Shannon loves to speak to women’s groups and moms groups, encouraging ladies to put their hope in God!

Current schedule:

October 20, 2009 momstop at Calvary Baptist Church in Grand Rapids, MI

November 6, 2009 Moms & More, Grand Ledge, MI

November 19, 2009 MOPS at Ridgepoint Church in Holland, MI

December 6, 2009 Immanuel Reformed Church, Grand Rapids, MI

December 17, 2009  MOPS at West Cannon Baptist Church in Belmont, MI

Past topics include:

Age Old Beauty Secret (I Pet. 3:3-7)

American women spend billions of dollars every year on makeup, dieting, and trips to the salon.  Our exorbitance suggests an urgency to acquire beauty. (And bearing children doesn’t exactly catapult a woman forward in this pursuit!) Glancing back at beautiful Eve, with the fruit sitting like a rock in her stomach, we’ll discover the roots of our ongoing struggle with wanting control, and using beauty to get it.  Then, we’ll listen as God whispers an age old beauty secret — one that promises unfading beauty on the inside and out.

Diet Ditchers and Anorexic Cooks: (Luke 15)

The church is like a giant kitchen that is constantly cooking up feasts of joy, for the cooks to share collectively. But some of us mistakenly believe that Christianity is about depriving ourselves, rather than feasting. We ‘Dieters’ usually become either:
1) Diet Ditchers, who throw down our aprons and set out for the world with our mouths watering.

Or:

2) Anorexic Cooks, who stay in the kitchen, but constantly talk ourselves out of tasting the food. Jesus told a story of two brothers who erred in these two ways… The prodigal eventually learned that the greatest feast of joy was with his father. And the older brother, who deprived himself out of obligation, was being invited to enter the feast. Am I a woman who is dieting or feasting?

Don’t Cheat Your Kids out of Trembling Before God

Because I so desperately want my kids to love God, I’m tempted to sugar-coat his fearsomeness. But where’s the wisdom in warning my kids about hot stoves and busy streets, but not the One who can destroy both body and soul? When I present God as a G-rated character, how grossly I misrepresent him! Rather than zooming in on God’s love and mercy, and cropping the rest away, I must show my kids the full and dazzling landscape of God’s character!

God Wants to Steal the Show and Dazzle you with Christmas  (Luke 1)

Mary allowed God to ‘rewrite’ her script, and cast her in a role she hadn’t auditioned for!  If there’s ever a center stage moment in a woman’s life, it’s when she’s wearing the white dress.  And if there’s ever a time that she’s upstaged, it’s when she’s holding a newborn! Sometimes God clears our stage, and asks us to take a front row seat because he wants us to catch our breath as he dazzles us from Center Stage with his greatness.

I Need Proof! (Ex. 25:10-22)

An unfaithful husband, bankruptcy, cancer, a homosexual family member, aging, death of a friend… Any one of these can cause us to doubt and ask, “Are you really there, God? Am I really your child? Am I truly on this path for a purpose?” Israel struggled with all of these questions in the desert. And God was kind enough to give them an Arc of Testimony- Proof that He was with them! We’ll explore the treasures (manna, Aaron’s rod, stone tablets) in the arc and the stories they represent; and learn that we, as God’s women today, have the same proof.

Run-On! Sentences (Heb. 12:1-2, Heb.11)

If I’m running the relay of faith, trying pass the baton to my kids, my heart rate will be up (not resting). But as a Mom, it’s hard to keep straining toward an invisible finish line with prizes that aren’t yet attainable. It’s easy to get sidetracked and fixate on whether my kids are keeping up with the Jones’s kids!  I need to listen to some parents who have already crossed the finish line and can see what I can’t. They’re shouting to me from the sidelines as I run past some of the exact same pitfalls they encountered.

The Significance of Dog Hair, Trash Cans, and Toilets

Though exhausting, my work as a stay-at-home mom can feel very insignificant-- especially since each of the things I accomplish today will need to be accomplished all over again tomorrow!  I keep looking for an on-ramp to the highway of significance, but the road blocks and detours of sticky floors and towering laundry baskets burn off all of my energy before I reach it.  Yet, as God sifts my accomplishments, he assigns the most value to serving.  This means that endless crumb sweeping and nose wiping actually offers endless opportunity for advancement! 

Treasure Maps Shouldn’t Bypass the Treasure!

In the same way that you might say to a toddler, “If you eat your vegetables, you can have a cookie!” I have mistakenly said to children, “If you receive Jesus, you can go to heaven, and escape hell!”  And so, little Ethan raises his hand, prays the prayer, signs the card.  But what has changed?  Ethan asked Jesus to save him from hell, but he has always craved safety.  He’s thrilled with the gift of heaven.  But he can’t remember a time he would’ve turned it down.  Really, nothing had changed.  Ethan’s heart is embracing the things he had always embraced:  safety, happiness, escape of consequences.   
The problem is that Ethan does not have a new treasure.  He just has a card to reinforce what he has always treasured. And this is not the radical gospel of which Jesus spoke.

Who’s This Gift For? (I Cor. 12)

When I receive a gift, I get to decide when to take the wrapper off and how I’ll use the gift, right? Not this gift! Our spiritual gifts come with a gift tag that says: “To: the Body, From: Christ”. Christ placed these gifts in our hands to serve as little hammers and chisels which chip away at the flaws and imperfections in the Body of Christ. As the gifts are used for the common good of the Body, we collectively begin to reflect Christ’s image more accurately.