Blog Conference on Women in Ministry

Dave has written to let our readers know that over at the Ryde Presbyterian Church site a blog conference on women in ministry has started. The first post, by Peter Barnes (part time lecturer at the PTC) is up.
Future contributors include John McClean and a couple of past PTC students.

Flourish - women's ministry conference

It has been very quite on the PTC blog since we've been busy finishing up the the year and then been on leave. In fact I'm embarrassed to see that the last post was almost 2 months ago!

As the new academic year starts comes closer I hope we will get a bit more active.

I'd like to point you to the website for Flourish, a national conference on women's ministry for the Presbyterian Church of Australia. I am on the committee and I think it will be a great conference. Too often in the last 20 years women's ministry has been a topic of controversy in the PCA. We hope this conference will encourage women to be active in their lives to serve the Lord, and help churches find ways of helping women flourish.

There is also a facebook group.

Ministry Training for Women Launch

On Friday night we launched our new Ministry Training for Women program. It was a great night and the Knox Room was full with about 80 people from a lot of different churches. People obviously think that MTW will meet a need for flexible, ministry focussed training. MTW  will integrate with any of your awards so we're encouraging women to supplement the MTW material with Biblical and Theological subjects as well as other ministry units. Some women will find that MTW is enough at present and take it as a stand alone. Here is a picture of the crowd enjoying supper and of Carmelina interviewing Fiona Wright.

Ministry Training for Women

We have an exciting new development at PTC next year. We are starting a training strand for women, with the creative title Ministry Training for Women (MTW). The idea is that often theological training is designed by men and for men, so here is a strand which is designed for women. Carmelina Read, our Dean of Women, has had a large role in getting this started and we have recruited an advisory board of fine spiritually mature women who will help us shape things. They meet tonight for the first time to cast their eye over the plans.

MTW will mesh in with any study program a woman wants to pursue, from a certificate to an MDiv (or even an MA). It will focus on developing insight and skills for church and evangelistic, teaching and pastoral service; and will be a 'safe' place for women to think and learn about issues which affect how they experience church life. It is not primarily for 'vocational' ministry, but will be part of the training for women who want preparation for that (including our deaconess candidates). As well as lectures and seminars over four years, we will also provide or support mentoring and field education. Students will also be able to work on a project relevant to women's ministry.

MTW has received a fair bit of interest and we are having a launch on Friday 15th August at PTC. Anyone interested is welcome to join us. Let us know if you're coming (so we have enough desert and coffee!). There was an article in the August edition of the Pulse (the magazine of PCNSW) with more details.