Since 2019, the Center for Leadership Excellence, in partnership with COSROW, has been lifting up the voices of lay and clergywomen in ministry through Encouragements—monthly emails designed to inspire, encourage, and offer practical ways for women in ministry to support one another. This month, we’re honored to share words from Gray Southern, NC Conference Secretary, and a member of NC Conference COSROW and GCSRW.

Anyone can sign up to receive Encouragements—and the full archive of past emails is available for you to explore. Please share this link with lay and clergywomen in ministry who might be interested.

In one of the most human of reactions to stunning news, Mary went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth (Luke 1:39-40). What do you do when you get shocking news, or great news, or sad news, or puzzling news, or just news – most of us need to share it, both to get help contemplating it, understanding it, and sometimes dealing with it.

So, too, Mary went to her kinswoman’s house to consult with Elizabeth. We often celebrate the remarkable proclamation of faith that Mary subsequently gives, The Magnificat, but just as worthy of celebration is the reality that Mary had a network of support, a person to whom she could turn at what had to be at that point the most tumultuous moment of her life.

Not all of us have people to whom we can go. That’s frustrating and can be incredibly isolating, especially for those of us rooted in the Church where we are to be community for each other. BUT, there is a sweet promise in our communion, even if sometimes unfulfilled. That promise is that we can be community for each other. We will be imperfect community to be sure, but community just the same. In that grace we can:

Realize we are community for each other, indeed already are community, and call on one another to fulfill that promise;

Thank someone who has been a supporter, a co-worker, a friend, a mentor, a counselor;

Offer someone community and thereby help create it both for them and for ourselves;

Look to see who is on the margin and does not realize that community is on offer so that they are invited to it.

Our Book of Discipline defines “connectionalism” as a “vital web of interactive relationships.” (Para. 132) That interactivity was what Mary and Elizabeth offered each other. And it is what God offered us in entering the human sphere in the gift of Christ. May we be and become and offer that community to others.

In partnership,
Center for Leadership Excellence and the Commission on the Status and Role of Women