About a year ago, a group of female students at Presbyterian College, Montreal were discussing how we managed our lives outside of school. We shared our experiences of answering God's call by meeting the demands of student life while also being wife or mother, single woman or friend, and in many cases, living far away from home in order to do so. We laughed and groaned as we swapped stories. Yet as we witnessed a new sense of solidarity emerging, we learned that we were not alone.
So when we heard about the Women in Ministry Committee's plans to hold a retreat on Church Leader Health, we immediately wanted to be involved. The Heart, Mind & Soul Conference and Retreat at Presbyterian College (May 27-30, 2008) will provide, as one of my fellow organizers Katherine Burgess said, “vital importance of time away, of time with like-minded people, of re-creation and recreation.” Another organizer, Barbara Duguid, likewise insisted, “Like Mary, I need to depart and be with Elizabeth for a while. Like Jesus, I need to step aside and make time to commune with God.”
Marion Taylor, Old Testament professor at Wycliffe College, recently spoke at our college. She insisted that “our foremothers of faith” interpreted scripture differently than did men because their experiences differed. Taylor encouraged the women and men in the audience to look to these role models to understand what these women wrestled with and what they learned. She further explained that “women look to women for learning.”
The new circumstances of ministry in the 21st century require us to respond creatively and to pool our resources not only to survive, but to flourish. If you are a woman in a leadership position within the Presbyterian Church, we invite you to join us in benefiting from the deep reservoir of wisdom, knowledge and experience found in our contemporary church, with the hopes that our time together will lead to deeper Christian strength of the heart, mind, and soul.
