CWCI Fiftieth Anniversary
Today I speak about a wonderful Australian-based women’s organisation that I have admired and supported for many years, and which has just celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Formerly known as Christian Women Communicating International, it now goes just by the initials CWCI. CWCI’s mission has not changed, however, and that has always been to be an international evangelical women’s ministry reaching out to other women and teaching them about the profound relevance of the Bible and how to apply its lessons to the issues of modern life.
CWCI conducts a number of different functions every day of the week in order to meet the needs of traditional home-based women as well as working women. Included in their many activities are the Know Your Bible study groups of which there are several thousands in Australia, seminars, conventions, teach-ins, dinners, home meetings and speaking tours to the outback, particularly with indigenous people. CWCI also provides well-written materials for church, community and mission groups to study scripture together.
Recently it held a conference in the Blue Mountains, attended by hundreds of women, on the theme Being a Godly Woman in a Godless World. It is encouraging to know that there are many women in our community who long to be of service to the community and to be a godly influence in their families and communities. They are acting in a truly counter-cultural way—against the flow of demeaning images of womanhood splashed about on buses, billboards, across the covers of magazines and on television. The CWCI women are claiming the dignity of Biblical womanhood and finding their gifts and talents nurtured into developing all they can be, which is really a liberation.
In addition to such popular conferences, CWCI conducts correspondence classes for women who, for various reasons are living at a distance away or are unable to leave their homes, or are in remote and rural areas or who simply prefer to stay home and use their computers to engage the world. Particularly of interest are the special classes they have carefully developed for those women whose first language is other than English. For example, there are CWCI study materials in Vietnamese, Arabic, Indonesian and Burmese, just to give an example of their various languages and their resourcefulness and serious intention to reach everyone in the Australian setting.
There is an active and dedicated CWCI membership across all of Australia, but particularly here in New South Wales. Throughout Australia there are over 2,000 groups run for women, by women, which recognise and develop leadership qualities in evangelical women. Every week, tens of thousands of women meet in these home Bible study groups.
The abiding purpose of CWCI is to deepen and enrich the spiritual lives of women and to build them up in the Christian faith through teaching of the Bible, to bring women a personal knowledge of Jesus, and to equip them for life in their homes, workplaces and communities, enabling them to be effective in their churches and in service for the Lord.
I congratulate CWCI on 50 years of remarkable success and I indicate that here, starting in Australia, is a worldwide movement involving hundreds of thousands of people. For the past 20 years I have been on the reference board for the Australian movement, and for the past five years on the International Board of Reference.
Every time I read the reports I am amazed at what is being done by Australian women reaching women not only in this country but making a magnificent contribution to women in many underdeveloped countries around the world. On their fiftieth anniversary I congratulate the work of Christian Women Communicating International now known as CWCI.