Rick Hill, PCI’s Discipleship Development Officer, spoke twice during the Presbyterian Women’s Leadership Forum in February 2019. Rick’s second talk, entitled ‘Living for Jesus’, focused on Luke 24:30-33, the Emmaus Road story. He drew four images out of this passage: The Table, The Fire, The Road and The Chair. Each relates to four environments needed to prioritise as leaders: our invitation to others, the power of God, our witness to the world and our devotion to the King.

Rick Hill, PCI’s Discipleship Development Officer, spoke twice during the Presbyterian Women’s Leadership Forum in February 2019. His first talk was on how prioritising proximity, practicing patience, pursuing presence and pushing participation in our leadership will enable us to ‘push past the surface in what we are doing (as leaders)…and pursue depth.’ He encouraged participants to move from distance to proximity, not to become preoccupied with programmes, projects or preaches, but to think of people and our relationships with them.

Claire Ebbinghaus has been the Ministries Facilitator at Kirkpatrick Memorial Presbyterian Church since 2015. She supports, both practically and pastorally, all the leaders of Kirkpatrick’s ministries and organisations, including her husband, Christoph, who has been the minister at Kirkpatrick for 15 years.

Claire shared that, "Leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal. To be a leader, we need to be clear about the goal of our leadership. We need to be clear about what goal we are trying to achieve and how we go about achieving it." That goal for Presbyterian Women is to encourage women to become disciples of Jesus Christ and to grow together as His followers.

In order to achieve this goal, Claire explained that we needed to recognise that "you cannot make disciples if you are not a disciple yourself", and that good, biblical leadership is "about obedience rather than expertise" because Jesus will be at work in us and through us when we are willing and when we are open to Him.

Around 1,600 women from across Ireland gathered in PCI’s Assembly Buildings in Belfast on Thursday 10 May 2018 for the Annual Meeting and Evening Celebration of Presbyterian Women, a part of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’s women’s ministry. At the meetings, guest speaker Kate Patterson spoke on the newly launched PW theme for 2018/2019, Beautiful.

Outlining the content of her talks, Kate said, “The theme of both sessions is ‘Beautiful’. In a world where beauty is an industry and an obsession, we are called to gaze on the beauty of the Lord. In Psalm 27, David said that it was top of his prayer list. Why is it so important? Because when we gaze on the Lord, we find that His face is shining on us. He wants us near. We were made to know Him. What could matter more? “

Around 1,600 women from across Ireland gathered in PCI’s Assembly Buildings in Belfast on Thursday 10 May 2018 for the Annual Meeting and Evening Celebration of Presbyterian Women, a part of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’s women’s ministry. At the meetings, guest speaker Kate Patterson spoke on the newly launched PW theme for 2018/2019, Beautiful.

Outlining the content of her talks, Kate said, “The theme of both sessions is ‘Beautiful’. In a world where beauty is an industry and an obsession, we are called to gaze on the beauty of the Lord. In Psalm 27, David said that it was top of his prayer list. Why is it so important? Because when we gaze on the Lord, we find that His face is shining on us. He wants us near. We were made to know Him. What could matter more? “