Catalyzing the Conversation on Women, Leadership, and the Church
Cynthia teaches, writes, and speaks on topics of faith and women, both women in the Bible and church history. She earned her Doctor of Ministry Leadership (D.Min., 2022) and Master of Arts in Christian Education (MACE, 2017, summa cum laude) at Dallas Theological Seminary (DTS). Her dissertation focused on biblical, historical, and theological views on women and church leadership. Studying Koine Greek was a key part of her studies.
In 2021, Cynthia founded Theology of Women Academy®. In her online Academy, she teaches the spectrum of orthodox views on women and the church (see Course tab).
A contributing author for the book 40 Questions About Women in Ministry (Kregel, 2023), Cynthia writes for Engage at Bible.org, blogs (see Blog tab), and her writing has appeared in Fathommag.com, Parker County Today, HeartStrongFaith.com, and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Cynthia has leadership and teaching experience in the workplace, church, and non-profit ministries, including DTS Spiritual Formation Leader (2022—present, Ft Worth; 2015—17, Dallas), Chair & Chair Emeritus of the Association for Women in Ministry Professions (2019—20, awmp.org), international Bible conference teaching in Ajijic, Mexico, Miragoane, Haiti, and at Kyiv Theological Seminary, Kyiv, Ukraine, and as a minister to women in a Bible church (2011—14).
Married to her Baylor Bear sweetheart Lindsey, they have two married sons and three adorable grandkids and live in Weatherford, Texas.
In a lecture on the book of Ephesians, one of my seminary professors described Artemis of the Ephesians as a goddess of fertility. Except she wasn’t. Artemis, whose temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was “nobody’s mother.”
Does the Bible direct the exclusion of women from a pastoral role? Let’s put this hotly debated question under the microscope in Part II of “Disfellowshipped Churches, Rick Warren, the SBC, Women Pastors.” An influential SBC pastor writes, “Abiding women in the pastoral office materially harms the work of the Convention because it cultivates disunity where we have long been united. It contaminates the soil of our Convention with distrust of and disobedience to the Scriptures.” I’ll recap this description of sisters-in-the-faith: Women pastors “harm the work,” “cultivate disunity,” and “contaminate the soil” because of “disobedience to the Scriptures.” Truly?
“What changed my mind was scripture,” said author and retired Southern Baptist pastor Rick Warren, to explain why he changed his mind and now affirms women serving as church pastors. In this article, I’ll connect the dots between disfellowshipped churches, Rick Warren, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), and women pastors. For those of you who are not a Southern Baptist, don’t attend an SBC church, or haven’t followed the recent happenings in the SBC (the largest Protestant denomination in the U.S.), please keep reading because this conversation broadens to a discussion about women, the Bible, and the disagreement among complementarians and egalitarians over women pastors.
Catalyzing the Conversation on Women, Leadership, and the Church
