What Does Church History Reveal About Women in Public Ministry?
- As a contributing author to the 2023 award-winning book, 40 Questions About Women in Ministry*, I explore how church history helps us form our views on women.
- Learn how women deployed spiritual gifts in the Early Church to the Middle Ages.
*Permission for use by Kregel Publications, Benjamin J. Merkle, ed., copyright Feb 27, 2024.
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Articles
This page shares articles I’ve written on topics like Jesus and women, women in the Bible and church history, Bible translation and interpretation, and more. I write about the contributions of women in public ministry and relevant theological issues about women and their spiritual gifts. Are you ready to dive in? The category headings below will assist you in browsing the articles.
I write about the contributions of women in public ministry and relevant theological issues about women and their spiritual gifts.
Are you ready to dive in? The category headings below the images will assist you in browsing the articles.
Book Review: Nobody’s Mother: Artemis of the Ephesians in Antiquity and the New Testament
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.”
Disfellowshipped Churches, Rick Warren, the SBC, and Women Pastors: Part II
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 …
Disfellowshipped Churches, Rick Warren, the SBC, and Women Pastors: Part I
“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 …
NEW BOOK REVIEW: TELL HER STORY: HOW WOMEN LED, TAUGHT, AND MINISTERED IN THE EARLY CHURCH
I fell down an escalator, at a recent Evangelical Theological Conference (ETS), to get Nijay Gupta’s newest book, Tell Her Story: How Women Led, Taught, and Ministered in the Early Church. I’d seen a Twitter announcement about this forthcoming book and couldn’t wait to read it. A word of caution, if …
A Daughter’s Worth: Rise, Church. Reclaim Your Daughters’ Worth
My article titled “A Daughter’s Worth” was originally published at Fathommag.com in July 2019.
Be a Daniel, not an Esther.” With papercut precision, the church elder’s words sliced to my core. “Unlike Daniel,” he explained, “Esther discredited herself because she hid her faith.” The elder’s …
‘Bible Women’ Who Founded and Established the Chinese Church
God chose to work largely through women to found and establish the Christian church in China and Cambodia. Nineteenth-century pre-literate Chinese women, evangelized by Protestant women missionaries, were taught how to read Chinese characters thereby enabling them to teach from the Mandarin Bible. …
Tracing the Influential Roots of an Ancient Anti-Feminine Bias to 3 Sources
While tracing the influential roots of an ancient anti-feminine bias, I read a revealing statement by theologian and priest John Wijngaards: “Prejudice against women existed everywhere in the past.” Wijngaards describes the pervasiveness of both secular and religious anti-woman prejudices. From what …
Who Gets Lost in Bible Translation?
Today’s Bible readers mostly read English translations, rather than Greek and Hebrew texts. Though we don’t have the original writings, we do have thousands of ancient biblical manuscripts from which translations have been written. The Bible, in its original form, is the inspired word of God. …
“Mom, When Are We Having Family Dinner Night Again?”
I’ll never forget when my son Matt stopped me in our kitchen and asked, “Mom, when are we having family dinner night again; we haven’t had one in a while?” He and his twenty-months younger brother played basketball on their local high school team, but one attended a Christian school and the other a …