The ICOC Women’s Service Team has been active throughout 2021 in its Task Forces, as well as continuing to meet online as an entire group approximately every two months throughout the year. We have operated exclusively online throughout 2021 due to coronavirus restrictions.

We thank God for the significant accomplishments of this past year and lessons learned, as we have worked to fulfill our mission statement: To inspire and train women servant leaders around the globe to connect and grow spiritually, and to advance the gospel.

International Women’s Day Task Force

Each year the WST facilitates the nomination and voting on the theme for our traditional International Day of Prayer, fasting, and action, to coincide with International Women’s Day (March 8). The theme chosen for 2021 was “For Such a Time as This.”

You can search #forsuchatimeasthisicoc in your browser to view ICOC women’s photos and videos and social media posts from many of our women’s ministries around the world, who created evangelistic events centered on this theme. You can also view a selection of our IWD 2021 events from around the world here: womentoday.international/womens-day, including the March 6, 2021 online event organized by the Jakarta women for the SEA Region churches, with 4000 women in attendance.

International Online Prayer Events

Shortly after the Women’s Day events, we began a series of invitations to online international prayer, which we repeated at the end of the summer. The first events we considered an experiment, inviting groups of women mostly through word of mouth. We learned that our sisters love the opportunity to pray and worship online with other women from faraway places!

As our conviction about the value of this kind of activity grew, so did our vision: more women on every continent helped in the organization. In one outstanding example, our sisters gathered a group of 35 volunteers from 18 churches in Asia to create a prayer event entitled “Immeasurably More,” in which 4000 women participated, praying in six languages!

Spanish Women’s Service Team

The ICOC Women’s Website, WomenToday.International

This task force managing womentoday.international consists of a core group of four to six volunteers who meet weekly, plus a handful of content editors for English submissions and several language groups representing the languages most spoken in our fellowship. New posts appear weekly as a rule, except during special seasons (such as the weeks before Christmas) when we post new content daily. We manage a system of harvesting content from every regional family of churches in our fellowship. Over a two-year period, each month we feature material submitted from a different church family around the world.

Webinars and Crucial Conversations

The stars of 2021 who have taken the mission of this task force to new heights, along with the new Spanish WST, have been our WST women focusing on Asia. The March webinar, aimed at mature singles, entitled Light on a Hill, featuring Dr. Cornelia Haener, was attended by 200 women; their crucial conversation for single mothers, More Than Conquerors Through Him, in June, featuring simultaneous translation into three languages, was attended by 275. Their crescendo was in October with a crucial conversation online for Asian women entitled, You Are Loved. Women in 18 Asian nations participated with six language interpreters and a viewership of well over 4000 via Zoom and YouTube.

International Women’s Programs Task Force

The WST is tasked with facilitating the organization and planning of the women’s program at any international ICOC conferences that are considered “global.” This task force has rested this year due to the coronavirus restrictions and the postponement of our next World Discipleship Summit, Vision, scheduled for summer 2022. It will resume its planning and oversight of the women’s program for that event early in 2022.

We say goodbye and huge thank you, here at the end of 2021 to our Chair for the past three years, Tammy Fleming (Kyiv, Ukraine). We extend a very warm welcome to Saraí Serra (St. Luis, Argentina) who was confirmed by the delegates’ vote at the end of 2021 as our new Chair. Tammy will retire from the WST but remain a volunteer on WST task forces.

Below is the list of current WST members:

Marci Arneson, Chicago, USA

Victoria Auki, Nairobi, Kenya

Toli Beruah, New Delhi, India

Gillianne Brisebois, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

Girlie Cabadsan, Cebu, Philippines

Erica Fortina, Milan, Italy

Sharon Gauthier, Chicago, USA

Kae Habel, Manila, Philippines

Susani Karta, Jakarta, Indonesia

Griselda Lua, Los Angeles, USA

Rolayo Ogbonnaya, Lagos, Nigeria

Vania Salim, Jakarta, Indonesia

Saraí Serra, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Chelsea Thorne, Sydney, Australia

Sirikit Umaguing, Colorado Springs, USA

Please direct any communication to the WST to: [email protected]

For more 2021 Service Team Reports: Elders | Singles | Teachers | Youth and Family