This month, I'm posting resources that encourage us in the role as mothers within the body, in older women/younger women relationships. I asked Christi Gac, former coordinator of our mentoring program, if she had any favorite resources. She led me to a book called Word-Filled Women's Ministry, highlighting a chapter by Susan Hunt and Kristi Anyabwile on taking Titus 2 seriously. I will provide the links for the book and how you can borrow from the library via Hoopla below, but for today's resource I wanted to provide these Open Letters created by Crossway as an article adapted from that book.
Both letters address the idea of relationship between older and younger women as outlined in Titus 2, especially verses 3-5:
Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
An Open Letter to the Younger Women of the Church
Susan Hunt, former women's ministry director of the Presbyterian Church of America, shares her journey including her delayed response to Titus 2 and her wish that she'd taken opportunity to learn from older women in her church earlier. She shares how her vision for Titus 2 was initially small, just simply matching older and younger women in specific mentoring relationships in formal mentoring ministry. While this can be a great place for relationships to begin, she looks at what older women can and should teach younger women and even in places where older women might be less interested in formal leadership or mentoring relationships, how even then we can find ways to learn from them in serving together or asking questions. Susan also encourages that older women seek to be both a combination of life experience and spiritual maturity. While you might not fit clearly into the category of older woman, she explains that we are often both the younger and older woman, so while seeking teaching from older women, also seek out ways to encourage those younger (and you can grow and learn while you also minister).
An Open Letter to the Older Women of the Church
Kristi Anyabwile, pastor's wife and Bible teacher, shares her experience seeking out an older woman to serve as her mentor and how the first two women she asked to mentor her told her "no". Kristi shares how those experiences led her to always be willing to mentor younger women whenever asked, even if it was once a month or just mentoring through a specific season. Often women have a hard time acknowledging their role as older women or are scared to know how to teach in these mentoring type relationships. Kristi shares these words about her own experience as a reminder how the Lord provides and teaches even older women in these specific discipling relationships:
"Through my own limited experience in mentoring ladies younger than me, the Lord has taught me many valuable lessons I may not have learned outside of those relationships. Sometimes I can feel quite inadequate in my attempts to minister to them. The Lord reminds me that I am indeed inadequate! He emboldens me to allow younger women to see not only my trials and sins but also how I respond as God brings me through them. It is through this kind of vulnerability that I learn to make my life an open book to the women I disciple. I learn to trust in God’s good purposes for my own struggles and to receive his comfort for myself so I can in turn comfort others"
These letters are adapted from a longer book called Word-Filled Women's Ministry. Susan Hunt and Kristi Anyabwile wrote chapter 7. Find the book here or borrow the audio version on Hoopla from your local library.
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