In many ways, our world has become smaller and larger all at the same time. It appears smaller to us because of global transport and digital technology. Today, one can at least feel as if they can reach out and touch the world, if not literally doing so. However, the world has become larger in the sense that the choices that our children now have before them can seem infinite. They no longer need to remain within the cultural boundaries of generations past. Our children can now choose to travel the world for educational purposes; job opportunities; or just for that newly defined term called “wanderlust!”
Over the past 14 years, our thoughts about Ladies Ministries within the international church setting have blossomed & transformed. We have gone from a time of weekly bible studies where community was found within the church walls, to now experiencing that international ladies ministries needs to flood over those walls and become life-on-life with one other.
As women come to Montpellier from every corner of the globe and for all types of reasons, we have the opportunity to provide a welcoming home and a fertile ground for the gospel to be rooted and lived out in the ladies’ lives. Ladies Ministries at the International Chapel begins firmly with solid bible teaching and counsel. But building on that input of our knowledge about God, we have found that international ladies ministries' is a dynamic test tube to communicate that in fact, we serve a living, faithful and watchful God. Most of the women have left family and friends to live in Montpellier for a set period of time. They have set aside culture and comfortability and therefore, sometimes can struggle (like most women around the world) with one’s understanding of God and His love for them personally. So ladies ministries revolves around not only biblical knowledge about our God, but daily life-on-life experiences and conversations that help to “flesh out” that reality.
In 2018, Montpellier was awarded the #2 Incubator City of the World for Business Innovation and we feel that in some way our small group of ladies has its own incubator element. Women are able, in a loving environment, to wrestle with the truths of the Gospel as they hear the Word of God taught and as they are able to see with their own eyes what the Word says. But then as they encounter spiritual conversations or the unexpected hardships that expat living provides, it is at that moment that “spiritual roots” are able to go down deep into the soil of God’s marvelous love and our prayer is that they “may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that [they] may be filled with all the fullness of God.“ (Eph.3:18-19) … With the end result that Christ would be glorified in the church and to the ends of the earth!