I should've trusted the worship leaders at my church more - but I didn't. So when the video rolled and the cheesy, deep, deejayish voice announced, "And now, a Thanksgiving presentation?" I rolled my eyes. Oh, boy. Here we go, I thought. The opening scenes of a smiling, neatly sweatered man sitting in an upholstered chair with two fancily dressed toddlers ...

Femininity has gone through the ringer.

I asked a group of Christian college students from the University of Boulder to explain femininity. They used words like catty, submissive, quiet, modest, emotional, weaker and lesser. With such a definition would you rush to claim your feminine identity? Even women like my grandmother who can out-tailor, knit, embroider, cook, ...

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about sex - specifically, what does a person's sex have to do with how they function in the world? If we could remove everything we learn about being male and female from the cultures that shape us, would there be any significant differences to what it means to be male and female? If there aren't, what does that mean for leadership? ...

It was Saturday and I was at home. So I was a little puzzled when I answered the doorbell to find the church's office manager dropping by. It was near Easter, and she had used the excuse of bringing some homemade treats over for my family as her reason to make the half-hour drive to my house. But there was more.

She also came by to let me know that she had found a ...

Limp with exhaustion, I leaned into my husband's arms and buried my face against his shoulder. "I don't want to wait ?til heaven to not be tired." This was a pattern for me as I zealously strove to minister across the continent to women.

As women in ministry, the demand will always exceed the supply. There will always be far more ministry than we can ...

From the moment my husband brought home The Dangerous Book for Boys, he and our son have been doing some serious bonding. The premise of The Dangerous Book for Boys is to resurrect some of the classic boy activities of yesteryear - things our grandfathers did as boys that boys today just don't do (like make their own bows and arrows or catch frogs in the creek). Since ...

This is Part III in a series of posts. Click here for Part I and here for Part II.

As questions of Christianity and gender are placed within the deeper context of ecclesiology (what is the Church and what is it supposed to accomplish) and "missiology" (what is the church's present context), the conversation will change substantively. Where the former dialogue ...

When my daughter was getting ready to enter second grade, she was really anxious. Every time we asked her how she felt about it, she said she was scared and nervous and she didn't want to go to second grade - ever.

We talked about her feelings and tried to figure out why she felt so anxious. She couldn't really explain it. Then one day, after I asked her to tell ...

Last weekend, I marched on the streets of my town in support of the giftedness of women. Okay, so that's a bit of a stretch, but I DID take advantage of one of the most glorious fall days ever to walk the half-mile or so to my church to attend a "town hall" meeting to share my thoughts on women holding the offices of elder and deacon.

As I crunched through ...

Men love to be respected, and they hate to be disrespected, especially by a woman. Though women in the church already know this, they don't always realize what showing respect to men entails. From a woman's perspective, it isn't necessarily disrespectful, for instance, to interrupt a man mid-sentence. Though to him it may appear that she simply cut him off - ...