Dear Wives of Faith members,

Our Board as well as some of our leadership team met at the end of September to discuss plans going forward for our ministry and to see what God has in mind for us. We had an amazing time sharing and I am excited for the women He has brought together in leadership.

I wanted to share with you some of the thoughts I shared with the group on where we are going as a ministry and some of our goals. As a ministry, we will be celebrating 5 years of service this December and as I explained to the group, in many ways, it feels like we’re about to graduate Kindergarten and move into First Grade. We have been feeling our way, seeking God as we go, and listening for His voice in how we should follow. I am excited about the next 5 years and what He has in store.

A VISION FOR 2012 AND BEYOND

“But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.” ~ 1 John 1:7

I ran across the above verse two days before our team met. KOINONIA (koy noh nEE ah) is a Greek word meaning fellowship or close mutual involvement. It’s a common fellowship in a task or cause and as believers we share koinonia with one another.

Looking at the verse above, as we think about what it means to walk in the light – there is a lot of darkness in military life today.

• Struggling marriages
• Hard, sometimes emotionally painful, deployments
• The worries and sadness of families separated
• Mental health issues for both the service member and the spouse, and sometimes even the children

There are a number of wonderful causes and organizations out there serving military spouses, particularly those struggling with loneliness, or depression or suicidal thoughts. Many encourage us to look for hope in ourselves, in the future, in our own strength, in each other. But, ultimately, none of those things are what can save us. They can help – but they can’t heal. 

Jesus is our only hope. Jesus is the light we focus on when darkness seems to be everywhere. And Jesus is the light, as Wives of Faith, we want to follow and we must share with others.

Walking in the light means living consistently with God’s commands and following His character. When we spend time in fellowship together, we can share that knowledge with each other – it’s walking together, encouraging each other.

This makes me think of Hebrews 12:1 –

“Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that lay before Him endured a cross and despised the shame and has sat down at the right hand of God’s throne.”

As military wives, we are looking for a reason to endure. Our purpose as Wives of Faith is to show that reason – and His name is Jesus.

Over the last 5 years of Wives of Faith’s existence, we have grown. We have learned. We have made some mistakes but we have also seen some wonderful successes.

BY THE NUMBERS

• Currently we have almost 800 members – ladies who have signed up on our membership form offered on our website.

• We have over 200 who have participated in Survival Sisters since we started that program.

• Over 250 who have gone through our online Bible Studies.

• We currently have 10 local groups in various stages of existence – some brand new, some that have been around for a while, and we have more on the way.

• And our website is receiving almost 60,000 unique visits a month to our website.

But numbers are only one way we can measure the effectiveness of our ministry at Wives of Faith and how God is using all of us to connect, encourage and support military wives.

We were all disappointed when we had to cancel our retreat that was supposed to happen the third weekend of September. The current economic times we find all of us living in are making everyone stop and consider what we can do and what we can’t. And we’re not the only ministry that has had to put some plans on hold as a result. But I wanted to share a note that was posted on our website after we made the announcement –

Although I was not going to be able to attend this event bcause of the economy I wanted to share with you that the blogs and WOF site and fb page has been a tremendous blessing for me as a military wife facing my first deployement. Many times I have thought it might be easier to give up and allow doubt and anger into my heart but the constant feeds on my fb from your page has kept me going and reassured me daily that I am ot alone.

WOF has reminded me just how much I may not be seeing personally but what my soldier does see and taught me how to be there for my soldier and support him through our deployment. I have renewed my relationship with Jesus Christ at the beginning of our deployment and many including my husband can see a difference in my actions and my daily lie and the way I live to let Christ be my #1 in my life.

God is in control and he has a plan for WOF and although some may be saddened by the cancelation of this event I want you to know that you touch a millin people’s lifes every day, you may not have a million fans literally but I tell and read almost all articles and verses publishd with family and friends and they share these with their families and friends so WOF have touched many more people than ever imagined. Thank you for all yall have done and continue to do throughout this ministry!

This note was very encouraging to our leadership and I hope it is encouraging to you as members as well. We don’t always know the impact we are having… but we continue to press on in what we do because we know God has called us to do it – and He deserves all the praise.

LOCAL GROUPS

First, we are going to make local groups our primary focus in 2012 and beyond. For a while, the web has been our primary means of ministry. This is going to change.

We continue to receive more and more requests to start groups. We’re going to plan new local group curriculum, develop local group leader training and develop a ministry manual for leaders that will give them tools and ideas to see successful ministry in their groups.

Among some of the special things we are planning over the next year, we hope to do an annual, if not bi-annual, WoF Member Meet-Up, where Wives of Faith members sign up to be hostesses and we coordinate girls night out dinners where Wives of Faith members come together in their respective cities to meet and get to know one another.  This will be helpful I believe in seeing new local groups start, once women know each other exist in their towns and cities.

We also will launch our first quarterly magazine for Wives of Faith members beginning in 2013. We will begin small, but we want something members can hold in their hands – and know they are part of an incredible group of women who pray for one another, encourage each other and seek God in all of it.

MARRIAGE FOCUS

Marriages are going to have an important emphasis for Wives of Faith. I’ve asked Kori Yates to join our leadership and she has graciously agreed to be our new MarriageCare Director. Kori is passionate about the military marriage and we want to encourage Wives of Faith women to not only fight for marriages in trouble, but to learn what God has to say about marriage – what God desires for us as wives – to see our roles as wives as blessings, and our families as one of the ministries God has given us. We’re going to offer more marriage articles, but we can also do other things such as create a marriage mentoring program or offer marriage classes or Bible studies on marriages.

We will continue to encourage wives who are going through deployment. I’m so happy to say that we have something very special we are working on for deployed spouses and hope to announce all the details very soon.

We are going to focus on the programs that match our mission and vision and cut away those that do not. This means that there will be programs we will add and programs we may take away. We want to be effective with the resources and the volunteers we have and we want everything we do to answer yes to the question – is this something that is bringing a military wife closer in her relationship with God? This is our purpose. This is our mission.

FUNDING

For the past 5 years, our ministry has run on extremely limited resources, made possible by a few willing individuals and the occasional donation. These funds have kept the website running as well as other communication tools we subscribe to.

This coming year, as we enter our third year of our Board of Director’s existence and a stable, consistent leadership team with several of our leaders now in their second or third years of service, we will put into place an operations budget and add revenue and donation streams in order to fund that budget. We will begin to work on this, this fall in preparation for a budget year of 2012.

All of our staff are volunteer – but it still costs money to run the website as mentioned earlier and to do some of the things we want to accomplish. We want to have the opportunity to send one or two leaders to help train local group leaders, or hold regional events where military wives don’t have so far to go to participate in a Wives of Faith event. Our Board has also discussed our desire to fund scholarships for military wives to attend certain events or conferences through Wives of Faith.

So we will be looking at various ways of what we need to do and focusing on this in 2012. Some revenue examples – we are looking at establishing an online store offering Wives of Faith products and resources. We will look at the possibility of holding fundraisers and we will also examine the idea of requiring a nominal membership fee, provided we have answered the question, “What are the benefits for being a Wives of Faith member?”

NEW VOLUNTEERS

As you can imagine, these goals, these plans, will take a lot of volunteers – women who are committed to making a difference for military wives, who share the vision we have in Wives of Faith to connect, encourage and support military wives in their relationships with Christ and in their marriages and families.

A general list of leadership positions has been compiled that we either currently need or will want to add over the course of the next year. Be watching for this list with descriptions of each position’s responsibilities a to be posted and shared in the next week or so.

Let me encourage you to consider getting involved in a more direct way with Wives of Faith. What are your gifts? What are your talents? How could you use those talents to serve and bless other military wives through WoF? In a big way or a small way, every way is a blessing when you make yourself available for God to use you. There is a place for you here in Wives of Faith.

I am thankful for each of you who have already been so gracious and willing to step out in faith and obedience and serve– I’m thankful for the time you’ve given, for your willingness to step up and lead – your desire to make a difference in someone else’s life. God has some amazing things in store He wants to show and teach military wives – I am excited to see what God does and how He uses us in the coming years to connect, encourage and support military wives as they focus on Christ as the center of their lives! I hope you are too and that you will join us as together, we all seek His great and perfect will.

May God bless your life abundantly,

Sara

Sara Horn is the founder and president of Wives of Faith. A writer and speaker, she is the author of GOD Strong: A Military Wife’s Spiritual Survival Guide and Tour of Duty: Preparing Our Hearts for Deployment. Her most recent book, My So-Called Life as a Proverbs 31 Wife, released in September. Visit her online at sarahorn.com or on facebook.

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