Dear Bethlehem Women,

16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. 17 But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. I John 3:16-18

The Women's Ministries Leadership Team spent the last year reading Women's Ministry in the Local Church by Susan Hunt and Ligon Duncan. We have sought the Lord, asking Him to show us how the principles in this book should influence our ministry at Bethlehem. This time of prayer, discussion, and even wrestling over these concepts has had a significant impact on the direction and focus of Bethlehem's Women's Ministries.

Ligon Duncan gives 5 reasons why Women's Ministry is important in every healthy evangelical church:

1. Through it we have the opportunity to address helpfully the issue of the nature of manhood and womanhood, an issue that is very much at the heart of the cultural transition that we find ourselves in the midst of right now.
2. It is important to have a deliberate, intentional ministry to women in the church because the Bible teaches so much and so clearly on manhood and womanhood. There is no better way for us to discreetly and appropriately address those nitty-gritty issues than in the context of a women's ministry. There are certain matters more aptly addressed and applied in the context of a specific discipleship of women.
3. When Biblical manhood and womanhood are denied or altered or unpracticed, that results in disasters for marriages, families, and churches. Women's ministry provides a safe and secure environment where those kinds of things can be addressed.
4. There ought to be an intentional, deliberate approach to female discipleship because men and women are different, and these differences need to be recog- nized, taken into account, and addressed in the course of Christian discipleship.
5. The denial or the twisting of the Bible's clear teaching on manhood and womanhood is one of the central ways that biblical authority is being undermined in our times. Women's ministry has the capacity to deal with this issue in a unique way.

As you read through these reasons, you see a key repeated phrase, "Biblical manhood and womanhood." We believe that this is a topic worthy of attention, teaching, and discipleship.
Therefore, we will begin this fall specifically focusing on Biblical womanhood. Some foundational principles include:

• God created men and women equal in their essential dignity and human personhood, but different and complementary in function.
• Biblical womanhood is radically different than worldly womanhood and in fact, counter-cultural.
• The crisis of womanhood is so critical in our times that the church must educate and equip women in a Biblical understanding of their roles.

Women were created to be helpers and life-givers. "Then the Lord God said, 'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.'" (Genesis 2:18) Our helper design equips us specifically for nurturing covenant community in the church and for ministering compassion to those in need.

A covenant community is a family, and we are graciously adopted into that family by God. As God has entered into relationship with us, we are to enter into relationships with each other, to include those beyond our spheres of comfort and familiarity, crossing cultures, ages, and marital status. A woman's nurturing and relational strengths equip her for this life-giving mission. Independence and isolation go against the design of our creation in the image of a personal God of covenant faithfulness. The cadence of the covenant is a steady rhythm of love.

Our corporate ministry as women in God's church should have the effect of bringing a deeper sense of community and compassion into our church family. It involves sharing gifts and graces and performing whatever duties promote the mutual good of the church. It is asking how we can touch the lives of others in our church with grace and mercy. It means being intentional about the ministries of planning fellowship dinners, visiting the bereaved, and taking food to those in need - understanding that these ministries are sacred because they are kingdom activities done with the motive of cultivating a sense of family among God's people. Community life must be cultivated, and woman's helper design furnishes her with tools for the task. She gives substantive, principled, diligent care to cultivate a sense of family in her home and in her church.

Our prayer is that God will be glorified as His bride lives in covenant relationship with Him and with each other and that women will be blessed and content as they appreciate their creation design and understand the significance of their calling. Please join us in this endeavor to equip and encourage each other to glorify God by enjoying the uniquely feminine design that He has created for us as women.

Delighting in God's plans and purposes,
Mary Delk

Parts of this document taken from © Women's Ministry in the Local Church by Susan Hunt and Ligon Duncan, and other writings on Biblical Womanhood by Susan Hunt