November/December 2011 MOPSGuide.org

Boldly Use Your Gifts 3

Boundaries & Leadership Relationships 4

Faith Story 6

Loneliness & Leadership 7

plus Practical Pointers Throughout

Plan together. Finalize details for a special Christmas meet-ing that includes an opportunity for moms to hear the message of Jesus and why he came.

Serve together. Participate in Operation Christmas Child and pack and collect shoeboxes as a group. Go to MOPS.org/occ for information. Involving the whole family provides a great teaching tool for young children.

Participate together. Extend personal invitations to moms to participate in special Christmas activities at your church.

Show appreciation together. Honor your MOPPETS workers.

Celebrate together! Thank God for everything he accomplished through your MOPS group this semester.

Pray together. Ask God to open your eyes for future leadership. Notice and mentor moms who are available to step up.

Begin together. Register new moms for membership so they begin to receive the full benefit of being part of MOPS.

Invest together. Value relationships and strong marriages. Plan MOPS & POPS event. Plan for the future of your group by planning a spring fund raiser.

Influence together. Meet with your Chartering Ministry to select a date for a MOPSunday to raise MOPS awareness.

Work together. Share accomplish-ments with Chartering Ministry so they can share in your praises and also know how to pray for you.

Gifted to Do Certain Things Well Have you ever given your child a gift that completely captivated his or her attention? My daughter was just 2 years old when we gifted her with a play kitchen, complete with dishes and pretend groceries. She explored every nook and cranny, from the faucet knobs to the microwave buttons. She steeped tea for all her stuffed friends and made cookies for daddy. Once she even organized all my forks, spoons and knives in her tiny silverware drawer. Not one iota of that little kitchen went unused, giving my daughter, her friends (imaginary and real), and later her younger siblings, hours and hours of fun.

God also has given each of us unique spiritual gifts that he wants us to use to help other people. God doesn’t want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible. (2 Timothy 1:7 MSG)

Shy. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, shy means nervous, timid, unwilling or reluctant, to avoid something through nervousness or lack of confidence.

Imagine what it would have been like if my daughter had been reluctant to use her little kitchen. What if she’d been nervous that the drawers would smash her fingers or worried her daddy would make fun of her plastic cookies? Suppose she timidly left her kitchen in the corner to gather dust? It makes me sad to even consider the loss.

I’ve thought about that fully utilized gift of a play kitchen when considering the gifts I’ve been given by God. How about you? What loss would the moms in your group experience if you are shy about

Read more about spiritual gifts in the follow-ing scriptures:

Romans 12:6-81 Corinthians 12Ephesians 4:1-16

leadership view

using God’s gifts? What loss would the moms in your group experience if the Coordinator was reluctant to use her gift of leadership, the MOPS Mentor unwilling to use her gift of wise counsel? If one or more of the Discussion Group Leaders were shy in using the gift of understanding?

According to 1 Corinthians 12:7 (NLT), “A spiritual gift is given to each of us so we can help each other.” Paul goes even further in Romans 12:6-8 (NLT) where we read, “In his grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you the ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you. If your gift is serving others, serve them well. If you are a teacher, teach well. If your gift is to encour-age others, be encouraging. If it is giving, give generously. If God has given you leader-ship ability, take the responsibility seriously. And if you have a gift for showing kindness to others, do it gladly.”

Clearly, God doesn’t want us to be shy with his gifts; we’re to use them to help others, to share God’s love with other moms — regularly, generously, responsibly, gladly!

What gifts has God given you? Maybe you have the gift of encourage-

ment or hospitality. Perhaps God’s given you the gift of organization or teaching. Your gift may be clear understanding — you can quickly get to the heart of any situation. Some of you have the gift of healing and some of helping. If you’re unsure what your gifts are, consider asking your pastor if the church offers a class on spiritual gifts or take the spiritual gifts assessment at gifttest.org.

Are you using your gifts reliably?If you lack confidence to use your gifts,

you’re not alone. We all have times when we feel inadequate, uncertain, afraid, even shy. That’s why Paul is writing to Timothy, to remind him — and us — that only through the power of God’s Spirit can we reliably use God’s gifts to do God’s work well.

God doesn’t want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible. l

: equipping You for MOPS Leadership

Welcome to the new version of Connections magazine incorporated into MomSense magazine.

equIP YOuR teaM. Ensure all members of your leader-ship team are registered and set up as a “Group Leader” in group management to have access to the MOPS Guide, and to receive Connections and Leader’s Online e-newsletters. Go to:

MOPSGuide.org/groupmanagement

LeaRn tOGetheR: WedneSdaY WeBInaRS. View the Next Level Leadership webinars offered on the third Wednesday of every month. Make plans to participate in the webinars as a team! Past webi-nars are available for viewing at your convenience. Go to:

MOPSGuide.org/webtraining

aCtIOn IteMSto build relationships

nOv

deC

Jan

by Shelly Radic, Interim CEOMOPS International

WaYS tO uSe MOMSenSe

h Dr. Leman’s article, “It’s a Kid, not a Gerbil,” would make a great panel discussion on ideas for moms to create family time and decide about activities.

h Use Tricia Goyer’s article, “The Steps of a Good Mom,” to prompt interesting Discussion Group time around the topic of schedules versus flex-ibility in mothering.

Members of MOPS leadership teams, including MOPS Mentors, receive this integrated version of MomSense and Connections. Meanwhile, MOPS moms who are not in leadership get the traditional version of MomSense.

In each issue of Connections you’ll find:

• Practical ways to implement MOPS in your local group.• Spiritual deepening for your leadership team.• Leadership principles you can live out on your team.• Inspiration for reaching more moms.

Plus we’ll explore a relevant leadership topic in every issue. In this issue of Connections we are looking at transformative relationships,

as leaders and as moms moving toward Jesus. Read MomSense and Connections together, and gain new ideas about how to take information from MomSense and use it for discussion and content in your MOPS meetings (see sidebar).

Connections is just one part of the whole suite of leadership resources available through MOPS International. These resources include the Leader’s Library dvd (that your group received with your

renewal or Charter), Leaders Online e-newsletters and the MOPS Guide website (MOPSGuide.org). This year we are adding monthly webinars on important leadership topics. See information below.

Along with the transitions in the magazine, Beth Vogt is no longer editing Connections. We greatly value Beth’s expertise, skill and ministry perspective as she guided Connections over the past four years. Beth continues to work on various MOPS projects, including writing for the MOMSnext e-zine and as a consulting editor for MomSense.

We welcome your feedback and ideas; email us at Connections@MOPS.org.

Mic

hael

Bla

nn/l

ifes

ize/

thin

ksto

ck

cover © coMstock/Getty iMaGes + istockphoto/thinkstock icons © vallentin vassileff / istockphoto

by Carla Foote, Executive Editor

2 November/December2011 November/December2011 3

Teammate or BFF? Defining Your Leadership Circleto Keep Relationships in Perspective

by tracey d. Bianchi, a freelance writer and speaker who serves as the Pastor for Women at Christ Church of Oak Brook in Illinois. A mother of three preschool age children, she and her husband make their home in the Chicago suburbs. traceybianchi.com

1 Len Schlesinger, Willow Creek Leadership Summit August 11, 2011

Mindy’s face betrayed a blend of disappointment and frustration. After three years of leading together, my decision to hold back the intimate details of a recent loss wounded and confused her. I scrambled for a word of comfort that would be honest.

Her strong emotion ambushed me. I never considered sharing my grief with Mindy. I valued

her — but she was a colleague, a teammate, not my deepest friend. Sure, we giggled and sucked down gallons of coffee together, but that was during planning sessions. While I felt clumsy in my unexpected interaction with Mindy, her emotion also was familiar because I had been in her position on other occasions. Longing for connection when I was invited to a task. Hoping for deeper friendship when the goal was completing a project. As women, navigating relationships in leadership is a complex journey.

The Lure of Leadership Leaders guide and shepherd others toward a common goal that may or may not include intimate friendships. We want to be gracious and welcoming, and we want to represent the warmth of God. But is the goal of leadership to become the best of friends with our whole MOPS group?

Many moms volunteer to lead with us because of the vision we cast to encourage, equip and develop moms. Others imagine camaraderie and friend-ship. Great teams have fun together, they know about life in between the meetings, they care. So how do we navigate the expectations of someone like Mindy? How many people can we celebrate life with and delve deep with? Jesus limited himself to twelve, with an inner circle of three. We need to set limits. Here are a few key questions for providing honesty, integrity and friend-ship for your teams.

Key questions:1. What am I offering? Are you invit-ing people to forge a connection or join a cause? Both are appropriate but, “Join us, we have a great vision and need your expertise” sounds dramatically different than, “Join our team, we have fun to-gether and you will meet people.” Both may be true, but how you extend that invitation sets the expectation.2. What are we celebrating? Is your leadership circle a place to swap the gritty details of life or stick to “business”? How much time is spent cheering on a newly adopted child or 35th birthday versus tasks and deadlines? Both are needed. Every team lands somewhere on this spectrum, so be clear about where you plan to position your team.3. how vulnerable am I? Define the level of intimacy you expect from your team. Honesty about our own faults and failures is essential, but what personal information do you share? The level at which you share marital struggles or family issues will be the level to which your team will feel led to share. The more you share, the more they experience a friendship with you, so choose a wise boundary.

Harvard Business Professor Len Schlesinger researched the relationships behind successful entrepreneurial endeavors. He

noted that in half of successful partnerships, a concept drew people together around that common goal. The idea was the catalyst. The other half found their spark from simply being together. “We have fun with one another, now what project can we do together?”1

Both expressions are valid and exciting. Both accomplish goals. Your ability to be clear about the invitation will help offer honest relationships to someone like Mindy. To pull her into the fold or simply join and celebrate with her in the process. l

“Why didn’t I know about this? I thought we were close friends?!”

Leadership Relationships Lived Out

Relationships that heal and connectPaula Brunswick, Area Developer, Arizona and New Mexico

New in town, with three children under 4 and a frequently absent husband, Lisa came to MOPS looking for friends to heal her loneliness. Overwhelmed by the demands of mothering and bitter about the move, she quickly shut down other moms with forceful negativity. We knew we had to mobilize quickly or we were going to lose not only Lisa, but also the entire Discussion Group! We believed God had given us a special opportunity to love this lonely woman through this season. We prayed daily God would soften her heart and give us courage to love her through the “prickles.” One leader, who lived near Lisa, led the way in building a deeper friendship with her by inviting small groups over for impromptu coffees. Lisa eventually moved, but we saw her negativity melt away as her emotional, spiritual and practical needs were met by women who learned to love the beautiful woman underneath. Our leadership team also grew closer as we met challenges and reached out to the moms in our group.

Building team relationshipsNichole Bethel, Area Developer, New Jersey, New York, Delaware

Recently I took on responsibility for a new Field Leadership team. When I prayed for God’s wisdom and guidance on how to lead, he directed me to have each member focus on the MOPS ministry purpose. By doing this, I discovered the common ministry goals and values for my team members. We met regularly via a web room and supported each other’s endeavors. For our team retreat, I assigned everyone a responsibility specific to their giftedness to foster the team’s individual talents.

Praying for one another has deepened our team’s relationship. We are facing various personal and/or ministry challenges, yet everyone’s continued dedication to serve is inspiring.

We are a diverse blend of women God has joined together: writers, talkers, deep thinkers, movers, shakers and doers. We could easily clash, but the intentional time invested in developing our relationships allows us to embrace our uniqueness and enhances our ability to serve together.

Psalm 133:1 says, “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!” I believe our team illustrates this verse, and I am thankful for that.

Finding love and leadership through a teamHolly Rowlette, Area Developer, Military MOPS

When I was a MOPS Coordinator, I intentionally connected with the women on the team. Then, during the first semester, I missed about half of the meetings! I wasn’t being a slacker leader — but different circumstances prevented me from attending meetings. My team rallied around me and made sure things were covered in my absence. God was there, even when I couldn’t be. He encouraged us to not just do our jobs but to work together as humble servants. There was no complaining behind my back or voting me off the team. There was love in its purest form, and that is what our moms saw … Christ’s love.

oscar Bjarnason/flickr/Getty iMaGes

4 November/December2011 November/December2011 5

Have you experienced a season of leadership when you cried out to God? When you felt unsure, even desperate for his direction?

In Psalm 142, David shares a prayer where he cried out to God while he was in a cave. The context of this Psalm is found in 1 Samuel 16-23. Fleeing from King Saul’s death threats, David hid in a cave. David’s story is a dramatic account of a leader alone, seeking refuge and protection, crying out to God:

I cry aloud to the LORD; I lift up my voice to the LORD for mercy. I pour out my complaint before him;Before him I tell my trouble.…I have no refuge; No one cares for my life.(Psalm 142:1-2, 4b)

We may not have as dramatic a story as David’s. However, at some point, all leaders confront feelings of trial, personal attack, loneliness, even desperation. What can we learn from David to help us in our moments of leadership crisis and isolation?

God meets us where we are and provides exactly what we need. When you have a “cave” experience, you struggle with doubt and echo David’s words that “no one cares.” In the isolation of the cave, the memory of God’s faithfulness fades. But God doesn’t change. He is faithful to meet our needs. Even in David’s time of distress, God sent a community of people to him. “All those who were in distress or in debt or discontented gathered around him, and he became their leader. About four hundred men were with him.” (1 Samuel 22:2)

Ultimately, David took his place as king, chosen and anointed by God. He enjoyed great success, but David’s leadership, influence and character were born in that cave through the most difficult of circumstances. David became king in the cave.

In the trials, the defeats, the failures and the pain, we can look to our almighty God and ask him for his strength, his revelation and comfort. Your simple cry of “Help” will cause God to turn his ear to you. l

God meets us where we are and provides exactly what we need.

by andrea Jones, Director of Groups, Leadership and EventsMOPS International

thInK & dISCuSS

1 How free do you feel to share your own faith story? What prevents you from sharing?

2 Sharing your story involves noticing the points in your life where God’s story intersects your story. Take some time to think through the markers in your life and how you might share some of those intersections with someone else.

I had a faith crisis awhile back, though it wasn’t exactly my faith that was in question. It’s just that I’d become somewhat … ashamed — though ashamed might be too strong a word. Whatever word I’m searching for, it’s on the opposite spectrum of proud.

It got to the point where my faith had become a secret, like an embarrassing hobby I didn’t like to bring up in public. I embraced my faith — but only in appropriate settings.

Here’s why: I struggled deeply with the negative perceptions those outside Christianity have of Christians.

I’m embarrassed to admit that’s my reason for keeping my faith a secret. To see it written in black and white feels a little bit like turning my back on God and all those who have suffered for their faith. This wasn’t the story I wanted to live — one where something that’s really important to me is kept hidden.

In hopes of reshaping my story and giving it new direction, I talked to a handful of people whose faith I admire. I didn’t walk away from those conversations with perfect answers, but refreshed in spirit and hoping my heart would come around. I let myself marinate in those thoughts and sought out conversations with God to continue asking questions.

I found two major themes. Both reveal that the answer might be bigger than simply getting over my embarrassment and would require reexamin-ing my perspective.

by Jackie alvarez, Editorial CoordinatorMOPS International

Christianity is more than a definition. Faith is not merely a marker of what I am not; faith is what shapes my soul. It’s the weaving together of my story with God’s, where his gives mine purpose, meaning and perspective. My faith is a piece of my identity — it shapes my decisions and values from the inside out. It’s a piece of the puzzle that makes up the whole of who I am.

It takes courage to be the real me. Being me on a daily basis feels like it should only require waking up in the morning. But it doesn’t. It’s a daily cause, wrestle and choice. And it takes courage. The earliest definition of courage, when it first came into the English language from Latin means, “To tell the story of who you are with your whole heart.”

While the process may be scary, I’m practic-ing the courageous process of figuring out who I am and allowing others to see the real me. My faith is an intimate part of who I am and a meaningful part of my identity. To share that with others reveals my deepest self, inviting them to see the beautiful, intimate ways God interacts in my life and how the story of Jesus has become a significant part of my own story. l

A Solo Act: Loneliness and Leadership

Faith as My Identity

heMera/thinkstock

istockphoto/thinkstock

6 November/December2011 November/December2011 7

thInK & dISCuSSHere are take away questions related to transformed relation-ships and practical information to go through with your leadership team.

The MOPS experience

What’s Your Story?Relevant, relationally inclusive, growth-oriented, purposeful and passion-ately Christian — these attributes make up The MOPS Experience that powerfully impacts both moms and leaders. Remember this as you pour into relationships with moms in your MOPS group: You are shaping their MOPS stories. When we asked MOPS leaders how MOPS influenced their lives, we heard hundreds of incredible stories. Here are just a few.

ShaRe YOuR StORY at Stories@MOPS.org.

1 How are you building relationships in your MOPS group? Are there more intentional ways that your Discussion Groups and leadership team can connect with moms on the fringes?

2 As relationships are growing in your MOPS group, are you finding authentic ways to share Jesus with moms? Do you have a plan for a special meeting around Christmas to share why Jesus came? Can one of the leaders or MOPS Mentors in your group share a part of her story of life with Jesus with your group?

3 Are you going through a difficult leadership season? Consider reading through the Psalms or through the story of David in I Samuel to remember God’s faithfulness to leaders.

4 Does your entire leadership team know how to access resources on the MOPS Guide? Are they registered as leaders so they receive Leaders Online e-newsletters? Have you watched any of the leadership webinars in real-time or recordings on the MOPS Guide?

ExEcutivE Editor carla foote

consulting Editors andrea jones, alexandra kuykendall

graphic dEsignEr cindy young

Editorial coordinator jackie alvarez

contact Mops intErnational: info@Mops.org

For lEadEr rEsourcEs: MopsGuide.org

copyright 2011, Mops international, inc.

As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another. — Proverbs 27:17 ( NIV)

Being a member of MOPS has made me a better and more confident mother, and it has also given me confidence to share my faith in a very powerful way. … It’s the relational ministry of MOPS that keeps me coming back every year. I have definitely seen God’s hand in every aspect of our MOPS group, and he is good! — Stephanie, California

So much of who I am as a mom, a friend and a leader is directly due to MOPS. I have been able to recognize and use my spiritual gifts, along with others who I met through MOPS, to reach moms who have been “unreachable.” Our Teen MOPS group has connected with almost 100 moms over the past 2 ½ years. And my children are learning about grace and outreach by witnessing their mom leading and growing. My entire family has answered the call to grow moms, and we are blessed because of it. — andrea, Wisconsin

I believe that MOPS (and Christ) have made me who I am today. I felt “called” to the relatively new group that was started in our town. I was very shy and did not like to speak. As a matter of fact, I really only spoke to people when directly spoken to. During my first meeting at the new group, I volunteered for MOPPETS. I started with MOPPETS then became Co-Coordinator, and now I am the Coordinator of the group. I would never have thought I would be the one trying to give these moms what they need, with the help of the rest of the Steering Team. I feel that MOPS has turned me into the Christian, mom, wife and leader I am today. Thank you. — Shana, Michigan

MOPS has given me the confidence to step out as a leader, to make new friends and to be the mom God intended me to be. Without MOPS I would still be sitting alone on the bench at the park watching the other moms chat. Now I walk up and invite them to MOPS! — Mary, Washington

Transformed Relationships

8 November/December2011