Kyria Conference 2025
Women from across Northern Ireland (and a number from the republic of Ireland) gathered in Lisburn for the Kyria NI Conference at the beginning of March. In the opening session, Kyria CEO Amy Summerfield urged women to stop, to keep on and to start anew. Here’s what she had to say.
Amy Summerfield
Kyria (named after the church leader of 2 John 1) seeks to champion, empower and release women into all spheres of influence.
Our values are to:
Recognise and Relate
Encounter and Equip
Advise and Advocate
Leverage and Listen
Within Northern Ireland our team is: Donna Jennings, Claire Rush, Ali Knight, Laura Bell, LJ Watt and Amy Summerfield. We will continue to cultivate a diverse and collaborative community of women who lead with confidence across and for the nation. Our goals is to:
Create spaces of safety and solidarity
Champion our prophetic voice
Communicate robust theological foundations
Connect individuals groups ad movements
Commission and invest our shared leadership experience and wisdom
At the start of this conference, I’d like to ask:
What have we done in the past that we need to STOP doing?
What have we done in the past the we need to KEEP doing?
What do we need to START doing as we look to the future?
1) STOP leading in your own strength
Where are you at risk of or know you are leading in your own strength?
Judges 16. Samson is a powerful military leader. He was physical and emotionally tired after yet another victory. He has a reputation and a track record of succeeding. Judges 16: 20-21 – I will go out as before and I will shake myself free. I will arise as I have at other times. I know how to deal with this. I’ve done this before so I will be able to do it again. Over confidence is a killer. Lack of dependence on God leads to self-confidence. Samson did not know that the spirit had left him. God’s judgement is life on your own terms.
There are consequences when we do things in our own skills, strengths and strategies. Every day we need to come and acknowledge our need of God. What we did yesterday may not work today. If we always do what we’ve always done, we will always get what we’ve always got. How do we stop trying to do everything the way we’ve always done it? How do we stop trying to be everything to everyone? How do we stop being over-confident or having a lack of dependence on God?
Every day let us make it our daily prayer to say, “I will not arise as I have at other times.”
Allowing the Holy Spirit: 2 Corinthians 12:9 - strength in weakness. We have a responsibility to bring our own transforming selves daily before God. We need to check in with the Holy Spirit – are you still there?
2) Keep Amplifying Awareness
What are your attentive practices as followers of Jesus and leaders of people that will fuel awareness of Jesus, self and others?
Acts 20:28 Pay careful attention. How are you? How do you know how you really are?
We’ve navigated seven years of global upheaval. The world is more angry and anxious, more divided and distressed than ever. We are feeling weary, disappointed, battered, discouraged or broken hearted.
The Johari window is a model of increasing self-awareness.
Public Room: open area. This is the part of us that both we and others know about us.
Private Room: hidden area. I have a window into this room but there is no window for anybody else to see. The stuff that I know but nobody else knows.
Blindspot: We don’t have a window into this room but other people do. Other people see this but we don’t see it. We only discover more about it when we seek accountability and direction.
Buried Room: This is unknown room – no windows. We don’t know about ourselves and other people don’t know. The only person who knows is God. The only way we can discover it is through lived experiences.
Self-Awareness and awareness of others is built upon staying close to the one who knows us the most and the ones who work with us the most. Effective leaders are self-aware leaders who lead from humble a heart.
David, the poet and king, wrote one of the boldest prayers in Psalm 139. Search me oh God and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
3) Start ditching monuments for the sake of movement
What is your Nehushtan? What is the idol of your leadership? The Israelites were grumbling. God sends snakes their way. After prayers and appeals, God builds a large bronze snake to bring healing to the people. When they look at it, they were saved. But what God told them to look at once, suddenly became an idol of worship. Over 700 years later, they had moved from looking at the snake to worshipping it. Why was it still needed long after it had served its function? 700 years later, Hezekiah destroyed the snake.
Every leader has something that we have idolised. The thing that we have got comfortable in. It could be a method, a person, a building or a successful ministry. If we think about it, the whole of our humanity has a way of collecting images and messages and holding on to them.
Where do we need to repent and renounce our habit of monument building. God says, Forget the former things, look at the new thing I am doing.
As leaders we cannot cling to the past. We can celebrate it. We can learn from it. But don’t live in it. See the new thing He is doing and jump in.
We can be thankful for what God did in the past. But we need to renounce its hold. It is time to ditch the bronze snake. As leaders, memories can get in the way of reimagination. What was, was; but what is, is of more importance. Even good things can become idols in our lives. Recalibrating our leadership is all about focusing on new beginnings and not building shrines to the past.
“God loves reluctant leaders and even better he loves reluctant leaders who know they are frightened confused and broken. Here is God’s leadership model. He chooses fools to live foolishly in order to reveal the economy of heaven which reverses and inverts the wisdom of this world. He calls us to brokenness not performance, to relationships not commotion, to grace not success. A reluctant leader know that her calling to lead is ridiculous but she bears the high Glory of God’s decision to call weak fools in to the work of leading others.” - Leading with a Limp by Dan Allender
All of us are a work in progress. None of us have got it all together. We need to come low and humble ourselves and say, “God come and have your way.” We stop leading in our own strength. We amplify awareness and ditch the monuments.
Recently, I was walking my dog in a rush. God said to me, “I don’t work this fast.” I slowed down. Then I felt the Lord say again, “I still don’t walk this fast.” I slowed down even more. Even my dog was confused. We live in this high pressured, high paced world in life and leadership. We are not equipped to slow down and listen out for the voice of the Holy Spirit. Slow Down!
As we slowdown in healthy reluctancy, we recognise that it is only through God we can do this.