The Generations Project: Equipping Young Women to Serve and Lead
By Evangeline Weiner|
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The Apostle James states that “as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.” The model he offers, to feed faith with works, should compel every Christian to consistently live his or her life with unwavering acts of compassion. Works coming from the heart are the essential life-givers in our walk of faith.
Aglow International’s Generations Project is all about mobilizing and releasing young people to move into such vibrant expressions of faith. The goal of the Generations Project is to help young women ages eighteen to thirty-five to develop leadership skills as they plan to enter the workplace or the mission field, empowering them to become influential leaders in their community. The vision is that they become God’s kingdom on earth in the darkest parts of the world.
As a pioneer in equipping women to serve and lead, Aglow has ministered to women and guided them into leadership for forty years. One key to our model for restoring and releasing women is mobilizing indigenous women to mentor younger women in their nation. Aglow’s worldwide network in more than 170 nations now includes more than 200,000 women involved in over 4,600 local fellowship groups.
In 2006, Aglow began to act on the need to encourage and empower young women in their spiritual life. They took on the challenge that wherever a woman’s career or life endeavors took her, it was imperative that younger Christian women today understand the outworking of their faith in society. We sought to connect young women with Aglow’s already extensive humanitarian outreaches, such as care for HIV/AIDS orphans and families, prison ministry, and disaster relief work—the kinds of hands-on “faith feeding” of which James speaks.
Aglow had the spiritual maturity and the practical resources, but the question was how to connect. We needed to mobilize the younger generation to take worldwide opportunities to grow and serve. That connection began the Generations Project.
Young people want to be a part of change in the world. It is no longer enough for them to grow spiritually without seeing the works Jesus proclaimed would follow those who believe. Signs and wonders are a huge part, but in addition, Jesus said, “And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19). We need to take this authority Christ has given us and use it to change our society.
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Evangeline Weiner is director of Aglow International's Generations Project. |
