How would you exercise spiritual leadership if you weren’t allowed to be employed by a church, teach publicly, or attend seminary?

Sarah Edwards (1710–1758), wife of famous colonial pastor Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758), lived with all these restrictions, yet they didn’t stop her from becoming one of the most spiritually influential women in her ...

In her landmark book, You Just Don’t Understand, linguist and researcher Deborah Tannen, noted that women tend to use communication to connect and emphasize common ground, even from a young age. Men, on the other hand, more often use communication to compete, to assert their authority. Whether these traits are inborn or simply learned at a very young age, the fact is ...

My brother’s car sped off down the street. The police officer jumped into his vehicle in pursuit. What started off as a suicide intervention had quickly turned into a high speed car chase. As I sat in shock in the first squad car chasing my brother, our speeds increasing to 80 miles an hour, all I could do was pray. Miraculously, the chase ended without any physical ...

Fatigued from a sleepless night of worry, I sat frozen, staring at a list of unanswered emails. I had been coming alongside a woman in my ministry, and her email subject lines had increased in intensity over the week from “Can you help?” to “I’m hurting!” Suddenly, her one word text—CRISIS—dinged on my phone, and I burst into tears. ...

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I once saw my past as a liability. I thought I had the wrong upbringing, the wrong ethnicity, and even the wrong sex. But God had a different plan.

Starting at the age of 8, I walked a mile with my little sister and brother to our little country church, tip-toeing past the house with the two menacing German shepherds on the porch. Although my parents never took us to ...

Two years ago, Heather Larson stepped into the executive pastor role at Willow Creek—what Bill Hybels describes as the number two position in the church. But the truth is she’d been leading and building the church alongside Hybels long before she ever got the matching title. As executive pastor, Larson leads the executive team and leadership team of the church ...

This week, in conjunction with the most recent issue of Leadership Journal, which explores the state of the pastorate, we're featuring two articles by pastors answering one question: what is the current state of your pastorate? Click here to see all the articles in this series.

What’s the state of your pastorate? Let us know online through tweets, blogs, drawings, ...

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A little over a year ago, I sat down with women at three evangelical seminaries across the country, and posed this question: Why are you here? I quickly learned I wasn’t the first to ask.

Over half the women I interviewed said they’d been asked, “Why are you here?”—more or less verbatim—by at least one of their male classmates. Some ...

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During my first year of campus ministry, a senior minister told me that the average tenure for women is three years. I have observed this to be true. Many young women have a passion to serve in ministry, and do so wholeheartedly and effectively, but few last more than five years.

I’m currently in my 15th year. I was made for kingdom work, and I love pouring into college ...