FireFall Vol. 7: Amplifying Women in Ministry + the Academy
News!!! Plus Visual Museum of Women in Christianity, Rev. Dra. JoAnne Solís-Walker, The Happy Givers, Practical Resource for Search Committees, Review: Are These Apps Worth Your Time?
Thanks for your ongoing support for this effort to amplify the voices of women in ministry who are leading in the church and higher education.
God, we are thankful for Your goodness that prepares us, sustains us, and sends us. Thank You for the women who’ve paved the way for us. Thank You for the women who journey alongside us. Let us rejoice in Your creative faithfulness. Amen.
News! News! News!
I’m thrilled that a generous volunteer is offering to translate FireFall archives into Spanish. Soon, there will be a tab on the home page for Spanish resources.
If you’re proficient in another language and you’re interested in translating past weekly newsletters at your convenience, please let me know!
For the rest of November, for any free subscribers who bump up to an annual subscription, 50% will go as an honorarium for our Spanish translator.
The Online Visual Museum of Women in Christianity: How Do You Picture Leaders in the Story of Our Faith?
If you haven’t visited yet, check out the fantastic website that Dr. Lynn Cohick, Dr. Sandra Glahn, and Dr. George Kalantzis are putting together.
The Visual Museum of Women in Christianity really is designed like an online museum. It displays paintings, sacred art, and sculpture to illuminate part of the story of women in Christianity. It’s a great example of bridging scholarly work out into church life.
As the doctors explain on the “about” page, “The purpose of this collaborative project is to create a curated, permanent visual exhibit of women in the history, ministry, and piety of early, Byzantine, and medieval Christianity that will be available online for researchers, educators, and interested laypersons.
The goal of this multi-year project is to make the visual record of women in ministry and leadership available free of charge and unencumbered by permission requirements; and to include short teaching elements to guide the audience through the constitutive and pivotal role of women throughout Christian history.”
How to Browse: This is a must-visit resource for ministerial students. Scholars in other specializations and pastors will enjoy it as well. You can enter to browse the art gallery first, or you can head over to “read their stories” for deeper dives into the lives of these saints.
How to Use: Some examples from “read their stories” could supplement small group discussions, academic readings, or even confirmation classes.
Why art history matters for our imaginations today: a while back, I listened to someone with a PhD give a public presentation. A classic painting was included in the slides. The presenter brought up that the figures in the painting were all white but said the painting just reflected its time, and returned to the point they were trying to make.
I felt myself frown. I’m not an art historian by any means – but I knew just enough to know some European artists across centuries included people of color in their works. A swift online search confirmed this with multiple examples, including the time period of the painting in question.
And it turns out the Visual Museum of Women in Christianity includes a Black Madonna and child from the 12th century. This is so beautiful and valuable, for many reasons – not least of which is that leaders and academics are still sometimes starkly unaware of visual representations of their own faith that go back eight hundred years and more. Can faculty meetings can start with a “The More You Know…” segment…?
Watch: Rev. Dra. JoAnne Solís-Walker, ¿Somos o No Somos? (Are We or Are We Not?)
Rev. Dra. JoAnne Solís-Walker is Associate Dean of La Mesa Academy for Theological Studies and Professor in the Practice of Leadership and a senior advisor to the dean on diversity, equity, and inclusion for the Candler School of Theology at Emory University. Ordained in The Wesleyan Church, Dra. Solís-Walker is the co-founder and lead consultant at CaminoRoad and also taught at Northwest Nazarene University’s College of Theology and Christian Ministry, Wesley Seminary, Indiana Wesleyan University, and Asbury Theological Seminary. Dra. Solís-Walker belongs to the Asociación para la Educación Teológica Hispana (AETH), Cooperación Misionera de Hispanos en Norte América (COMHINA), and the Hispanic Theological Initiative (HTI).
Enjoy worship and prayer in Spanish in this chapel service; the sermon begins around the 31-minute mark.
The Happy Givers: Listen to Women Preach, God Is Within Her, & More
Over at The Happy Givers, you can browse some fun merch like mugs, stickers, and shirts - and all profits support the Puerto Rico-based non-profit.
A Practical Resource: Discussion Prompts on Female Lead Pastors for Search Committees in Denominations with Congregational Government
The Problem: Women in pastoral ministry and church leadership can have very different experiences depending on their denomination. Denominations with congregational forms of church government are significantly different than denominations with an appointment system.
Sometimes the hurdles are so significant they create problematic levels of attrition – pulpits stand empty as women leave their denomination or the ministry altogether.
When a congregation chooses its pastor from a job listing or a pile of resumes a superintendent provides, women may prepare for ministry, train, get licensed or ordained – then struggle to find a church in her own denomination that will hire her on staff or as a lead pastor. Sometimes women struggle to find a congregation that will host the field experience required for ordination.
What do you do when there’s a significant gap between a denomination’s values and how values are lived at the congregational level - when there are few mechanisms in place to prevent significant loss of women ready to pastor but without a place to minister, year after year?
One Response: Here’s one of the only practical resources for search committees that I’ve found that bridges the gap between values and practice.
This one happens to be from district leaders in the Assemblies of God – it’s a printable PDF called Female Lead Pastors: A Discussion Worth Having – a collaborative resource by Assemblies of God district/network superintendents.
(It’s one of the helpful resources tucked away in denominational websites that I stumbled on 30+ hours into online research. Most of it is applicable across denominational lines.)
It’s a great model for positioning strategic communication by including:
Quotes from District Leaders: In addition to denominational stats and a brief biblical and theological basis, this printable resource includes practical quotes from district leaders. “‘By excluding female candidates, a search committee is potentially eliminating a good match for their church. It important to cast the net as far as you can,’ said Andy Smith, secretary/treasurer of the Central District.”
Questions for Search Committee Members: Here are just a few examples of the questions for search committee members and board members to study, reflect on, and discuss: “What are the most important things a pastoral search committee would need to ask themselves before considering a female candidate? That was the question posed to district/network superintendents in the survey.”
Does each individual member of the search committee subscribe to the Assemblies of God’s interpretation of Scripture as it relates to females in ministry? Why or why not?
Are we willing to accept that God may call a female to serve as the lead pastor of our church? Why or why not?”
Do we have a female candidate who possesses the qualifications, experience, and leadership skills to lead our church? Why or why not?
Will female candidates be exposed to the same kind of examination, respect, honor, and remuneration as male candidates?
Expectation-Setting - Preparing Committees for Possible Responses: In addition to more search committee discussion questions, the resource also lists common obstacles and challenges – a helpful briefing on common questions or concerns so that committee members aren’t surprised or unprepared if they come up. It concludes with a forward push for search committees to engage with these questions now even if they don’t have women ministerial candidates currently, so they’re prepared for the future and ready to proactively include women as candidates in the pastoral search process.
Overall, this is a great resource model for denominations with congregational systems of church government. Tools are only helpful if they’re implemented, but this is a great tool for bridging the gap between values and practice at the local and district level.
Are These Worth Your Time? Loom, Threads (two very different apps)
This week I played around with Loom. Here’s what you need to know:
You can send a quick video memo through email for free - like a brief workplace Marco Polo (and some workplaces are using Loom’s screen sharing ability).
It’s a mobile or desktop/Chrome extension app, but use desktop if you want recipients to have a preview image. Desktop also has some background options if you don’t move around too much, as well as a canvas background option.
It startled me. I recorded a few FireFall thank-you videos and AI took my speech and instantly generated a video title and transcript from it. I’m used to big tech having All My Data, but seeing it printed out instantly was still startling. However - also super useful as a transcript to skim, edit or fix, then include. (Titles and transcripts both edit-able.)
Loom integrates with Gmail, Canva, and also a bunch of other sites my audience probably doesn’t use (who knows, maybe you’re Jira all the way).
I also started up a Threads profile for FireFall, since [insert government hostile to women and Christianity funding purchase of a different famous, recently rebranded social media platform here]. I miss some of [insert here] but I’m really trying not to use it.
Is anyone on Threads, you ask?
What I’m seeing is some people initially were on, heard crickets, left, but are coming back.
Automatically following Insta people on Threads is handy.
So far, it seems to have the basic capabilities users would want.
For now, it’s not swamped with grossness, it’s just kind of chill.
Social media has pros and cons, but here’s one of my takeaways: sometimes, you can discover voices you wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. I like that. I find a lot of value in being able to follow women theologians in Brazil, for instance. (Recently on Facebook I watched some of the worship from the installation service for the new presiding bishop of the Methodist Church of Southern Africa - a woman.) So again - that connectivity is really valuable to me.
Not everyone can afford to travel or has the health to travel. At its best, social media helps bridge access gaps and if we choose, can be used to promote equitable access to resources.
I’m excited about some new resources heading for FireFall. If you find even one resource helpful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. When you do, you’re supporting the effort to amplify women’s voices across algorithms, through denominational silos, and beyond geographic distance.