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Pastor Tim Young’s wife, in the ministry for over 30 years and has a deep concern for the next generation church if older women do not heed God’s call to minister/teach/counsel/mentor other women.  She gladly shared the following truths.

Reasons why women do not mentor---minister to older women:

• We no longer have strong generational ties. Families often live miles apart and other women need to fill the gap.
• So many women have older parents who live in nursing homes and have lost the value of aging.
• Women are tooooo busy with perhaps good things...but not the BEST things.
• Vanity--Women lost their perspective n aging---we try to keep young and if invested ourselves in younger women than ourselves we would be ever conscious of our age.
• There are very few examples of mentoring among women, so it is almost a lost art form.
• Younger women have not been taught to respect the aged women of the church and won’t listen.
• Women often don’t feel qualified to mentor and need to be encouraged.  Remember we don’t mentor alone---it is a partnership with God.
• Older women often think that they deserve a break when their nests become empty.  Chapter and verse please?
• Sharing our lives makes us vulnerable.  Sharing our failure, sins, struggles, is never easy.
• There is a risk to pointing people to the truth.

Older women are commanded to pass on to the younger the knowledge that they have gained.  (Remember that the word "older" does not always have to do with our age in years.  It also denotes our maturity in the Lord and our years we have been saved.)

 What are the advantages for an older woman to "pass" on her knowledge?

• Replaces the loneliness of the older years.
• It gives a deep abiding satisfaction that only comes from helping others.
• It helps us to recapture memories of the past and the lessons that life has taught us.  We can "give" our life away this way:

----all you have learned

---all you have gained in the Lord

---all you have lost---broken dreams, grief, friends,

---all the pain you have experienced

---all the joys you have known

---all the love you have for the Lord!!!

---all you have survived...with joy!!!

• Helps to make the next generation strong, faithful, determined, persevering!!!
• Brings you a quality of life you never dreamed possible.
• Energizes your battery

Mentoring other does not mean we have to spend a lot of time with others.  Sometimes it is a simple as being a loving, Godly, caring example.  Spirituality is sometimes better "caught" than taught.  Younger women need to see it lived out.

Us "older" women need to ask ourselves:  What am I doing today that will impact the next generation of women for Jesus Christ? "

Women are called to ministry work.  And the ministry work outlined in 3 verses in Titus 2 is comprehensive in scope.  There is no reason for a women to want to be ordained to be a VIP in the church.  Titus 2 calls her to change lives, build marriages , help raise godly children of so many families, encourage and strengthen women to be all that God wants them to be....thereby building churches for today and for the future.

She’s Waiting
Titus 2:3

There’s a younger woman needing
Some time from your fast-wound clock.
There’s a younger woman hoping
For some help from your well-worn Book.

She needs what you have gleaned
From that grain on the rocky path.
She needs the oil that someone poured
When you feared instead their wrath.

She has a hurt that has left her
With a wound as big as life,
And a question you could answer
If you’d only be "midwife."

Perhaps someone has wronged her
And she knows she’s to forgive
But no one’s ever taught her how
So she waits --- to guilt captive.

Or perhaps someone abused her
And violated trust,
And she wonders if our God likes that
Or if He really is so just.

She’s waiting by a well
That could heal her thirsty soul,
But if you don’t draw and give to her
She may never be made whole.

--For Sharon Merhalski
And The Titus 2 ministries
www.titus2menandwomen.org

--By David M. Atkinson
March 30, 2002

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