A Fine Sight to SeeSample

She Leads

A year or so ago I spoke about leadership to a group of women, and afterward, I was stunned by their reactions. “It’s funny,” one woman remarked, “because I am in charge of an office full of people at work, but I don’t think of myself as a leader at all.” Another woman offered this feedback: “So often as women we think of ourselves as serving other people, but we don’t identify as leading other people.”

Of course, we know that women lead. But in our American churches. I’m thinking mainly of evangelical ones, but it applies to others, too. I’m not sure we always do a great job of encouraging women to use their voices to lead, to speak up and out about what matters to them. Without a doubt there are women in every church who lead in all sorts of contexts, but we don’t necessarily use the language of leadership to describe the ways they’re using their God-given gifts.

Women lead inside the church. Women lead outside the church.

So we should be talking about how to lead well. Right?

Naturally, within the body of Christ, we’re going to land all over the place in terms of women’s roles in the world and in the church. We can do our very best to be faithful to Scripture and still see things differently. However, none of that changes the fact that women are children of God who have influence over other people. Maybe they’re on the preaching team at your church. Maybe they’re managing an accounting firm. Maybe they’re in the thick of life with little kids. Maybe they’re supervising a department at a hospital. Maybe they’re considering a new and better strategy to channel their entrepreneurial spirit. Maybe they’re creating, or casting vision, or trying to figure out the very best way to love a friend who is hurting.

Recently I was reading Ephesians 4, verses 11 to 13 in particular, and it was such a reminder that the gifts God has entrusted to all of us are on purpose. So today, let’s take time to really see the ways people are using their gifts all around us, and let’s be sure to affirm one another. Brothers and sisters. Then, be encouraged by the ways you see your fellow believers—men and women—leading with humility, compassion, and integrity. May Jesus be so visible in and through it all.