Top names aim to empower women at Woman Alive/BRF conference

Balancing our inner Martha with our inner Mary – and throwing in a little bit of Lazarus.

That will be Lucy Moore's aim at the Empowering Women conference (8-9 May – click through to register) at the forthcoming Christian Resources Exhibition International (8-11 May, Sandown Park, Esher).

"How are ordinary women like you and me getting alongside families and living out our faith in front of them?" asks Lucy, founder of Messy Church. "How can the structures of a church actively help relationships flourish?"

Lucy founded Messy Church – the church for people who don't 'do' traditional worship services. At Messy Church, hands-on activity using arts and crafts replace hymns and readings. Joining Lucy as a speaker at the conference will be a number of popular figures including Margaret Sentamu, Jennifer Rees Larcombe and Anne Le Tissier.

"I have a question scrawled in large red letters, dominating my journal: God, How Can I Fit It All In?" admits Anne. "How can I juggle so many ought to's, should do's, have to's and would like to's?"

She will ask whether it has to be all or nothing – comparing biblical Mary with Martha – or if it is possible to strike a balance.

"I'll be sharing some guidelines as we seek to be the women God made us to be," says Anne.

All visitors to CRE can attend the conference, sponsored by popular Christian women's magazine Woman Alive and BRF, publishers of women's daily Bible reading series Day by Day with God. Woman Alive is celebrating its 30th birthday and BRF is 90 this year.

The two-day conference begins at 11am on Tue 8 May when Margaret Sentamu (above), wife of the Archbishop of York, will explain what Queen Esther, Mary Magdalene and Margaret Thatcher (among others) had in common – namely, they were all agents of change in the communities and world in which they lived. Slide guitarist Bryn Haworth, a Woman Alive columnist, will sing and provide a male perspective.

More than 10,000 people, the majority in some form of leadership in their local church, are expected at CRE International, the largest annual exhibition of Christian resources in Europe, often dubbed the' ideal church show'.

The show will be opened by Lord David Puttnam, producer of Chariots of Fire, arguably the most successful sports-themed movie of all time.

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