About Us

In 2015 We Celebrated Our 10 Year Anniversary!

Who Are We and What is Our Purpose?

Martin Luther said, “A simple lay[person] armed with Scripture is greater than the mightiest pope without it.” His thesis #62 says, “The true treasure of the church is the most holy Gospel of the glory and grace of God.” Luther would have loved Women in the Word Workshop!

“Women in the Word: a Workshop” is a ministry of the World Reformed Fellowship that serves the church by helping women study Scripture in a way that is informed, reasoned and reverent – strengthening both those who teach and those who study on their own. It has a two-fold purpose:

Workshop Purpose: The purpose of Women in the Word: a Workshop is to help women who love God’s Word improve their ability to interpret, apply, and present Scripture to others.

Study Group Purpose: To practice the practical steps necessary to make the above happen; to give women a safe place in which to ask, “Am I on the right track?”

The Workshop also produces audio and written resources to further that goal. These can be found under the ‘Resources’ menu selection.

October 13 and 14, 2017 was our twelfth Workshop. Ninety-five participants, from a wide range of ages, represented 35 different churches, 13 denominations, and 2 independent congregations. Since our first Workshop in 2006, women have come from nearly 150 different congregations!

Study Groups, a unique feature of Women in the Word, are practice times — times in which women assume the responsibility of helping each other grasp how wide and long and deep God’s Word is. The required study beforehand is considered part of the Workshop experience. During the Workshop, women give and receive feedback on their understanding of a passage so that the strengths of some in the group become the strengths of all in the group. There were 13 Study Groups this year, led by women who invest 10 hours in training plus huge amounts of time meditating on and working through their book. In 2017 there were Study Groups in Proverbs, Daniel, Exodus, Malachi, Zephaniah, Jonah, James, Titus, John, Hebrews, and Philippians.

Large group teaching sessions are Study Groups on steroids! That is, women get to learn from what good study produces. Our 2017 Bible teacher was Dr. Karen Jobes, the Gerald F. Hawthorne Professor Emerita of New Testament Greek and Exegesis at Wheaton College and Graduate School, and a prolific author. She spoke about “Walking in the Truth: Studies in John’s Letters.” Her first session was entitled, “Genre: What? So What?” Her other three lectures were on walking in the truth about Christ, about sin, about love. You’ll want to listen to the recordings, which can be found under the ‘Past Workshops’ and ‘Resources’ menus.

Here are what two women said about their experience this year:
“When I came to Women in the Word for the first time last year, I did not know what to expect. I received my materials and dutifully studied and prepared beforehand, but I did not get it! My study group leader patiently guided me through the process to understand how to develop a Central Idea. What I found was that being laser-focused on finding what the passage says about the nature of God and His redemptive plan was revolutionary. The concept of finding a Central Idea has opened up a new world for me when I open the Bible to study now because I am looking for God, and He always shows up!”

“When asked at my church’s Bible study this morning to share my experience, I told them how encouraged I am to see so many young women so excited about teaching and dedicated to handling God’s Word with reverence and joy.”

October 12 and 13, 2018 will be our thirteenth year! Kim Monroe, our plenary Bible teacher, will be speaking on “The Good News about God’s Judgment.” Kim is a seminary graduate, a long-term Study Group Leader at Women in the Word, and an editor of the Journal of Biblical Counseling.

The Workshop – by its very format — proclaims that the Word is worth our work and the Author is worthy of our worship!

How did Women in the Word: a Workshop come to be?!

Its roots rest in the reason-for-being of something called the EMA (the Evangelical Ministry Assembly) based in the United Kingdom. An Anglican minister in London, Dick Lucas — then Rector of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate — organized the first EMA conference with “the aim of examining and learning what particular Bible texts actually say.” Now, this event is attended by about 1000 delegates, with speakers like Keller, Ferguson, and Piper.

Out of the EMA assemblies emerged Proclamation Trust [1986], which began a “Women in Ministry” conference for paid church staff women. In the early 2000’s, over several years, a dozen American women participated in this UK conference. In 2006, some of these women worked together to offer the first American version of the British conference. Sixty women from across the USA attended that first year. In 2016, at our eleventh Workshop, over one hundred women participated!

Women in the Word is committed to helping women learn to “correctly handle the word of truth” (2Tim. 2:15) so that God’s Word can bring joy, understanding, and revival to their hearts, and to others. The preparation that is required of participants before the Workshop is actually part of the whole Workshop experience! In 2010, aiming to help not only women Bible teachers but also those who “just want to be better Bible students,” the Workshop provided Study Groups in both a Teacher Track and a Personal Study Track format.

In March of 2008, Women in the Word: a Workshop became a ministry of the World Reformed Fellowship. This new oversight created the potential for training women from a wide variety of evangelical Reformed denominations, not only in the United States and Canada, but from further abroad.

The Word is Worth the Work!

The WRF is grateful to Calvary Presbyterian Church in Willow Grove, PA for the use of their facilities and the involvement of their congregants.

WiW:

The words of “Speak, O Lord,” a hymn by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend, have become the theme song for the Workshop, and it is our ongoing prayer for this WRF ministry:

Speak, O Lord, as we come to You to receive the food of Your Holy Word. Take Your truth, plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in Your likeness, that the light of Christ might be seen today in our acts of love and our deeds of faith. Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us all Your purposes for Your glory.