I am grateful to Seedbed for their partnership in producing the things I’m passionate about. This time, they are letting me talk about the barriers women church planters face. This is the subject of my doctoral dissertation, so I’ve been putting a little reading time into it lately (gotta love deadlines!).
My project asserts that the original design for men and women is partnership, not hierarchy. Given that assumption, the focus is not on the question of whether or not women ought to preach or lead men, but rather to explore that intersection of human design with human fallenness — that point at which fallenness distorts and stunts female leadership, especially in the arena of church planting. The goal is to discover the pathways that negotiate that intersection so that those called to lead as church planters can reclaim the joy and meaning of their created design.
Here’s a beginning on that work: