For the first time in the 52-year history of the annual Alabama Baptist Evangelism Conference, a track for and about women in evangelism was provided. The 2002 conference was held in Huntsville Jan. 27–28.
High attendance and the audience’s enthusiasm testified to the appreciation that Alabama Baptist women felt at having a conference tailor-made to their needs.
The decision to offer a women’s track for the traditionally male-speaker-dominated conference was a strategic move, according to SBOM director of evangelism Sammy Gilbreath.
Gilbreath said he has been burdened for the last several years that more attention needed to be given to the evangelistic needs of today’s Baptist women.
“I felt that women in the workplace were not adequately being prepared and equipped to reach those individuals in their world — be it their co-workers, peers, family, children or neighbors. Out of that burden I felt I couldn’t ignore that section of the Baptist population,” he said of his decision to implement the first-time format.
Gilbreath said he tried to put together a conference that would be inspirational, educational and informational for the women who would be attending.
The all-day conference, held at Huntsville’s Whitesburg Baptist Church, was comprised of four presenters, along with a three-member female singing group, By Design, from Atlanta, Ga.
The day’s featured speaker was the well-known and popular Ann Graham Lotz, daughter of Evangelist Billy Graham.
Lotz’s presence attracted a mostly female crowd of around 2,000 who ranged in age from teenagers to senior citizens.
“We were thrilled not just in the number who attended but in the response to the speakers and their messages,” Gilbreath said.
Although the crowd diminished following Lotz’s one-hour presentation, a steady group of 400–700 women stayed throughout the day to hear presentations from other speakers such as Mamie McCullough, a Christian motivational speaker from Dallas, Texas; Jean Stockdale, a motivational speaker and humorist from Franklin, Tenn.; and Jaye Martin of Houston, Texas, the North American Mission Board’s women’s evangelism strategist.
Gilbreath is extremely pleased with the outcome of the event and he says he has even higher expectations for its future.
He feels that this year’s conference still did not fully reach the working segment of women that he had hoped it would.
“We were right in our motivation for the event but perhaps there is a better time for women,” he said, adding, “We still feel like some of of the women we wanted to attract couldn’t attend because of their work schedules.”
But keeping that issue in mind, the success of the event has already motivated Gilbreath to begin preparations for next year’s conference. “We will be looking at the possibility of perhaps holding the next women’s conference on a Saturday where they can spend the whole day and not be concerned about their work schedule,” he stated.
“This type of women’s conference has definitely struck a very positive nerve,” he said, adding that, ”our next goal is to tweak it so that we meet the needs that are out there.”
Executive director of the SBOM, Rick Lance echoed Gilbreath’s sentiments. “This is a huge segment of the population that we need to minister to. Women’s conferences are becoming very popular and we wanted to experiment with the concept as part of this conference,” he said. Lance’s wife, Pam, said she heard positive comments about the conference all morning. “The women appreciated not being charged a fee to attend,” she said.
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