WELCA has Lutheran women who gather in over 7,000 locations in the United States and the Caribbean for study, advocacy, service and awesome fellowship. But how to mobilize everyone to act boldly on our faith? Well, it's all quite wonderful. 

Expression. The first definition of the word "expression" at Dictionary.com is "the act of expressing or setting forth in words."  WELCA expresses itself three ways, each with its own constitution.

CWO - Churchwide Women's Organization
As you can tell, this is the grandest organzation from which others flow. Within the CWO expression of WELCA, a convention is held triennially (every three years.)  You may have just come back from Triennial this past July! The triennial convention is the highest legislative authority. There is a churchwide executive board who are volunteers elected by the triennial convention of delegates. In between conventions, the Board conducts the business of WELCA. Numerous updates on the business conducted is shared in the many publications released throughout the year. 

SWO - Synodical Women's Organization
This is the mid-level structure that is the communication liaison between units in each geographical area and CWO. The SWOs also have an executive board, who are elected at the SWO annual (or biennial in other SWOs) convention. Delegates from participating units who attend the convention do the electing. Each SWO can establish clusters or conferences of units within its geographical area.  So what's a conference/cluster? It is a grouping of congregations within the SWO. I know, it can get confusing. Maybe if you think about it this way; three womens groups in their congregations are too small so they merge into one Cluster. Now there's enough people to meet and share fellowship. We're not animals, we have coffee, lunch and dessert. :D

Congregational/Inter-congregational/Special Units
(We need an anacronym, right?:)
But the good part of being here is that it's the largest expression of the organization; the heart of the organization. Why? Because this is you! We are the participating congregations (or units) in Texas and Louisiana who invite other women to experience the refreshing love of Jesus Christ to local church bible studies, cluster meetings and special speaker events. Clusters? You'll have to go to the Cluster Information page to get the 411 on whom you can contact and get involved!

For mobile users: If the above information looks a little off kilter, your eyes are right. It's one of the adventures in site building when the changes apply to both the desktop version and the mobile version. The web support team knows about it and hope to fix that in the future. :)