Wellspring Women’s Ministry Blog and Online Community

Change, change, change. Don’t you just love it when a good plan comes together? I am so excited about the new things that are coming together for Wellspring 2010!

After the 2009 Wellspring Women’s Conference, I realized that God had given us a wonderful gift. We had tried out a number of new things at the conference and they were all successful. Suddenly we had MOMENTUM! Women left the 2009 conference talking about the 2010 conference. On the evaluations, women wrote all over the margins with enthusiastic and creative suggestions for the next year. I got emails and Facebook messages with response after response expressing eager anticipation about next year. We have even had donations for scholarships for the 2010 conference already! Now that’s MOMENTUM!!

Funny thing about momentum: when you realize you have it, it becomes very important what you are going to do with it! As we sought the Lord about what HE had planned for 2010, He made it clear that He had not quite finished CHANGING things yet. Gradually, His plan has come into focus. THIS YEAR WE ARE GOING TO TAKE WELLSPRING TO THE WOMEN instead of asking the women to travel to Wellspring. Instead of inviting women to travel to the mountains, we are going to hold 3 regional Wellspring events in 3 different locations across North Carolina. Here are the dates and venues for these Wellspring Regional Events:

May 21-22 at Kernersville Community Church, Kernersville, NC

August 6-7 at Valley Community Church, Weldon, NC

October 8-9 at Rockfish Church, Raeford, NC

We are doing everything we can to make each regional event affordable while still keeping the Wellspring flavor. The emphasis on worship and teaching will remain constant. Our trained Ministry Team will be present at each event for prayer ministry. Chrissy Davidson will lead worship again and I will be teaching in each session. Heather Cotten will again organize and oversee The Nest on Saturday afternoon with additional attractions added to the activities. The character and personality of Wellspring will be much like you have come to expect, but the location and some of the scheduling will change.

Each event will start on Friday at 7 pm and end on Saturday by 8:30 pm. This time frame will cut down on our expenses and will also allow attendees to be back in their home churches for Sunday services. Holding 3 events instead of 1 and making those 3 events accessible regionally will enable more women to participate. We actually anticipate tripling the number of women we are able to involve this year!

So mark your calendar for the event you plan to attend — or mark your calendar for all three! We are going to have a blast at the WELLSRPING REGIONAL EVENTS in 2010!!

Oh, and the theme for this year’s events is: PRESENCE! Stay tuned for more updates soon.

I wanted to make a conference highlights video from our annual Wellspring Women’s Conference, in case any of you who didn’t go were wondering what it’s all about.  This is just a quick glimpse of the conference, but it includes an awesome 3 minute clip of Gloria speaking, which is always the highlight!!!  I think even those of us who went to the conference will enjoy seeing this again.  I can’t WAIT for next year.  What about you?

Just checking in with everyone… in case you weren’t able to come to the conference this year, I wanted to post a snippet of what’s been going on here at the Wellspring Women’s Conference.  Here’s the link to a little video update…

So we’re having a lot of fun here in Black Mountain, North Carolina.  The weather is gorgeous and there are lots of women here hungry for God and He is here to satisfy us!  Most of the day today is filled with fabulous workshops on different topics, and then tonight we’ll have another meeting with worship followed by Gloria speaking to us more on how to make God famous wherever we are and whatever we’re doing.  We’ll have another update later tonight, assuming technology cooperates with us!

Hey everybody!
I was bored today. And then a package came from UPS. My heart skipped a beat. I knew exactly what was in that big brown box. We had been waiting on it for 10 days, tracking it’s every move.
Joseph and I are overseeing the design/decor of the stage and room for this year’s Wellspring Conference. We are so excited to be doing this because we have a passion for great design, and how color and decor can affect people. So we’ve been having fun dreaming of different ways to express the feeling and theme of this conference through the “look” of the room. Granted, Wellspring is a ministry that already values creativity. I mean, there are people drawing and painting throughout the worship and the rest of the conference. So the room always has lots of color and activity going on. We’re just adding our own bit to it!
Back to the package. Inside of it lies part of our idea for stage design for this year’s conference. And I was so excited to get it that I decided we needed to make a video of it showing the breathtaking moment we opened it up. Can you guess what it is and how it’s going to be used? Go ahead and post your guesses in the comments. Write what it is and how you think it will be used. It’s our rainy day game today (unless it’s not raining where you are)!

View the video here.

Last Sunday Michael and I ministered in a church in Virginia that is undergoing drastic change. It had been founded over 200 years ago as a denominational church, but had gone without a pastor for several years and dwindled down to about 20 members, all of them over 70. Those 20 faithful had prayed about their options: should they take the risk of trying to find a new pastor (and put up the money to pay him!) or should they just give up and shut down the church? They decided to find a new pastor.

What they found was a guy who is an old and dear friend of ours, a man with deep mercy wells inside, sensitive and caring and gentle but also not given to compromise. Our friend is a musician as well as a pastor so he became not only the new pastor but also the worship leader for the small congregation. It has been over 2 years since he moved in with his family and most of the 20 he started his ministry with are still there. Last Sunday the sanctuary, which seats about 75 comfortably, was jam-packed with young people, mostly in their late teens and early 20’s. The music was lively and contemporary and there was dancing in the aisles. The pulpit, altar rail and choir loft were all removed and electric guitars had taken the place of the organ. A digital projector and screen have replaced hymn books and the rest of the altar furniture is scheduled to be removed in order to create more space in the sanctuary because they are growing!

Families with young children have begun to come on Sundays so a children’s church has been started, and one of the men has built a deck on the back of the building to accommodate covered dish dinners. Things are changing! And things are changing QUICKLY! I couldn’t help but wonder how the “old guard” felt about the change — did they still think they had made the right decision?

After church on Sunday there was a covered dish dinner and I got to visit with one of the “old guard.” I asked him how he liked all the changes. He said God had taught him something important. God had reminded him of when his father had died, of how sad he was because he missed his dad, but how happy he was because his father was no longer in pain and was in the presence of the Lord. He was happy and sad at the same time, and that is how he was feeling about his church right now. “I love the old hymns,” he said. “And I miss the old altar rail and the old pulpit and it makes me sad sometimes. But I don’t think I have ever been so excited about what the Lord is doing! I don’t want the old things back; I am so looking forward to seeing what God is going to do with us!”

I fell in love with that old gentleman right then. What love for Jesus and His Church was revealed in his life through his words! As Michael and I drove home, praying for Church on the Rise, I was reminded of Psalm 133:
Behold how good and how pleasant it is
For brothers to dwell together in unity!
It is like the precious oil upon the head,
Coming down upon the beard,
Even Aaron’s beard,
Coming down upon the edge of his robes,
It is like the dew of Hermon
Coming down upon the mountains of Zion;
For there the Lord commanded the blessing — life forever.

Lord, command blessing on this church and cause her to prosper and grow and bring glory and honor to Your name!

Have we mentioned lately that the Wellspring Conference is coming up? I can’t remember if we have said anything about it yet. HA! Don’t worry, we’ll try not to clog the blog up with much more conference details, since we know there might be some of you reading this who are unable to attend and are therefore bored silly with post after post about this conference! In the meantime, have fun reading about one exciting new thing for this year’s conference! Here’s Marion to tell you about it…

We are so excited to introduce a new aspect of the Wellspring Women’s Conference.  We are going to have a social room that we have dubbed “The Nest” that will allow us to have a central gathering place during our free time.  This will allow for different groups to mingle and will give us “night owls” a spot to converse without waking the “early birds”!  We will use the room that we have used for our meetings in the past (we have a new room for that now), so we have lots of space!  We will have tables set up around the room for various activities.  Some ideas we currently have are:


1.  A craft table.  Bring your scrap booking, card making, extra crafty stuff and enjoy setting up and having time to work on your projects that have been sitting on the back burner.

2.  A Card Table.  We will do as many of these as needed depending on what games we have going.

3.  A Board Game Table.

4.  A Manicure Table.

5.  A Color Consultation Table run by Sherry Cox



So…here is what we need from you!!!!


1.  We need other really fun and cool ideas

2.  If you have a service you are good at (massage, pedicures, manicures, etc) then it would be great if you want to share that talent with others (don’t worry we won’t sign you up for the whole time).

3.  CARDS AND BOARD GAMES

4.  Any craft or scrap booking stuff you would like to bring

5.  Cool music

6.  Cameras to capture the fun


Please email Heather Cotten (hmcottenatgmaildotcom) with any ideas or offers of services, games, etc.  

We are really looking forward to this aspect of the retreat.  It will be a great place to further develop relationships with the ladies you come with and the ladies you don’t see often.

A word about food in ‘The Nest’: The rules at Ridgecrest do not allow us to provide group snacks unless we purchase them from their catering department. To keep the costs of the conference down our leadership has decided not to order group snacks this year. However individuals can bring their own snacks and/or purchase them from vending machines and shops on site.”


Looking forward to seeing all of you in October!
Marion
 

Hi all! This years’ Wellspring Women’s Conference is fast approaching! We’re excited and praying . Here are a few prayer requests:

-That all those who would benefit from this conference would hear about it and register.
-That each woman who wants to go would have the finances, faith for finances, childcare arrangements, & a ride there.
-No sicknesses would keep women away.
-That the workshop leaders would have the focus and ability to fine tune their workshops and minister to their families in the process! Please cover them with prayers for health, clarity, inspiration/sensitivity to the Holy Spirit.
-That all volunteer spots for the conference would be filled.
-Protection and health for the guys who are planning to pray for us during the conference.
-That all administrative details would go smoothly.

We welcome all fasters! Some will be fasting every Thursday before the conference. Please join us or choose your own time period for fasting if so led. We want to receive everything the Lord has for us Oct 2-4!

Last week I had an email from an old friend whose name is Mary Buchanan. It was actually God who introduced us. He gave Mary a burden to pray for Michael and me before I had ever met her. More recently we have reconnected via Facebook and it turns out Mary is still praying for me! I can’t tell you how much that blesses me! She will be coming to the Wellspring Conference this year (I can hardly wait to hug her!) and has been praying for everyone connected with it. Do you notice a theme here? Yes, Mary is an intercessor! If you tell Mary about ANYTHING, the first thing she will say is, “Let’s pray about it.” And when Mary prays, she expects to also hear from God. For her, prayer is a two-way street! So God has spoken to her the following instruction for us and I post it here to give you a chance to respond.

I was reading in Judges 6 when an angel came to Gideon at the time the Lord spoke to him to rise up as a man of valor. The angel called Gideon to go into battle. What stood out to me, is that Gideon set up a memorial to the Lord before he ever went into the battle. He set up an altar because he was so blessed that God would send His angel to someone as lowly as himself and call him to do great exploits. God revealed Himself to Gideon as “God is peace” so that is what Gideon named the altar he established.

I am praying for the retreat.  I will be praying for the Lord to have His way and to just give courage to our sisters so that His name and renown would be known!

If you have a testimony that you would like to share as a memorial to the goodness of God in your life, please use the comments space below to tell us what the Lord has done for you.

We keep plugging this conference because we really believe God is going to do something great and we want you to be a part of it!  So, forgive us if this is getting old but we just can not hold ourselves back from talking about Wellspring Conference 2009 because we are so stinkin’ excited about it.

At our family beach trip this summer Joseph and I were able to have a few minutes with Gloria to film her talking about her heart for the conference this year.  It was a great interview; she is so excited about what God has been speaking to her regarding spreading His name and renown in everything that we do and wherever we go.  Part of the interview can be heard on the promo video (which we’ll share with you soon!), and part of it I wanted to share with you today on the blog.  So for a couple more minutes of your time today, why don’t you sit back and get inspired as you hear her talk about what she wants women to come away with from this year’s conference.  Again, you can register for it here.

We have been giving some additional information about workshops that will be offered at this year’s conference. Today we will add a little teaser on two more.

Marion Graham is called by God to pray and to teach others to pray. Come and learn and be inspired to talk to God.

Marion Graham is convinced that God delights in answering the prayers of His people. In fact, she believes that God is glorified when He answers prayers. She believes that God often begins when we are children to lay dreams on our hearts that are attached to His plans for our lives. So often we allow circumstances to cause us to put down our dreams, but God wants to stir some of those dreams up and bring them into the realm of faith.

What did you dream about doing when you were a child? Do you ever dream of doing something mighty today? The Bible is full of stories of fulfilled dreams, stories of men and women who dared to believe that God could do the impossible in their lives. “God is not only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” Marion recently said, “but also the God of Hannah and Ruth and Esther and Sarah.” He has a plan for all of our lives, not just the “bigwigs” but also the “ordinary” people who have learned that they serve an extraordinary God!

Susan has been through a tough year since last year’s conference. There wasn’t a great tragedy or traumatic event— in some ways that would have been easier! — but the Holy Spirit has led her on a journey of rediscovering herself and her calling, a year getting to know God at new levels as she followed Him through a spiritual whirlwind of confusion and doubt from which she has now emerged stronger and more full of faith than ever before.

Out of her struggle, Susan will share with us “God in the Whirlwind: Why Suffering?” Isaiah 61 is her jumping off place as she shares on the faithfulness of our God who insists on giving us “beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning that He might be glorified.”