The women of Christ

Michele Marr

“Serve the Lord with gladness.”

That is the motto of the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League and

the first part of the second line of Psalm 100. The rest of the line

reads, “Come before his presence with singing.”

This Sunday, the women of Faith Lutheran Church will do both. In

recent months, the women of Faith Lutheran reestablished their ties

to the missionary league, receiving their official league charter in

June.

On Sunday morning, they will host two morning worship services to

mark Lutheran Women’s Missionary League Sunday and to celebrate the

work of the league, which was founded in the 1940s with the goal of

“bringing all the people of the world to Christ.” The women will lead

the worship and prayers; they will read the morning’s scripture

lessons and assist in serving Holy Communion at services themed

“Christ’s Love Compels Us.”

In the usual place of the sermon, 11 women will offer short

monologues, each a dramatic portrayal of how a woman of the Bible was

compelled by the love of Jesus Christ to serve others.

“I chose lesser-known women [for the portraits] since they, too,

have powerful stories to tell,” said Laurel Kelsh Jones, office

manager and “unofficial drama director” at Faith Lutheran Church, who

wrote the monologues and directs them.

“Hopefully, each will be an inspiration to encourage others to

share their talents as well,” she said.

Music, hymns and contemporary praise songs, all written by women,

will illuminate the service’s theme and the biblical portraits.

“We [searched] for songs written by women as another way to honor

women who have served the Lord with their gifts,” said Barbara

Tiedgen, who was instrumental in reactivating Faith’s charter with

the Lutheran Women’s Missionary League.

Among the women portrayed on Sunday will be a nameless widow whose

selfless giving of two mites to the temple treasury is recorded in

the gospels of Mark and Luke.

“The others offered their gifts from what they had to spare, but

she, poor as she is, gave all she had to live on,” Jesus told his

told his disciples after he witnessed her offering.

Her story will be illustrated on the cover of the program.

Mite boxes, so called after the story of this nameless but

faithful widow, play a prominent role in Sunday services.

At Faith and nationwide, the boxes are filled with pennies or with

the change from pockets at the end of the day.

“In the past 50 years, mission projects exceeding $11 million have

been funded, all through the mite boxes,” Tiedgen said.

“God is gracious to all and very generous,” said Susan Martinez,

who will act as lay reader for the Sunday services. “We want to

motivate others to use the gifts that God has given them.”

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.