ALEXANDRIA – Instead of flowers at the annual LBC women’s conference, the platform area at Calvary Baptist Church here was dominated by a full-size cross, bare except for the thorny vine that twined around its center.
By Karen L. Willoughby
Managing Editor
ALEXANDRIA – Instead of flowers at the annual
LBC women’s conference, the platform area at Calvary Baptist
Church here was dominated by a full-size cross, bare except for the
thorny vine that twined around its center.
It was that kind of a “gets you in the gut” event,
which included Carrie McDonnall’s gripping story of how a beautiful day
in Iraq started with ministry and making new friends, and ended with
the bullet-ridden death of three missionary friends as well as her new
husband.
“We did what God told us to do,” Cindy Townsend told
the Message a few minutes after the conference was over. “This wasn’t a
feel-good conference. It was more a challenge conference.”
Townsend is director of the women’s missions and
ministry team at the Louisiana Baptist Convention, which sponsored the
day-long event.
The challenge was for participants to influence their everyday world for Christ.
“I’m going to do better about praying,” said
Jennifer Bates of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Calvin, when asked what
she got out of the conference. “I know I need to.”
Prayer was a major component of the day’s
activities. Globes four feet high were stationed along Calvary’s
spacious main hallway, with an attendant offering materials about needs
in Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia, including a specific prayer
request the attendant asked the recipient to pray for while they were
standing in front of the globe.
At one point, the 500 or more women in the worship
center stood facing first East, then West, North and South, to pray for
the people around the world who live in those directions.
“We’ve just prayerwalked the world without ever
leaving Louisiana!” McDonnall said as she walked to the podium.
The difference a woman could make was the general theme of the
conference. Breakout sessions showed attendees practical ways they
could impact their Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and the ends of the earth
every day.
Best-selling novelist Terri Blackstock asked her
listeners, “What matters to God? What matters to God is His
people touching lives. … All we have to do is respond to the people
He puts in front of us.”
Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world,
said small group leader Bill Townsend. He started studying Islam
when his son came home from his first day at school with a new best
friend named Mohammad, Townsend said.
His point: Reaching your Jerusalem isn’t necessarily just reaching out to people just like you.
Dottie Hudson talked about the practical things a
woman can do to make her marriage a ministry, including saying to God
every morning, “Let Your love consume me.”
“Build your husband up in public and in private,”
Hudson said. “Let your children know you love and respect him.”
Jaye Martin of NAMB gave several ways to reach the people in your
neighborhood: Prayerwalk, and ask the people you see how you can pray
for them; serve your local school and ask those you come in contact
with how you can pray for them; start a brownie ministry in your
neighborhood and ask those you give them to, how you can pray for them
…
Several times in the day’s final session, the
participants echoed, “God, give us a heart for the world. Let our
hearts break for that which breaks your heart.”
Romans 12:1 from The Message was the scriptural
watchword: “So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your
everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work,
and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering.”
Betty Larry was one of 10 women from the scattered Franklin Avenue
Baptist Church in New Orleans who traveled from several locations for
their first get-together since Katrina.
LBC’s Women’s Missions and Ministry team provided
financial resources to make the reunion happen, and that was wonderful,
Larry said, but the conference was even more wonderful because it
taught her so many things she can do to be a positive influence, such
as helping her grandchildren learn to pray and be strong in the Lord.
“Everything was so well-planned and so well
executed,” Larry said. “You can tell that prayer went before them, all
the way.
“You can take the papers [handed out during the day]
home with you, and they’ll get stuck in a corner somewhere, but what I
maintain in my heart, that’s what sticks with me and I got something
from every session that’s going to stick with me,” Larry continued. “To
be here was wonderful, it was a blessing. We were all participants.
Even as people spoke, you felt a part of it.”
Joanne Brechtel contributed to this report.