"Live Anointed," Kickstart "Women & Spiritual Authority" & FireFall Season 2
After rest, acceleration: book dropping, invitation to fuel a venture, and upcoming weekly newsletters amplifying women in church leadership
Friends, it’s lovely to return. I researched, wrote, and published over 20 weekly newsletters last fall and winter, highlighting women leading in the church - women across denominations, traditions, time zones, and historical eras. Each newsletter amplifies resources by, for, and about women in ministry. Pastora Daniela Galindo-Cabriales very generously began translating weekly newsletters into Spanish. And in the process, I developed a Zotero library that’s bursting at the seams - over 3,000 entries and counting.
Connecting across silos is a phenomenally powerful kind of grace.
It’s practical grace, too:
There is spiritual formation in reading testimony.
There are nuts-and-bolts takeaways when we learn from women of different places, eras, status, life experiences, traditions, and denominations.
There is perspective-adjustment, clarity, inspiration, and awe at the broad sweep of God’s work that is extraordinarily consistent across centuries and continents.
From Nenilava of Madagascar to Tillie Paul Tamaree, from Zilpha Elaw to Mary Barritt Taft, from Santos Elizondo to Ellen Stewart, from Mary Dyer to Candida Xu -
to practical board training tools, insights on Glass Walls, podcast episodes, and more -
I’m excited to keep amplifying.
FireFall Season Two Coming Soon
Last spring, I needed a break - heart, soul, mind, strength. I thought I’d fire up again in September. I needed longer.
My brain and bones are richer for it. You can feel it in my words, too: they’re weightier, and lighter; more timely, but also somewhat freer.
Soon Season Two of FireFall will begin.
Sneak Peek: We’ll look at Inkosikazi Nomawa Esther (Letswele) Mkabela, a Nazarene woman who pastored in South Africa in the 1940’s and 50’s; Refusal to Be Silenced, a paper on Catherine Booth; a report on the state of Baptist women in ministry; the Association of Theologically Trained Women of India; new strategies for women church planters; Jorgelina Lozada; and more.
Please browse Season One if you haven’t yet: there are so many wonderful voices, insights, art, resources, books, podcasts, lectures, sermons.
Book Drop: Rev. Katie Lance’s Lived Anointed: How the Holy Spirit Sanctifies Men and Women to Lead Together
“I’ve been missing out on what I was designed to do.”
Rev. Katie Lance sat on the porch of a woman in her seventies who’d recently preached her first sermon. The woman sat quietly sobbing.
It’s one of many engaging glimpses in Live Anointed, a book project I’ve had the privilege of working on.
I’ve worked on several books, but this one was unique. Its release is almost here; when it’s out, I’ll share it.
Rev. Katie Lance has worked tirelessly supporting pastors who are women, from coaching to equipping to fervent intercession, and her heart for a sanctified church is laser-focused.
She didn’t grow up going to church. She joined the denomination I grew up in. She worked as an RN and didn’t know that quiet or loud resistance to women in pastoral leadership was A Thing: her denomination officially supports women in all leadership positions. And it has a long, storied heritage of preaching and pursuing sanctification.
So when she felt God calling her to leave work as a full-time nurse to pursue ministry as a lead pastor, she was unprepared for the dissonance she encountered in very personal ways.
And then she started asking questions and talking to others.
She interviewed hundreds of pastors, men and women from multiple denominations. She is able to enter challenging spaces with graciousness: listening without defensiveness, but also listening without losing herself.
Some of the stories are jaw-dropping - quite literally, I found my jaw dropping multiple times. And I grew up with adults asking me as a kid if my Mom working as a pastor was unbiblical.
In every re-read, I was struck by how much this book is really a call to sanctification. Underneath, the heartbeat is holiness, and that pulse defines the entire book cover to cover.
In that sense, it reads like a spiritual formation book.
Each chapter includes reflection questions submitted by a diverse range of pastors and church leaders; the questions shape Live Anointed as a practical resource for leadership teams and small groups, especially in any denomination where there’s a gap between official position on women in pastoral leadership - and practice.
Live Anointed debuts before the end of the year.
(A side note: There were times when sections of this project were particularly difficult that I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt Katie was praying for me. When she prays for you, you know it. And she lives what she preaches.)
Project Launch: Kickstarting “She-Preachers: Seven Snapshots of Women and Spiritual Authority”
Next week, I’m launching a Kickstarter for one of my projects: a book. With a major project finished and some contract work wrapping up, the time is right. I’d like to leverage this window of opportunity.
Kickstarter works like this: if you pledge money, you only pay it if the project fully funds.
If it fully funds, I can put time toward it. If it doesn't, I may not be able to. That, as they say, is life.
The working title is She-Preachers: Seven Snapshots of Women and Spiritual Authority. ("She-preachers," as Pam Durso would remind us, is an old pejorative term a la the 1600’s, when some of the early women preachers in England were Quakers and...yes, Baptist.)
She-Preachers: Seven Snapshots of Women and Spiritual Authority will inspire readers with the insights, qualities, and practices shared by seven diverse women who all lived within the past four hundred years - women from around the globe who followed God’s call in the middle of profound challenges.
Lack of status, resources, and official recognition by church bodies could not extinguish the spiritual authority evident in their intercession, preaching, writing, or ministry.
Mostly drawing from primary sources or close-proximity secondary sources, She-Preachers will engage readers through accessible storytelling that highlights and honors their own voices, while opening space to explore the ways their witness continues to press into today.
While respectfully handling the unique place each of these women occupies in broader historical, geographical, and cultural movements, my goal is not to write an academic history book - much as I appreciate them, learn from them, and glean from them.
My goal is to fortify church leaders, students, church members, and pastors with reader-friendly snapshots from the remarkable accounts of the spiritual authority of women who lived before us.
By celebrating seven very different women, readers can enter the book wherever you like: wherever you encounter a point of entry and interest, like flipping through a photo album and getting absorbed by a particular image.
Out of thousands of women preachers, it’s difficult to highlight only seven. But: early backers will at least get a supplementary bonus eighth profile.
While men were still debating whether or not women have souls and whether or not it was worthwhile to teach women to read, God was calling women to preach scripture publicly to audiences of both women and men - and women were responding.
There is a difference between recognized status and spiritual authority - as leaders of the Civil Rights movement knew so well; as Mary Dyer, Quaker preacher who was hanged in Boston in 1660 knew so well.
For some women, it took decades to ease into their calling. For many, their calling caught fire as testimony to sanctification. Some spent time in jail; many faced hostile crowds; some were dismissed on the basis of both sex and race.
But as women relented to that pressing sense of call, as they began to stand up and speak up, the Holy Spirit showed up - and they began bearing witness to their obligation to answer to an authority that transcended any mortal walking on earth.
With a great deal of fasting and prayer, often enduring physical discomfort, these women sowed grace that grew fruit in the short-term and the long-term.
It is not a stretch to say that without the ongoing, enduring preaching of women of color and women of European descent around the world - religious freedom would’ve remained stifled far longer; the abolitionist movement would have been weaker; legislative action to protect vulnerable women in England would not have accelerated; the suffragist movement would have taken even longer; people who found themselves in war zones would have suffered far more; and the fallout from physical and substance abuse in rural areas would have gone unconfronted.
Technology prioritizes the living, but the living have been through a lot of disorientation.
Maybe you need the Hebrews 11-esque testimony and examples of women who practiced public habits of preaching in ways that angered saloon owners, pastors, corrupt politicians, traffickers, those with high social standing and wealth, those without high standing or wealth, pimps, the Klan, occupiers, mobs, misogynists, and sometimes their own families.
These women angered these entities - and many more - because they were radically focused on God’s truth in scripture; they could not abide distance between their spirits and the Spirit of God if they ignored the pressing conviction to preach; and they would not accept human misery either as something an individual deserved who “brought it on themselves,” or as inevitable - something which God predestined or the scope of which was too great to transform.
Their holy boldness fostered moments like the first time a group of small-town Methodists met for racially integrated worship.
Their holy boldness helped provoke the uprising of a violent anti-Salvation Army group known as the Skeleton Army.
Their holy boldness stopped invasive physical exams of women even suspected to be prostitutes.
Their holy boldness told a famous evangelist he needed to be sanctified - and prayed for him to receive it.
Their holy boldness prayed for the car tires to last to their next scheduled preaching stop.
Their holy boldness helped turn away an attempted Klan bribe at a camp meeting.
Their holy boldness met the spiritual needs of people under occupation.
Their holy boldness revealed the trafficking of young girls from England.
Their holy boldness turned down prestige or ease.
Their holy boldness stepped foot on the soil of the nation that had just dropped atomic bombs on their homeland.
Their holy boldness advocated for women’s ordination decades before it happened.
Their holy boldness resulted in rotten egg and dung being thrown at them, their hotels being threatened, physical assault, and incarceration.
Their holy boldness stood up to - and prayed down - a bullying sheriff attempting to shut down a tent meeting.
“The world was not worthy of them…”
One preacher became very ill and almost died; she had a vivid dream of Death coming for her. In her dream, she argued with Death; Death argued back. Then, she told Death, "No, YOU DARE NOT, I have work to do!"
And she got better.
Will you join me in amplifying these bold, diverse, brave, anointed voices?
Their examples - and their prayers - stand behind us, while shining a light ahead of us.
If She-Preachers is fully funded, you'll have your copy in hand before the July daylilies bloom. If funding exceeds the target, I'll create additional materials.
Next week I’ll share the Kickstarter link.
Because I have no interest in silencing the voices of people of color and women out of history, out of classrooms, out of lecture halls.
I do, however, have a great deal of interest in amplifying them.
And I intend to do so: their testimonies and sermons turned towns, cities, regions, and nations upside-down.
Spiritual authority does that.
“For in obedience to the will of the Lord God I came, and in his will I abide faithful to the death.” - Quaker Mary Dyer, before her execution, 1660