An excellent idea: A short women's conference

Not a conference for short women. A conference that goes on for a short amount of time.

I've spoken at 2 church women's days in the last month or so. Both were well attended and very well organised and I enjoyed them both. But one went on for 6-7 hours and one went on for 3 hours.

The long one was for church women and their friends. It started at 9am with a craft session followed by morning tea, a longish presentation about a worthy christian cause, another craft session, a fabulous lunch, a 12 minute bible talk (my part!), another craft session and afternoon tea.

The 3 hour one was for church women. It had a song, a couple of testimonies, a bible reading and a 25 minute talk, a fantastic hour for lunch and chatting, a musical item, another bible reading and 15 minute talk, a couple of discussion questions and that was it. People could hang around afterwards for afternoon tea if they wanted to.

Just about every woman in the church (young, old and in-between) came to the 3 hour women's conference. A narrower cross section came to the longer day and many left at lunch time (before my talk (sob sob)).

Last year I spoke at a long women's day specifically for Christian women (6-7 hours). I did 3 talks. There was also a long (30+ minutes) book review, 2 long (30+ minutes) talks on worthy causes and a testimony or two. People were struggling in the after lunch session. Older women were well represented and stayed all day but many younger women with kids and sport and stuff either only came for some of the time or didn't come at all.

There's a place for long and short events, but having experienced both recently I'm a fan of the shorter variety. A wider variety of women come, there's a higher percentage of time spent in the bible and there's no need to pad out the program with extras. You?