Encouragement

How to Make Confident Decisions

And stand by them.
How to Make Confident Decisions
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I’ve spent countless nights wide awake, mulling over a leadership decision. Did I do the right thing? Was the choice I made best for the ministry and everyone involved? Even when I feel confident making a decision, I often second-guess myself later.

I want my team to trust me. Yet my desire to earn their trust can cause me to overthink decisions and overanalyze ...

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My Difficult Past Makes Me a Better Leader

The very things I saw as weaknesses, I now see as strengths.
My Difficult Past Makes Me a Better Leader
Image: frolik2001/Flickr

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 ...

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Sister, You Are Not a Mistake

The church needs you and your gifts.
Sister, You Are Not a Mistake
Image: galerie_de_pioul/Flickr

In Christianity Today’s article “The Seminary Gender Gap,” Sharon Hodde Miller asks why seminaries continue to be predominantly male, reinforcing the impression that men are preferable for ministry leadership than women.

[Several] factors produce a persistent minority of female, evangelical seminarians with a rather tumultuous seminary experience. Evangelical ...
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Be Honest: You Don’t Have It All Together

And you don’t have to.
Be Honest: You Don’t Have It All Together
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It’s 100 million degrees in Chicago, and I’m sweating through my shirt. I’ve not showered, I’m sporting a baseball hat and sunglasses to mask this fact, desperately hoping no one notices me. I scurry from my car into the building like an incognito A-Lister—only I’m dashing across the church parking lot to my office.

It’s my day off, ...

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Support for Women Church Planters

How the Exponential Conference made me feel part of a tribe
Support for Women Church Planters
Image: Exponential

Loneliness is one of the greatest challenges church planters face.

Seven Key Issues Church Planters Face, a report prepared by Exponential, begins with these words: “Church planting is hard. Church planting is discouraging. Church planting is lonely. It is not for the faint of heart.”

For a woman church planter, those things are multiplied by ten. I should ...

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God Lives in the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days

We need more leaders who are willing to say they don't have all the answers
God Lives in the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Days
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“It's been an Alexander day.”

I love that when I say that to my True Love, he knows exactly what I mean.

“Some days are like that. Even in Australia.”

My Alexander day didn’t involve railroad pajamas, but it did start with only five hours of sleep. And I drove to the gym in darkness only to discover they cancelled my exercise class. ...

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The Strong Power in Every Woman

Reclaiming Eve's place in history means claiming our own
The Strong Power in Every Woman
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Hot tears splashed down my cheeks as my new husband stared at me in confusion. I had been studying the creation story when I stumbled across the strong Hebrew word God used when creating Eve: the ezer. In that moment, God's intentions leapt off of the printed page and started a revolution in my heart. I never would have guessed how highly God thinks of his daughters. I ...

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Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

A book review

Why I picked up this book:

I read Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In for several reasons: 1) I had seen Sheryl's TED Talk on why there are so few women leading and resonated with her message and style. 2) As the COO of Facebook, Sheryl consistently makes the "lists." You know, like the Forbes and TIME "most powerful" and "most influential" lists they create each year. 3) There still ...

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From No Experience Necessary to Your Experience Necessary

We can’t afford to make young women wait for their chance to lead

Every job I have applied for, or hired for, has required experience of one kind or another. Software experience. Task experience. Leadership experience. I can't think of one job description I have ever written that included the line "no experience necessary."

Because let's face it: we don't want to take a risk on someone cutting their leadership teeth on our projects and our ...

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Jesus in the World of Worthless Daughters

"Thank you, Mother, for raising a worthless daughter."

These words , part of a lament of a bride going to meet her husband for the first time, summed up the experience of women in China in the 1800's, according to Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. In this book Lisa See brings to light the reality of life for a female in that society: No value, no rights, raised ...

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