Come! Ground yourself in the Good News:

Faith Reflection

The Time for Boldness

1 March 2026

by Julie Arndt, Messenger Editor &

Secretary, North Carolina Women of the ELCA

This image is the logo for North Carolina’s Women of the ELCA for the next two years. When the current board met for the first time together, creating it was one of our first tasks together. We considered a few other themes,, but settles on this one. It felt right. The image, we found in Google Images clip art and with some digital manipulation, this is where we landed.

I like it.

The fractured heart represents the conflict and confusion so many people live with in our time, the uncertainty that has become a fact of modern life. We don’t know what to trust, who to trust, what to believe. In the midst of the conflict, though, there is the certainty of God’s love for us, guiding, healing, comforting. It breaks through the cracks and sets us right.

As we have prepared for Bold Women’s Day this week, I have been thinking about this logo and the words behind it.

These are troubling times. And they are not times when we have the luxury of sitting back waiting for things to happen to us. “These are the times,” wrote Thomas Paine in the opening line of his "The American Crisis," pamphlet series back in December 1776 during the American Revolutionary War, “that try men’s souls.”

As women, as Christians, we are called upon to act boldly on our faith. Often as we act on our faith, our greatest support as women is other women.

The North Carolina Women of the ELCA encourage women in a variety of ways, offering financial help for those seeking ordination or desiring to become lay preachers or SAMs. The Christine Bohr Andersen Scholarship assists North Carolina women who wish to pursue a seminary education at an Accredited Institution.

Scholarships are available that enable women to attend gatherings and other events. Most recently the NC WELCA Board established one such scholarship in memory of Maxine Amos. The scholarship will assist women, especially women of color, to attend Triennial WELCA Gatherings.

Supporting Our Sisters is a fund established to help secure inspiring speakers for events, provide learning resources for our leaders, provide seed money for new ministries, and support for existing ministries.

Women empowering women. Support from our sisters encourages us to find our voices, to take a stand and demand justice, to speak truth to power, to lead protests, to write letters, to make phone calls, to feed the hungry, to offer comfort and prayer to those who need it.

Support from our sisters encourages us to boldly step out into the world and do something about the issues that cause us concern, the boldness to do more than sit back and let things happen to us.

Yes, our times try men’s souls, and women’s too.

But together, we will boldly join our hands and voices and step into the fray, knowing that our sisters and our Father have our back.

Now is the time to discover your own brand of bold.

We’ll be there with you.