Young Women, Older Women: Bridging the Gap

Back in the fall I was asked to speak at our church's Women On Mission group on March 2 (that's today). This group is made up of mostly older ladies in the church who have a passion for missions and service to others. They meet once a month to hear missions speakers and have lunch. This year, along with the missionary speakers, they wanted to hear about some ministries going on in our church. So they asked me to speak about our Moms' Connection group. But as I thought about what I would share, and the months went by leading up to today, it was obvious that God wanted me to speak on a related, but different topic.

To prepare for the talk, I visited with many younger women in our church to get their input on what they would say to these ladies if they were me. What did they want these older ladies to know? And God actually brought about a couple of conversations with older women in our church, as well, about their desire to get to know the younger ladies in the church. There is a growing disconnect between the generations. Yet, we know that the older, wiser women have a legacy so valuable that must be passed along... so how does that happen?

Addressing that issue was the focus of my talk today. Below is my speech (sorry it's so long - it's about 40 minutes spoken).

Response was very positive. I heard from several ladies who already have giving, loving relationships with younger women. That was wonderful to hear! One older lady got my contact information and would like to host a dinner with 6 of my friends and 6 of her friends. One lady would love for me to connect her with someone who has kids in Girl Scouts and/or soccer because that's what she enjoyed as a parent. (Let me know if that's you.) Another lady asked if she could come to our Moms' Connection group so she can get to know some of us more. (She'll be there at our next meeting!)... And that's just some of the great bridges that God already formed today between the generations.

It's just SO exciting to find yourself part of a movement of God... what a privilege!!!

So young ladies reading this, - whether you're connected to my church and these particular ladies or not - I encourage you to be receptive to the attempts and efforts of older ladies to reach out to you. And when we can, let's try to be friendly and open, and maybe even ask the older ladies in our lives about their experiences, so they can pass along that wisdom to us!

Reaching Young Women in Today’s World
by Kim Verriere for WOM 3.2.10

I’m so grateful and humbled that you have asked me to share with you today about reaching young women- that you would even want to hear from me. I appreciate the invitation. And I’m so thrilled that several of my friends have come to support me today. So, for all of you who tell me every meeting to bring my friends because you wish some younger ladies would come, here they are!

Let me start by saying that I’m not just going to talk about moms today. I am a young mom, and proud to be one! But a little more broadly, what I want to talk about today is something I have sensed many of you would like to know about: How to Reach Young Women in Today’s World. It’s an important question because things are a bit different now than when you were younger.

I wanted to start today with a little ice breaker between the younger moms here today and our regular attenders. I’m going to ask the young ladies to spread out and go join one of the other tables. Then take time to go around the table and answer one or two of the questions on the pink card.
• What was a favorite book you enjoyed reading to your child(ren) when they were little? Or a favorite song you sang to them?
• What is a beauty product you just cannot do without?
• What is your favorite childhood memory?

Thank you everyone. I hope you enjoyed mingling with these younger ladies and getting to know them – even if just a little bit. Let’s pray before we dive in.

Father, please speak through me this morning. Open all of our hearts to what You would have us to hear. We ask this in Jesus’ Name. Amen.

Now I want to ask you a question, and I want you to answer this aloud for us, “What is Women on Mission about?” Say some answers where I can hear them, and I’ll repeat them in the microphone.
• Mission education
• Serving others
• Engaging the church in missions
• Sharing the gospel

Ladies, I’m going to say something that might be shocking to you… It sounds like you’re telling me that Women on Mission is not about securing a long tradition of first Tuesday meetings.

Rather, I think you will agree, WOM is about a legacy of mission prayer and service for this and future generations of women. … You see, you wonderful ladies have set the backbone, the foundation, of a passion for missions, a love for people, and lives of prayer and serving others for the glory of God. But the goal is NOT really to bring young women to these meetings. The goal is to pass along the wonderful legacy you hold, to them - to the next generation - so they may in turn pass it on, and so forth and so on.

So the question is, how do you do that? How do you pass along the legacy of mission involvement, prayer and service? Especially if it doesn’t really include getting young women here, on first Tuesdays… what do we do? Well, I don’t have all the answers by any means, but today I want to
• offer up some ideas,
• share with you a little about this younger generation of ladies,
• and give you some practical ways that, if you care to, even today you can reach out to younger women in our church and our community.

Now, as a disclaimer, my information comes from experience and some studying I’ve done through different books and such - and they are generalizations, of course. I’ll be speaking mostly of young women who are mothers, and of young women who are in the church, because that is my “expertise” so-to-speak. Each person is an individual and so some young ladies will be exceptions to these things I’ll share. But that’s where the excitement will be – it’ll be up to you to discover these differences, as you get to know more young ladies on a personal basis, which hopefully you will be inspired to today.

The first thing I’d like you to know about young women today is that they
Have busier lives than ever before.

Now, I know that all of you have busy lives. Some of you are caring for your aging parents and your little grandchildren at the same time. And I recognize that some of you have schedules packed as full as anyone - with church and volunteer activities. So you know how crazy life can be! But I just want to share with you some of the expectations young ladies are facing today. As you may know, women are expected to have it all and do it all these days, right?
A woman should have a quality education,
leading to a satisfying career,
a well-behaved and well-dressed brood of children,
along with a helpful and romantic husband
and a clean house,
a fit and well-dressed body of her own,
a great sex life and a fulfilling spiritual life,
a full schedule complete with exercise classes, volunteer activities, children’s piano lessons and soccer games –
oh, and, of course, a complete social life with her girlfriends. Whew! …
And ladies, I’m sure you could chime in and help me add to this list… anyone? … we could be here all day… THESE are our expectations of who we’re supposed to be. It’s quite the insurmountable accomplishment!

Now that may be exaggerating a bit, because most ladies I know realize the fallacy of the “Have it all” expectation. You truly cannot do it all or have it all. You have to decide what’s important and focus on that. But that brings me to another issue women face: with all the media, magazines and messages even from other women about what should be important, all of those things I mentioned cry out to be chosen worthy of our time, and we end up with stress, and even anxiety and disorders that require medication - from all of the stress – all from trying to decide what exactly we should spend our time doing each day. Do we wear our babies? Do we let them cry it out? Do we go back to school? Do we use paper or plastic or canvas? Do we go the cost-saving route or the organic-natural route? It’s enough to drive us to the loony bin!

Another factor that can add to the stress of all for younger women is the increasing trend of young families now living away from mothers, mother-in-laws and extended family, transplanted in a city or community where they don’t know anyone, and have the added task of making friends and connections. Young women end up without those close mentoring relationships to guide us, or those extra set of caregivers when we need a break for a couple of hours from the children. We struggle to maintain a clean house, keep up with the latest and best methods for loving and caring for our children, and still find time for anything else. So it’s difficult to make friendships and network within the community and church to seek out substitutes for those family relationships - that most in past generations held near and dear and benefited from greatly.

In fact, young mothers know that their children are the most important thing, and so often a young mother’s life becomes only focused only on her children at the expense of a healthy marriage, healthy friendships, an even a healthy self-image. There are many young ladies just struggling to find themselves amidst these lofty, unrealistic expectations. … And I truly believe that a wiser, older woman who cares and loves her deeply could be the saving grace for any one of these young ladies. As Pastor Ellis said on Sunday, God uses US to accomplish his will. You could really make a difference in the life of a young woman.

So, today’s young women: Have busier, or maybe I should say, “more muddled,” lives than ever before.

And today’s young women:
Want to be experiencing, more than just hearing.

I suppose this is related to the issue of having such busy lives. With seemingly little time to spare in a given schedule, when young women want to live out their heart for missions and serving, they would much rather be doing missions, than just hearing about it. That’s not to say that young women don’t want to ever listen to a missions speaker or don’t see the value in mission education. It’s just that the experiencing part is so much more valuable to the younger women today to feel useful in the Kingdom, and to inspire a lifetime of serving. I have young women friends who are missionaries, who are teachers in lower-economic neighborhoods - on purpose, who faithfully pray for Christian martyrs around the world, who serve refugee families, who take care of the marginalized kids in their neighborhoods and schools, who adopt orphans, who lead bible studies and worship services, who reach out to internationals – the list goes on - and many of these ladies are not active in their church’s women’s missions meetings like this one.

It may be shocking, but I just want to encourage you in this: Just because you don’t see young ladies here at these meetings, does not mean that they are not active in missions, or that they don’t care to be involved. These days the methods are just different. Young women may download sermons onto their iPods – even from several different pastors - and listen to them while they exercise or clean house. They might spend time on the internet reading about and researching ways to serve through any number of church and para-church organizations. And, like me, they might regularly receive e-newsletters or updates from different missionaries and mission organizations, staying informed and up to date on things God is doing around the world, and ways to pray for ministries and mission endeavors.

This is not to say that all young women engage in missions this way. Of course, we need to continue to educate and engage young women in missions through the church. But it might be that we can discover some new ways to do this, which would include some hands on mission experiences that make these women feel purposeful, and intentional, with their time.

So, today’s young women: Have busier, more muddled, lives than ever before. They want to be experiencing missions, more than just hearing mission speakers.

And today’s young women:
Are relational.

In general, the younger generations are much more interested in personal relationships – more than positions, or appearances, or much else for that matter. Genuine relationships with others are key. They are where the younger generations spend their time and energy.

In fact, that is what has been behind the transition we made in our church’s moms’ ministry. For 12 years our church had a chapter of MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers), an international organization that reaches out to encourage and equip moms. But we found it was increasingly harder to get the moms to step up in leadership in our group. And so after much prayer, analysis of what was working and what wasn’t, and conversations with moms who wanted to continue meeting, we came up with a scaled-down version of a moms’ group. We now call it Moms’ Connection. It’s unique to our church - not affiliated with any national organization. We no longer have a steering team of 10 or more leaders in charge of everything from crafts and speakers to decorations and food. We no longer meet around decorated tables with a podium and microphone. Instead we meet in the children’s area on the couches and comfy chairs, we take turns leading meetings, and we don’t fret over decorations or food or pomp and circumstance. The focus is solely on relationships, relaxing, renewing and refreshing as moms. Often we have 45 or more minutes of our meeting time just spent chatting with each other. And although we’ll like make some tweaks to our new system for the coming year to make those relationships even more a key focus, we have really enjoyed the more casual format and less stress it has placed on the few who were carrying the leadership in years past. We realized that young moms most of all need meaningful conversation and camaraderie.

And come to find out, they desire conversation and camaraderie not just with other young moms! When I talked to young women in preparation for speaking to you today, I found that they would love more relationships with you older, more seasoned, ladies! We have a few mentor moms in Moms’ Connection, older moms who have survived the young parenting years, who come to our meetings and provide an added dynamic to our conversations, a listening ear, and a prayerful heart for us. If you asked any Moms’ Connection mom, you’ll find that they consider these older ladies to be indispensable to their moms’ group experience. We love hearing stories from our mentor moms. It helps us know that we will make it beyond potty training and temper tantrums - because they have!

And I believe that these young moms would much rather enjoy a rich conversation with one of you, than just sitting next to all of you in a meeting every month or a church service every week. The young ladies I talked to wanted you to know that they truly value the wisdom you hold, and they look to you as the backbone of church. They see you as women with generous spirits, and they want to emulate you. Young women truly do want to draw from the faith and experience you have.

Having discovered this truth, I’d like to propose that the way to fulfill the purpose of WOM, the way to pass along the rich legacy of faith and mission service you hold, is to engage with younger women on a more one-on-one basis. In the book of Titus, Paul instructs Titus in this way:

You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine. Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance. Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

It’s the concept of mentoring. This concept is one we know is biblical, it’s one we know we all ought to be engaged in. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we’re just not sure how to make it happen. Am I right? I want to stop now and ask you to engage with me again, What are the things that hold us back from being in a mentor relationship – either as a mentor or "mentee?" What are our fears of a mentoring relationship?
• we might not “click” with the first person we try to engage with
• we don’t think we can make the time
• we don’t know what to say to someone so different
• we think they won’t understand us

So let’s try to get beyond these fears and obstacles. I’m going to talk to you older ladies here, giving you some ideas to reach out – mainly because the task of initiating a mentor relationship really does fall to you, as the older, wiser ones. But to my younger friends - as I’m speaking, you can certainly think of ways you could take the initiative and reach out to an older woman for a relationship, too.

Women on Mission, you can be a huge blessing to younger women and younger families! Whether it’s in our church or your neighborhood, there are many young women you can reach out to and build relationships with.

One of the main things I can say is, first of all, to go into this endeavor with the attitude of Christ, like Philippians 2: 1-11 teaches us, in humility, not with the attitude that you have great wisdom and advice you need to bestow upon some young woman. I personally made that mistake in one relationship I had with a younger gal who asked that I be her mentor. I found that most of all she needed someone to listen to her stories - and I had at first been disappointed by our times together, feeling that I had not shared my “vast wisdom” with her. Once I got my attitude in check, our times together became more fulfilling for both of us I think. An attitude of caring for her and loving on her, through the guidance and nudgings of the Holy Spirit, is the best place to start. Then when the time comes for some mentor-ly advice to be shared, you will be known by her as a woman who deeply cares, and it will be received with an open heart.

So here are some ideas of places to start:
Think of some ladies in your path – either at church, in your neighborhood, or even in this room today. Pray for who God may be drawing you to. Maybe this is someone you could put on your concentric circles prayer list that Pastor Ellis is encouraging us to do. Then say hi! Show an interest in her. Let her know you’d love to get to know her better. Offer to pray for her- or pray with her. What a great way to deepen a relationship than to pray with someone. Offer to be an ear if she ever needs to vent about stuff going on in her life. If cooking is your thing, bring the family a meal with the recipe attached. Ask her what her favorite things to cook are, and ask her for her recipe. If sewing is your thing, tell her you’d be happy to do her mending for her. (That would be huge for me!) If gardening is your thing, bring her family some of your vegetables or your flowers. You get the idea. Just reaching out and showing you care about her and her family means that you are being an example of service and love, and you are starting a relationship that she likely has a need for!

Really take an interest in her. Find out what her goals and desires are, her interests, the things that keep her up at night. A chat on the front steps or sidewalk, or in the hall at church, can go a long way. If you want to invite her to coffee or lunch, be aware that if she has kids, she might need to bring them, so meeting at McDonald’s might be the order of the day.

And this one is huge: Although I know it might be the last thing you want to do, offer to watch her kids while she take a run to the grocery store, or has a minute to herself at Starbucks, or has a needed dinner with her husband. Even if she never takes you up on the offer, I promise she’ll always think of you as someone who cares!

If a young woman doesn’t seem to be responding to your efforts to reach out, don’t be discouraged. Your acts of love and kindness won’t return void. Be assured that God is using them, and in God’s timing a relationship with some young woman will be forged and will flourish.

And let’s say missions is your thing, anyone? :) - maybe you could join with a young mom and plan a simple mission project for young moms and their children to do together with some of you. Taking a special interest in the needs of young women when it comes to missions can go a long way. And isn’t serving alongside someone one of the best times to get to know that person? I’d say that would really be a winning combination!

So, ladies, to conclude, I’d like to remind you what we women do best:
We love to talk, to gab, to visit. Right? It’s really as simple as beginning a conversation with someone from a different generation, and our God-given womanly instincts will naturally kick in to form some lasting friendships.

May I pray for us now?

Father, we come to you with open hearts for what you would have us to do to reach beyond generational lines. I pray that the wisdom these older ladies have will be passed along to the younger women in our church and community. I pray that you will move to lead mentors to mentees, that you will draw ladies together naturally, in your timing, in your orchestration. Lord, above all we want Your Name to be made known in all of the world. We know that the heritage of mission praying and mission action in this room must continue through generations to come, for Your Glory. Guide us in the ways to make that happen. Inspire us. Move us. We submit to Your purposes. We pray for new relationships. We thank you for Your infinite love for each of us. It is in Christ’s Name that we pray all of this. Amen.