REACH WOMEN CONFERENCE
The REACH WOMEN Conference 2023 took place this past Saturday in Cape Town.
950+ women arrived at St James Church for an incredible morning of solid Bible teaching, amazing praise and worship and wonderful connection. Around 50 of those women travelled from CCSW. It was an early start, but we organised “car pools” so that the women could drive through together. This meant travelling together, arriving together and even sitting together if they wanted to. God provided us with a beautiful, sunny day. As the women arrived, there was a coffee truck to greet them, for those that needed an early morning caffeine fix.
On entering the foyer, there was a warm welcome from a team of ushers. Besides offering their beautiful smiles, the ushers checked tickets and handed out bottles of water, brownies and beautiful bracelets. The bracelets were made by a ministry called BESIDE YOU. This ministry seeks to build up women economically and spiritually, and is run by a team from one of our sister REACH churches, CROSS CENTRAL CHURCH in Parow. The chocolate brownies from Khayelitsha Cookies were utterly delicious. Khayelitsha Cookies is a local bakery, supporting women and run by women.
Women from across Cape Town joined together for a morning of solid Bible teaching vibrant praise and worship and connection with each other. It was so encouraging. Our first session started with a wonderful time of praise and worship. Hearing 950+ women singing on the tops of their voices has to be one of the highlights of the conference. It’s hard to describe how incredibly emotionally evocative that experience is!
How long, O Lord? Living by faith in a broken world
We then heard the first talk from Habakkuk chapters 1 and 2, from our conference speaker, Jo Taylor. Our second session included a beautiful SPOKEN WORD POEM by the talented Unati Manyela who attends Hope Community Church in Pinelands. Unati wrote the poem for the conference, in response to the teaching from the Bible talks.
Here’s a link to listen to the poem.
The second talk focussed on Habakkuk 3, his response to God. It was so challenging to experience how Habakkuk ended by rejoicing in song, at who God is. We ended the conference with an interview with Sandy Lyons. Sandy shared some of her own struggles and how she had also cried out to God in a time of intense difficulty. She spoke about how she had lost the song in her heart.
It was encouraging to hear how her relationship with God had grown through her suffering. Not only had the song in her heart returned, but she is now able to rejoice in how God was at work in that season.
We ended the conference by singing again with great joy!
Please join us in praying that the seeds that were sown and watered at the conference will bear much fruit for God’s kingdom in the weeks and months ahead.
