15 Best Women’s Ministry Event Ideas For Your Small Church

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Whether you plan your ministry events a quarter at a time, or the entire year in advance, every women’s ministry leader with a heart for impactful small group ministry will want to find fresh, new ideas to go along with their tried and true events.

Finding the perfect event for every person within your ministry is a daunting task, no doubt. Will the events that our foundational women enjoy appeal to younger women? What do we do to make sure everyone feels included? How can we make sure the ladies have a great time while also enhancing their spiritual growth?

Narrowing Down The Goal For This Women’s Ministry Event

First, let’s make sure we understand why you want to host an event of any size. Hopefully, your answer is not to fill the calendar, like mine has been at times in the past! 

A friend encouraged me once to make sure the ministry events we planned fell into one of three categories: Growing, Going, or Doing. Doing so would help to ensure that certain aspects of church life and spiritual health are not neglected for our ladies, families, and communities. Growing would be things that would bring the ladies closer to Jesus. Bible studies or special services might fall into that category.

Going is service-related events, like outreaches to our local community, ways we show Jesus to the world. The last category (though equally important) is Doing, as in “doing life together.” This type of event may not have an overtly Christian theme, but because you’re fostering relationships within the community of believers, you’ll find that your church body grows stronger together. Many of these ideas also double as meaningful ladies’ fellowship events, perfect for building deeper friendships and making space for joyful connection.

Below I’ve compiled a fun list of ministry event ideas to not only help keep women’s events fresh, but hopefully to keep the schedule well-rounded and healthy for the spiritual and emotional needs of our women as well.

15 Women’s Ministry Event Ideas

1. BYOI: Bring Your Own Ingredient Dinners

Materials: 

Nothing more than the usual paper products for any dinner.

Event Info:

Our women’s ministry actually does this once a month. We decide on a menu and each person coming brings one ingredient (or more) for the menu. This theme tends to work better with food “bar” themes like: 

• Taco Bar
• Salad Bar 
• Baked Potato Bar. 

This is a great opportunity for anyone to contribute, regardless of income or budget limitations.

Pro Tip: “Assign” the main ingredient (the baked potatoes or taco meat) to 2-3 ladies to lighten the financial and time burden, then let other ladies bring the fixings. 

2. Pocket Encouragement/ Verse Books

Materials: 

• Notecards
• Binder rings
• Cute cloth ribbons (optional)

Event Info:

This has been a favorite of our women – and we do this every year or two to make sure any new gals are included. Give each lady in attendance one notecard for each person attending. (i.e. 24 attendees means each woman will have 24 cards). Have each woman write down a 

Bible verse they lean on when they need it. Then distribute those verse cards so that each woman has a stack of verse cards from every other woman there. Hole punch in a corner, and use a binder ring to keep them together for each woman. Lastly, you can tie short, colorful cloth ribbons to the binder ring to “pretty” it up boho-style!

Pro Tip: If you have more than half a dozen women, be sure to have snacks and beverages so the ladies can rest their hands as needed. You can also ask someone with pretty handwriting or experience with hand-lettering to write each woman’s name on a card to act as a front cover of their verse book of cards. 

3. Floral Arrangement Workshop

Materials: 

• Assorted Fresh Flowers
• Vases
• Ribbons

Event Info:

With the rising popularity of flower trucks, this is bound to be a great opportunity to display your ladies’ creativity. You could charge a small registration fee to cover the cost of the flowers if you need to (small church budget, anyone?). The best thing about this event is that you don’t necessarily have to be a pro to actually teach them how to arrange flowers… just let the ladies help themselves and enjoy each other’s company. They’ll be able to leave with a beautiful, fresh bouquet in addition to enjoying each other’s company.

Pro Tip: Contact a local floral truck or florist to see if they would be interested in hosting the workshop and let them take care of the setup. (This may involve fees)

4. Bible Journaling Sessions

Materials: 

• Bible highlighters
• Pens
• Colored pencils

Event Info:

Have everyone bring their Bible, choose one passage to dig into together, and go crazy highlighting and studying. A lot of women shy away from deeper study because they think they have to do it a certain way, but being able to draw, highlight, or even paint with watercolors right beside a passage helps me to focus on it better. 

Pro Tip: For inspiration, pull up samples of Bible journaling on Pinterest to show and put your own spin on it. Add some washi tape, translucent sticky notes, or stickers to add design elements. 

5. Bonfire Besties

Materials: 

• Marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate.
• Hamburgers or hotdogs

Event Info:

Have women bring items for smores and roasted hot dogs.

This is a great opportunity for fellowship outside the church by meeting up at someone’s home for a bonfire (or firepit fire). 

Pro tip: Have someone lead a few worship songs around the fire to encourage everyone to bring worship outside the church too!

6. Ladies Game Night

Materials: 

• Enough games for everyone to participate
• Game night snacks

Event Info:

It may surprise you who in your small group is the most competitive! My group of ladies love Phase 10; my good friend’s church adores Bunco. Be sure to have plenty of snacks and drinks to last the night.

Pro Tip: Once you find what game gets your gals riled up, plan a follow-up tournament night every few weeks or months to encourage repeat fellowship. You could even include a cute trophy that can be passed from one night’s winner to the next night’s winner! 

7. Pajamas, Movies & Snacks Night

Materials: 

• A movie
• Popcorn/snacks

Event Info:

This event is always fun to tackle with little-to-no preparation needed. Simply ask your ladies to bring a snack to share, choose a movie, and settle in to watch in the comfort of your pajamas! Mom’s Day Out is always a funny, Christian movie (and there are more out there too!), or go more serious with The Passion of the Christ at Easter time. With the advent of more Christian streaming services, the options for movies are endless.

Pro Tip: If possible, host this at someone’s home. You’ll find people will be much more relaxed and open to being themselves – especially since they’ll be in their pajamas!

8. Speed Dating For Faith Sisters

Materials: 

• Pairs of chairs facing each other (preferably with a table between the two people sitting there)
• A timer

Event Info:

Here’s a perfect idea for those times when you have some new people coming to church, or maybe to re-introduce some of the “regulars” to everyone. Pair off the ladies so that each person is sitting facing the other. It usually works best to have everyone in a circle, so that you have an inner circle of ladies facing outward to the outer circle of ladies. When the timer starts, one lady will tell the other about herself: hobbies, maybe a bit of her testimony, family, work, etc.

Then, the timer will go off and the other lady will do the same. They can ask questions as long as it’s within those two minutes each. Once the timer goes off for the second person’s introduction, rotate the “outer circle” of the ladies to the right so that they are paired with the next person. The “inner circle” ladies stay seated. Continue until everyone has had a chance to hear everyone else’s “elevator pitch” story. 

Pro Tip: Instead of intros, have the ladies tell the others their testimony! The challenge is to keep it within the two-minute time frame. Although, if you have a smaller group and feel it is necessary, you can always go for 3-4 minutes.

9. Cookie (Or Dessert) Packing Party

Materials: 

• Cookies (or some other easily divided dessert)
• Goody bags

Event Info:

To focus on community outreach events, just gather your ladies together for an evening (or Saturday morning!) of packing homemade cookies or easily divided desserts, like brownies into goodie bags to deliver to local first responders, fire departments, police departments, emergency department personnel, or even local daycares for the workers! It’s a great way to unify your small group to stay outward-focused.

Pro Tip: To keep the focus on helping those less fortunate, consider doing the same for local nursing homes or assisted living facilities, and plan for several of the ladies to go and hand out the goodies to each resident instead of just dropping off a basket. 

10. Ladies Worship Night

Materials:

• Lyrics printed on paper for those attending (optional)
• YouTube playlist of worship songs (if needed) 

Event Info:

Sometimes the best times of worship are in the smaller, more intimate settings. If you have any ladies who play or sing with your worship team, perhaps they can lead this. If not, just create a playlist on YouTube or your favorite music streaming platform, meet up, and spend time in prayer and worship as the playlist plays. I usually plan for two hours of prayer and worship, knowing that if needed we can end early. Of course, you could always just repeat your playlist if you need more time as well. 

Pro Tip: If you or your ladies are not comfortable worshipping for that long, or if you just feel led to include more intercessory prayer in your evening), have a few prayer stations set up around the room so that the ladies can walk around and be prompted to pray for whatever the station shows. Some stations might include: Missions, Pastors, Local Government, Children, Community, etc. 

11. Breakfast For Dinner

Materials: 

• Breakfast food
• Paper goods 

Event Info:

Instead of planning the usual dinner for your ladies’ group, take it to the comfort level and plan a breakfast for dinner! Have several ladies bring already-cooked breakfast items. Use a sign-up sheet to make sure foods are not duplicated and nothing is missing). We would serve scrambled eggs, grits (for those of us who are southern), sausage and/or bacon, biscuits, gravy, juice, and coffee. 

Pro Tip: Kick the comfort level up a notch by inviting the ladies to wear their pajamas and show retro cartoons as you eat your breakfast!

12. Cookie Decorating Workshop

Materials: 

• Blank cookies
• Cookie decorating icing
• Supplies for everyone attending

Event Info:

Everyone loves the cute decorated cookies that have become so popular in recent years. In this event, your ladies will come to try their hand at decorating a simple design on a cookie or two to take home. You’ll be decorating more, of course, but they will also serve as your snacks for the night!

Pro Tip: Contact a local cookie decorator to see if they’ll come to teach some techniques to your ladies.

13. “Stay-Cation” Or Day Retreat

Materials: 

• Depending on how in-depth you want to go, you could provide swag bags with tissues, mints, pens, etc.
• Simple lunch
• Any session materials or hand-outs (optional)

Event Info:

Sometimes budget and timing won’t allow for a full 3-4 day retreat, so our gals chose one year to do a “Stay-cation” Retreat. We gathered at one of the ladies’ homes that was a little bit out of town, situated on a picturesque farm. We had a Bible session in the late morning, broke for lunch (chicken salad sandwiches), and had an afternoon session. We started each session with one song played on our hostess’s TV so everyone could hear and worship, and then our Bible teacher led us in the sessions she had prepared. It was amazing! Exactly what several of us needed in the middle of a busy life season!

Pro Tip: If you’re able, have someone come lead the sessions that your ladies do not normally hear from. The fresh views and “special guest” aspect lend so much to make it more of a treat. 

14. Panel Discussion 

Materials: 

• Timer (optional)

Event Info:

Sometimes, we want to know how other Christian women have handled the nitty-gritty, daily intricacies of life. This is especially precious to newer Christians or younger women who just want some good godly advice on everyday trials. Select 3-5 women to be your panel, ones you would trust to give godly advice and ask your small group to submit questions beforehand to ask the panel so that they can share their wisdom (and sometimes humanity and humor!). Some of our questions were: 

• What advice do you have for someone whose husband or partner is not as far along in their faith journey as she is?
• How do you handle suicidal thoughts as a Christian?
• What tips do you have for helping a husband that is struggling to deal with depression or anxiety?

If you have a lot of questions (or an especially talkative panel), you may want to use the timer to limit the answers to 3-5 minutes. You can also choose to only let one or two women answer each question, to keep it moving along. 

Pro Tip: Have some sample questions ready just in case you need more questions to fill the time than are submitted. 

15. Monthly/Weekly Dose Of Sunshine

Materials: 

• Greeting Cards, either purchased or handmade
• Pens

Event Info:

Who doesn’t enjoy getting a handwritten note of encouragement? In today’s ever-darkening culture, those bits of encouragement are like little rays of sunshine – hence the name a sweet sister gave this group event! Meet together regularly with blank greeting cards and spend some time writing (yes, handwriting!) a note of encouragement to several other women who may need it.

It could be someone who missed church the last week, or who has been sick, or had a job change, or maybe someone who doesn’t have anything major going on – but the Lord has laid them on your heart. Once you have several cards, mail them or hand-deliver them in the next day or so to spread that dose of Sunshine to a faith sister or two!

Pro Tip: If you’re hand-delivering, recruit a couple of ladies (or more) to help you deliver them to the recipient’s job or home. Delivering them to a job adds an extra special touch!

It’s Not About The Numbers

Whether you’re planning your next women’s ministry event as a growing, going, or doing event, you can be sure that by focusing on those three areas of spiritual health, your women’s ministry will grow. Not necessarily by numbers, but in unity and spiritual support to each other. It is priceless to see as a fellow women’s ministry leader. Sometimes it may take leaning on each other in an unconventional way to draw that out, but that’s the beauty of creative women’s events. I pray each of us can be empowered, ourselves, to plan events for our small churches and women’s ministries that truly enhances the spiritual growth of the women the Lord has entrusted to us.

Read More:

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