Sabrina called me, excited about all the changes happening in her church’s women’s ministry. She had just one complaint…a group of older women weren’t being supportive, and they were sharing their lack of support with others. After some questions, she shared that the conflict seemed to revolve around the older women’s “Tissue Corsage Ministry.” For years, this group of women had met together on a weekly basis to create corsages out of tissues and deliver them to a local nursing home to pin on residents. The group of women wanted to continue the Tissue Corsage Ministry, but Sabrina and her team had no passion for the ministry and didn’t want it to pull away from their new ideas.
I asked, “Are the nursing home residents being ministered to?”
“I suppose.”
“Is the group of older women serving together in a significant way?”
“Well, I guess.”
Based on Sabrina’s responses, I challenged her to reconsider the significance of this ministry and the pros and cons of eliminating it. Regardless of what the final decision was, I challenged her to find a way to honor the women who had served for many years. And I asked her to give me an update.
Several months later, Sabrina called again to share that they decided to honor the group of women publicly at a women’s day, which had been on the calendar since before the leadership transition, and they knew most of the women in the church would attend. Without sharing their plans, the new leadership team came forward, and Sabrina began to tell a story of a small group of women who decided to sacrifice their time to impact other women’s lives. As she shared an estimated number of women impacted over the years by the simple act of creating and delivering tissue paper corsages, women involved in the ministry recognized the story. They were called forward, acknowledged by name and each presented with a silk corsage with a ribbon of appreciation attached.
The new leadership team prayed over the Tissue Corsage Ministry women, blessing them and their efforts, past and future. They validated this group of women that felt brushed aside. And through the respect they extended, they were repaid with respect. While the older group of women didn’t attend all the new women’s ministry events and offerings, they became supportive of the women in leadership.
Honor the history that’s gone before and prepared the way. Honoring the history is important in ministry, and it’s important in mentoring. It’s important in any situation in which people are involved, because we all have history that has brought us to today. We need to trust God with our history. Without glimpses into where we’ve been, we don’t know where we are. God has absolutely no intention of keeping us in our past, just as he doesn’t leave us in our present. He meets us where we are in order to take us to where we need to be. We need to do the same thing with those around us. However, we sometimes want to go where he wants us to go without acknowledging where we’ve been or where we are. He will never lead us in unhealthy ways, but he will certainly lead in uncomfortable ways. He requires our humility.
Are you committed to God enough to honor history in the timing and way he leads, not the way you prefer?
After all the people had finished crossing the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, “Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe. Tell them to get twelve rocks from the middle of the river, from where the priests stood. Carry the rocks and put them down where you stay tonight.”So Joshua chose one man from each tribe. Then he called the twelve men together and said to them, “Go out into the river where the Ark of the Lord your God is. Each of you bring back one rock, one for each tribe of Israel, and carry it on your shoulder. They will be a sign among you. In the future your children will ask you, ‘What do these rocks mean?’ Tell them the water stopped flowing in the Jordan when the Ark of the Agreement with the Lord crossed the river. These rocks will always remind the Israelites of this.” (Joshua 4:1-7)