We arrived in time for a PM check-in and an evening dinner. Our nametags told us where we lived (Williamson Lodge) where our connecting groups met and the workshops in which we would participate. We were met in the parking lot by the Executive Director with our arm bracelets for our meals.

This writer’s workshops included Presidents’ Officer Training, Spiritual Journaling, Prayer Walking and Conference Choir.

Bible study was excellent and the music great. Devotions were in the gazebo. The AB Girls entertained us one evening and Kristy Engel, missionary to Dominican Republic spoke on another.  A big celebration followed the announcement that over $402,000 had been received to date for Breaking the Chains Ministries.

We headed home after breakfast on Saturday.  Next year’s conference is at the Ramada Conference Center in Columbus, OH.  I hope Amtrak goes there as I don’t think we will drive that far.

Submitted by Karen Haver.

One of the best resources available would probably be the 2007 resource book called “To Know, To Care, To Pray, To Give: New Ideas for Love Gift” available from Judson for $9. Here is the Love Gift distribution chart.

A delightfully-stated history of Love Gift is available here.

Click here for additional Love Gift information.

Please keep Love Gift on the minds of your church!

Dues: Regional dues have been changed to $1 per woman of your church and they should be sent to your regional treasurer by June 30^th before conference takes place in July.  Area dues should be sent to your Area Treasurer.

National Support: These unrestricted contributions keep AB Women’s Ministries going.  It pays salaries, rent, buys supplies, pays postage, travel, (including region presidents to annual board meeting) and all the other expenses that keep a national organization like ours going.  In short, National Support funds the mission of American Baptist Women’s Ministries.

Mission (refit): AB Women’s Ministries passes along your mission (refit) contributions through International Ministries to “refit” missionaries who are returning to the mission field after their home assignment year and “refit” new missionaries getting situated overseas.  Mission (refit) money is also given through National Ministries to new church planters here in the United States to help them as they start a new church.

Student aid: AB Women’s Ministries give scholarships yearly to any female or male that is a member of an American Baptist Church.

Region project: Each year AB Women’s Ministries selects a project to support.  This year’s project is schooling for Missionary kids in the amount of $4000.  AB Women’s Ministries have some other funds like Vital Partners that can give National Support on a regular basis.  Some pay monthly, quarterly and annually.  Check into it.  There is also an endowment Fund for AB Women’s Ministries.

Don’t forget that Love Gift and it is necessary that each church send it to the Regional Office not to the Region treasurer.  The Love Gift is to raise extra funds to strengthen American Baptist mission work.

White Cross is a program of International Ministries and National Ministries that appeals to AB Women’s groups.  We hope every church receives and completes White Cross requests for needed supplies and monies for mission sites in this country and around the world.

Most circles we move in hurl us toward the center with centripetal force rather than out and away with centrifugal force. It’s the nature of our circles that we’re driven toward each other, not away. Family circles thrive on coming closer and closer together – the inner circle. But what happens if a church does the “love one another” thing so well that the “love others” suffers? What if the centripetal bond of fellowship is so strong that we never move outside ourselves? What if the tie that binds has us wound up so tight we can’t move? Then what?

Then we miss the opportunities to open the circle to others. Then we may not see what’s going on outside the circle. We may not go there. We can become a club…St. Centripetal’s Church of the Inner Circle. Oh, I know, we’re not there. Yet sometimes we say things that are disturbingly self-focused.

We can spend most of our time taking care of each other, making strong churches stronger, and sounding like religious consumers: “What’s in it for me?” We can spend so much time with each other in circles at worship, meetings, and groups that we never get to serve a stranger outside our circle.

I have been haunted by Jesus’ story of some pretty good church people ignoring an injured man on the road. So I’ve been thinking about what it means to be church outside our walls. I’ve noticed that we spend so much time inside the church circle that we have hardly any time left to serve God out in the community. That means we’ll have to alter our schedules. It means we need to make room to be the church where we live, not just inside our church circle. We’ll have to make choices with a heart for people outside our circle. The past three years has been a growing time…teaching me to look for ways to minister to the community “outside” the circle.

So, go ahead, get in a circle and hold hands but maybe from time to time we need to change how we stand, looking outside the circle instead of focusing on what’s inside the circle.