Sharing Womanly Wisdom

A women’s panel discussion offered wisdom to the women of Freedom Fellowships on singleness, dating, marriage, sex and parenting.

This summer, Freedom Fellowships hosted a first: a panel for women in the fellowship to come together to discuss biblical womanhood. The panel featured women with different life experiences to discuss anonymous questions that were submitted ahead of the panel. Seventy-five women attended the event and enjoyed connecting with women across ages, experiences and fellowship groups for a night of unity.

The idea came from a conversation Amia Muller and Alyssa Tarter had while covering the topic of marriage on Amia’s Saved Podcast. Younger women sent Amia questions to ask Corey and Alyssa, but she decided the questions weren’t suitable for mixed company. Amia and Alyssa realized, as Freedom Fellowships has grown, that there isn’t a real space to help younger women connect to the older women well. With split Central Teachings, usually by age and fellowship groups centered around life experiences, the need arose for a meeting where the younger women could hear from the older women in our church.

Titus talks about the significant opportunity older women have to teach younger women: “Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored,” (Titus 2:3-5). Many of the younger women in our church were raised in a culture that speaks against biblical womanhood. As a result, older women in our fellowship have an important and unique role to fill in guiding and showing younger women how to live godly lives.

The panel consisted of Angie Bertka, who offered a single and older Christian perspective; Darlene McCallum, who experienced a long, Christian marriage with a lot of child-rearing advice; Heidi Muller, who has been married for many years and raised five children; Sara Cartellone, who is a younger mother with marriage experience and young children; and Adi McCullough, who is a new mom and young wife. Their backgrounds, life experiences and personalities varied widely to give each question a fair spectrum of wisdom coming from successes, failures, experiences, biblical truth and humor. The event also featured testimony from Tami Mobley, who offered her perspective as a single woman, at the end of the panel discussion.

Amia and Alyssa received wonderful feedback from the women in attendance.

“The event went well and I definitely think the Lord was behind this and moving and grooving in the hearts of the women that attended,” Alyssa said. “There were multiple conversations after the panel ended, and we heard from multiple women they loved this and hope to have more panels like this in the future.”

Amia and Alyssa hope to host another panel in six months with new panelists. There are options about future women’s events including workshops or panels with specific themes. Alyssa was very happy to see her burden bear fruit and excited to use our “vast Body of Christ that can support each other [and] to help each other know we are not alone; that we can have hope in the midst of trials and suffering with pretty tough circumstances; and that we don’t have to be afraid to ask questions. People want to help and support each other here.”

Ladies of Freedom Fellowships, stay tuned for more women’s centered events to come. Until then, let’s remain open to asking questions and sharing wisdom with one another. Central Teachings are combined for the summer–take advantage of that and use the time to get to know women from different generations and walks of life in the church.