themed “Savor Life”  – with a coffee take-off on 2 Corinthians 2:14-16 — “For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one an aroma from death to death, to the other an aroma from life to life.  And who is adequate for these things?”

The breakout classes were wonderful, and I’ve listed the topics below, FYI.

If you’re planning a retreat for your church, I’d recommend that you attend a well-planned annual retreat like this one, and you’ll be inspired to quality and purposeful planning to make a difference in women’s lives.  It did!

Here’s a photo of Steve and me giving a welcome to the group. He’s quite brave, I think, to show up even for just a minute or two with that many women!

Retreat Breakout Classes:

- The Purpose-Driven Granny

- Are you Directionally Challenged?

- Feel the Fear…now do it anyway!

- So you want a great Women’s Ministry? (my class)

- The Thrill of Hospitality and the Agony of the Feet (my class)

- Super Woman’s Holy Makeover

- Compelled by Love

- Are you a carrot, egg, coffee bean or M&M?

- It’s all about the creamer

- Special Spiritual needs

- Digging deeper

- Engaging the younger woman in ministry

- Mentoring women

- Logged On or Tuned Out

- Witnessing is like a bag of popcorn

Titles don’t explain it well enough, but get the picture? There was a wide variety of breakout conferences for women of all ages, moms of all stages, ministries in the church and community, and classes just for fun.

And with all that, I heard more comments about one class than any other: Witnessing is like a bag of popcorn.  Sonja Roberson (Florida Baptist Convention) truly inspired women to share Jesus. I didn’t get to attend, but it must have been really something!

Praying that the fruits of this wonderful event will spread all over our state.

I spotted a new book that you women’s ministry leaders might enjoy. 

It’s called Devotions Galore–Warm-Ups, Wrap-ups and Prayer for Women’s Groups. 

If you read my book, Fresh Ideas for Women’s Ministry, you will remember that I’d recommended that you plan a brief fellowship coffee during your women’s ministry. This fellowship time might come between a Bible study or missions class and a ministry project, and it just lasts fifteen minutes. The purpose of these minutes is threefold:

1) Fellowship – informal, relaxed friendship-development, mentoring, laughing, chatting in a large-group setting

2) Snacks – it’s the “meet and eat” thing, but it can be healthy snacks!

3) A very brief devotional. Bring hearts together with a prayer, testimony or Scripture.

The majority of minutes during the coffee break are devoted to fellowship. Announcements and prayer requests are printed or written on a whiteboard. The fellowship time concludes with a one-minute devotional from God’s Word.  (That takes lots more effort to plan well than a fifteen-minute devotional!)

I just skimmed through this new book and thought you’d find several great ideas for simple, short, memorable devotions for your women’s ministry group. 

Keep on shining!

I received the cover art for my new book, Deacon Wives, which is scheduled for release by B&H Publishing in June 2009. 

Want to take a peek at the cover?  Click here:  Deacon Wives

If you are a deacon’s wife, this is the book you’ve been awaiting.  When your church ordains deacons, this will be a great gift book to encourage new or experienced deacon wives.

As a long-time pastor’s wife, serving in a small, medium and large church, I’ve observed first-hand the important value of deacons and their wives. As a denominational leader’s wife, I’ve watched hundreds more, and I’ve come to an important conclusion: deacons and deacon wives radically impact a church’s harmony, its ministry, its effectiveness and its growth. When a church selects a man to serve in the role of deacon, his wife naturally has unique opportunities to serve alongside him.   

Deacon Wives provides fresh ideas for those important leaders. It will challenge them to a new level of commitment and joy. The book is chock-full of suggestions and practical tips for ministering to church members, growing as a Christian, and prioritizing God’s work within a busy life. It emphasizes the Biblical mandate for wives in 1 Timothy 3:11, and demonstrates the seriousness of words, attitudes and actions.  And as a bonus, a detailed teaching plan for an enjoyable six-week study for deacon wives is included in the postlude.

I’m absolutely convinced that the wife of a deacon can make a difference—in her family, her church, her community—in eternity!

Can’t wait to see it in print! dd