It's a long, slow road ...

I wanted to tell you about one positive experience in mentoring and discipling.

I'm in a very conventional, conservative country church and right from the start sensed a great need among some of the women of the church to meet together regularly. In fact, a couple of weeks after our arrival (3 years ago now) we started a group during the day which met every week. Now this is very unusual in France where the way people live usually means they are reluctant to commit to meetings more frequently than every 2 weeks, and in some churches the women get together only every month.

Because I was the pastor's wife and I had the theological training it was assumed I would lead the group and organise every week's meditation and meeting time activity. I've always figured it was my rôle to pass on what I have learned and understood! So I did my usual thing and invited each lady to choose which date she wanted to have in order to share what she discovered about one of the women of the Bible (our theme for that year). Those who didn't feel comfortable with that idea could simply talk about how they had been touched by the Lord. Help was available if needed. Encouragement really seemed to be the major factor, since all the ladies have been Christians for decades and had always been in study groups and at church! I kept pointing out that fact saying how many years' resources they all had.

The idea is that in getting each of them to speak about the Bible in a safe environment - ie. a group they know well (mind you, they share surprisingly little of their personal lives and journey, so these sessions turned out to be very important in building up our relationships) - they will be practising to share in other situations, notably with non-Christians or seekers in their own entourage, and in a very natural way.

And so we continued for 2 years.

Time for a change and to get us more outward looking ... I managed to collect enough old copies of Rebecca Pippert's classic "Out of the Saltshaker" in French. As we have women with low educational levels, and 2 women whose first language is not French, the challenge was to help them read the content so we could discuss it as a group.

Again I asked for volunteers to lead each discussion and we made a timetable. Not many offered, feeling rather out of their depth. I asked one lady, a former primary school teacher's aide, if she could summarize each chapter. In fact we were to share the task but she so appreciated the exercise because the content really challenged her personally in her approach to sharing her faith, that she did the whole lot! I prepared a summary of what we all had discussed during the previous session and added discussion questions on the chapter we were studying in the current session. Those who needed it received a copy of the summary of the chapter to be discussed, if possible before the meeting. It became useful for other reasons also, because those who couldn't be there for previous sessions, or those ladies we went to visit as a small group (women who live in isolated farmhouses and who can't get to our meetin

gs) were able to catch on to the content as we read it through together aloud during the meeting.

If I had to be absent for any reason, the summary of the chapter, the previous discussion and the questions were there for the designated leader of that day.

It's a long, slow road! Thankfully,
we really do have all we need in Christ!

In this way all the different ladies in our group (from 4 to 11 depending on the day!) were able to follow the book, work on it themselves, discuss together the ideas and share their own experiences, de-dramatize what witnessing and evangelisation are, and support each other as they started to try and put it all into practice. Plus several women developed other skills in thinking of how to present ideas so others will understand and how to lead a group and prepare a study/discussion.

A bit long winded, sorry! But just wanted to share this experience.

The next school year starts September, and I'm still praying about what form our ladies' group should take. My desire would be that we cut back our joint meetings to once a fortnight and every other week they each invite one or two friends/neighbours to their home in order to discover the Bible together (there are plenty of booklets available to have as a guide). I would be the resource person if needed.

Many people in our church have been passively receiving all this spiritual food for years. The challenge for my husband (the pastor) and I , is to get them into active mode, using their abundant resources to let people know around them how God has blessed their lives.