INSPIRE...INFLUENCE...IMPACT

CWIMA Blog

The latest from CWIMA and featured sources
28
Nov

Belong Tour Featuring Prominent Christian Women in Leadership Roles

Roughly 8,000 people packed the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota for the Belong Tour. These 8,000 people gathered together to share their stories of faith and inspiration.

Sharon Irving, a singer on “America’s Got Talent,” led a powerful worship at the Xcel Energy Center in late October. Like Irving, all the speakers and musicians who would speak at the faith-based weekend were prominent Christian women.

“I’m so excited to be among women who are all about the holy mischief and stirring up things in the world and not doing it safe,” Irving said.

According to the Religion News Service, the entire Belong Tour was created alongside Women of Faith, a long-running Christian women’s conference that announced its farewell tour last year. The organizations now hosts live Belong Tour shows with powerful speakers, Christian musicians, and spoken-word artists. The goal of the tour and all its speakers is to attract a new generation of women.

“I think there’s a moment of great creativity for women leaders in the religious sphere,” said reverend Katharine Rhodes Henderson, author or “God’s Troublemakers: How Women of Faith Are Changing the World,” and president of Auburn Theological Seminary. “I think that we are seeing in lots of areas of American life that some of the traditional structures that served well for a long period of time are no longer doing so. A time of change means there’s a possibility of new types of leadership and new people doing it.”

Young Americans are open to change and represent a large portion of the Belong Tour’s demographic. Roughly two-thirds of young Americans, ages 18 to 29, have moved into a new home during the past five years, and Rhodes Henderson, Irving, and others want to get those individuals thinking more about their faith.

“If once upon a time women’s ministry was sort of fluffy, now I find real depth to it, really smart study of the Word, conversations that have typically been taboo and just a lot of real healing rise up,” said Jen Hatmaker, author and star of HGTV’s “My Big Family Home Renovation. “So I think there is still absolutely a place for women’s ministry, and I’m proud to see how many great leaders are carrying that baton.”

Leave a Reply