Christian women gathering in Boston

An estimated 9,000 women are expected to gather tonight and tomorrow at the TD Banknorth Garden for a "Women of Faith" conference.

The gathering, which offers a mix of preaching, music, and motivational speaking, is a bit unusual in the world of religion -- it is not affiliated with a denomination, and it is a for-profit operation, owned by a Christian publishing house, Thomas Nelson. At the Garden, women will pay between $65 and $149 to attend part or all of the event.

The conferences were launched in 1996, and have become a bit of a phenomenon -- according to the organizers, there are an average of 30 held each year, drawing a total of 400,000 women annually.

Earlier today, I spoke with Stephen Arterburn, the founder of the conference. Here's what he had to say:

Q: What is this about?
A: This is the largest women's conference, and probably the most successful travelling conference like this, with over four million people having attended. The purpose was simply to encourage women. There was no big agenda or hidden agenda. I was sitting in a motivational seminar listening to Mary Lou Retton tell women she hoped they have a 10 for a day, and I thought, nobody's ever done this for women. It was in the middle of one of the worst failures of my life, after I had proved I was the ultimate failure at these things.

Q: What is the scale now?
A: About 400,000 women attend every year. And then a new conference has spun off for young women, called Revolve, which is extremely successful. A lot of the women were asking for something for their daughters.

Q: Why isn't it in churches?
A: It’s in arenas, 12,000 to 16,000-seat arenas. There aren’t any churches that we know of that are big enough to hold it. Also this is not a typical church event. We love it when people who go to church invite people who don’t go to church.

Q: Is it a form of Christian evangelism?
A: I call it an inspirational conference. We’re trying to inspire women that are in big trouble to hang on. We try to inspire them to live the life that God intended them to live.

Q: What is the religious component of it?
A: Everybody that speaks is a Christian, but we’ve got Presbyterians and Southern Baptists and charismatics. There’s no denomination, but everybody is a believer. There is a place that people can check a little box if they’ve made a decision of any kind, but it's not like a Billy Graham crusade, with people flooding the aisles. It’s a grace-filled, shame-free day and evening of no pressure. The key to this is that the communicators are absolutely the best speakers in the world. You will never hear better communicators.

Q: What do the speakers talk about?
A: They talk about their own story, things they’re going through, sharing their own struggles. It’s always a great relief to women to know that not everybody that stands up on a stage and talks about God and Jesus acts like they’re perfect. They’re human just like everybody else.

Q: Is there some kind of take-home advice?
A: This year it’s a theme of grace, so the take-home lesson would be that there’s nothing you could do to earn God’s love. It’s a gift. You can’t earn it. So why don't you relax and quit trying to? Next year the theme is, "A whole new day."

Q: And it's for-profit? That seems odd.
A: It was formed when I was running a venture-capital funded company. It wasn’t in line with our original mission, but it was a way to draw attention to the services we provided, and we moved forward with it. Eventually the venture capitalists sold it to Thomas Nelson publisher. It’s no different than a Christian artists' tour. Those artists work for a musical company.

Q: Does it ever strike you as unusual that you, as a man, founded this conference for women?
A: I’m a very unlikely person to have started it, but I think that’s pretty typical of God, that he seems to like to use unlikely people. Moses spoke for Israel and he was a stuttering murderer. It’s just a kind of a theme God has of using ridiculously unqualified people to do stuff. But I've never been confused about why the success is there. It wasn’t because of me. It was something God inspired.

Q: Does it have any relation to the Promise Keepers?
A: No. We don’t have seven promises or seven anything. There’s no agenda, no pressure. When I started this, I had never even been to a Promise Keepers meeting. I didn’t even know what it was like. This is very different than Promise Keepers. We have men that come, and they beg for something like this for themselves.

Q: This is your second conference in Boston. Is the response different here from elsewhere?
A: Other than that it’s one of everybody’s favorite cities, it’s pretty much the same. Women are women and they respond the same all over the country.