Learning to embrace the gaps in our lives and how to use them for God’s glory was the focus of this year’s Priority Women’s Conference.
Having outgrown its recent venue in Decatur, Priority moved to the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Springfield, where more than 700 Illinois Baptist women gathered April 26-27 for leadership training, worship, and fellowship.
Carmen Halsey, IBSA’s director of women’s ministry and church missions, explained how the “gap” theme materialized after a mission trip in London. Passengers on the city’s underground rail system are warned to “mind the gap” between the platform and the subway car.
After returning home, she kept thinking about those words, “mind the gap,” and how they relate to leadership. The leadership gap is the space between what you know and what you don’t, Halsey said. Minding the gap means acknowledging your dependence on God’s power to be able to lead well.
Each speaker at Priority carried the theme into their messages, sharing how God worked in and through gaps in their lives. Tami Heim, president and CEO of Christian Leadership Alliance and former head of the Borders Bookstore Corporation, said many of her corporate coworkers viewed her as strange because of her faith. Her gap was a crisis of faith.
“God told me, be what they (her co-workers) don’t expect,” Heim said. “Don’t take the baggage that they expect. Love me and love them.”
Later, as president of Borders Books, she would lead employees through another gap—the decline of their business. Then, her mother went into hospice care.
Heim kept looking to God and he told her to embrace the change. Soon everything was turned around at Borders, and then God told her it was time to leave. “Whatever gap we may be in, whatever we’re feeling, embrace that,” Heim said. “See him in that, embrace it. Believe he is who he says he is—the God who is able.”
Suffering for his glory
Bible teacher Courtney Veasey, founder of Brunch Ministries, took attendees through Matthew 5, the Sermon on the Mount, reminding them about the “otherness” to which Christians are called.
Veasey likened it to finding the right road. “You have found the right road when you mourn because you had something so blessed to lose,” she said. “You have found the right road when you are trainable, when you are disciplined.”
It’s never easy to stay on the road, Veasey said. “Blessed, you have found the right road when you are pure in heart. But you have to fight to [keep pure in heart].”
Betsy Bolick, founder and director of Small Enough Ministries, shared about being born with physical disabilities and her experience in the gap. “What will matter is that he is King, and I will suffer for his glory,” Bolick said.
“The things that are seen are temporary. The things that are unseen are eternal. He is the God of the gaps. He just calls you to embrace them.”
Conference attenders also received several updates about women’s ministry and missions in Illinois, including:
• Missy Doyle of Chatham Baptist Church was named president of Illinois WMU. She replaces Jill McNicol, a member of First Baptist Church, Patoka, who served five years as president.
• The conference featured panel discussions on special needs ministries and the future of women in the Southern Baptist Convention.
• IBW (Illinois Baptist Women) University will now be known as IBW Academy. The online learning community will meet in Springfield once a quarter. For more information about IBW Academy and cohorts, go to IBSA.org/Women.
At the close of the Friday evening session, Halsey shared about the recent sudden death of her husband, Keith. The two had discussed her plans for the conference and ministry beyond it. “That man that loved me and protected me for 34 ½ years would want me to go on,” Halsey said with emotion. “The job is not finished.”
Halsey shared how she and Keith had gone to see the pro-life movie “Unplanned” and how the movie had inspired her to issue a challenge to them. Next to her on the platform stood a large wooden cross, bare except for some greenery.
“You’ve all been given a carnation when you came into this room,” Halsey said. “Many of you have given your life to Christ, but some of you all have never left the cross. If you have had some sort of sexual mishap in your past but you’ve kept it nice and hidden, you’re holding back from what God paid for. Do you trust God or don’t you?”
Women poured into the aisles, lining up to give their carnations to waiting attendants who placed them on the cross. Soon it was covered with carnations representing sins, hurts, pains, and traumas that had been left behind.
“It’s time for us to do some healing,” Halsey said. “I’m in a season of healing again. We have some business to do. Girls, it’s about being obedient to what God’s calling us to do.”