The first presidential election I can remember was the 1984 race (or lack thereof) between Reagan/Bush and Mondale/Ferraro.  I didn’t really understand politics and what the candidates stood for, but I vividly remember being intrigued by the presence of a female among the candidates.

As a little girl with a leadership gift brewing in my heart, having an example on the political stage was very exciting to me.  But in the 28 years that have passed, very few women have attempted that leadership pinnacle.

Kind of seems like we haven’t made much progress.

I have to admit that my heart still longs to see some amazing women leaders take center stage.

With Michele Bachmann’s recent announcement to run for President in 2012, it’s got me wondering if it can be done?  Is it possible for a female to be elected to the office of President of the United States?

I’d love to hear what you think.

Do you think we’ll see a female president in our lifetime?

Why or why not?

What does it cost us when half the church’s gifts go untapped?

I’ve been wrestling with this question quite a lot lately.

Conversations are stirring in the church world about our inability to engage the 21st century female.

“I don’t know where I fit in the church.”

“I feel like I don’t belong because I’m a single woman and everything the church does is for wives and mothers.”

“I don’t want to just serve in the nursery or kids’ ministry, but I don’t know how to get involved in other ways.”

These are statements that I hear repeatedly.

Before I came on ministry staff full-time, I felt this way too…

Continue reading at CatalystSpace

What is it costing us when half the church’s gifts go untapped?

I’ve been wrestling with this question quite a lot lately.

Conversations are stirring in the church world of our inability to engage the 21st century female.

Here are some things that I hear repeatedly:

“I don’t know where I fit in the church.”

“I feel like I don’t belong because I’m a single woman and everything the church does is for wives and mothers.”

“I don’t want to just serve in nursery or kids ministry, but I don’t know how to get involved in other ways.”

Before I came on ministry staff full-time, I used to feel this way too.  However, I remained silent thinking I was just the unusual one.   (I was pretty sure that I must have been given a male brain in a woman’s body.)

The truth is that the majority of the 20 & 30 something women in your churches feel this way.  They may be attending, but they are sitting quietly back out of respect and uncertainty.  They really wrestle with whether they fit in the church at all anymore.

Church leaders: Are we really ok with that?  Are we really ok with perpetuating half the population’s feelings of uncertainty and worth?

If you are willing to engage the discussion, I want to beg you to check out Carolyn Custis James new book, Half the Church: Recapturing God’s Global Vision for Women

Women comprise at least half the world, and usually more than half the church, but so often Christian teaching to women either fails to move beyond a discussion of roles or assumes a particular economic situation or stage of life.  This all but shuts women out from contributing to God’s kingdom as they were designed to do.  Furthermore, the plight of women in the Majority World demands a Christian response, a holistic embrace of all that God calls women and men to be in his world.

Carolyn Custis James unpacks three transformative biblical themes, showing how God gives women a new identity that frees them to embrace the life he gives.

Half the Church embodies a positive, kingdom approach to the changes, challenges, and opportunities facing women throughout the world today.

What trends do you see in how young women are being engaged in the church today?

A couple of years ago a leadership mentor challenged me with a tough statement. She said, “Jenni, how you steward your influence as a leader will directly impact the rest of the women in your church.” That statement has haunted me ever since.

I’m ashamed to admit that up until that conversation, my leadership had been very me-centric. I was worried about me instead of being intentional about developing other leaders, especially the young women leaders around me. In fact, I wasn’t even sure who the young women leaders were in our church. There were hundreds of 20- to 30-something women coming in and out of our doors each week, but I was seeing very few of them lead.

I knew it wasn’t because they didn’t have the potential. Statistics tell us that there are more single women in the U.S. than married, and those who do marry wait until age 30, on average, to do so. Women also are more educated than ever before.

I also learned by way of conversations and observations that many of the single women in our church were serving at local non-profits and other organizations throughout our city. They want to serve; they have time to serve. But their volunteer and leadership horsepower wasn’t being put to use in the church. Why?

Continue reading at Gifted for Leadership

Last week I had the privilege of speaking at Church Planters Velocity Conference about engaging our young women in the church.  This was the overview of my session:

Cultivate Her: Developing the Women Leaders in Your Church & Why It’s Essential

What would happen if half of your leadership horsepower walked away from your ministry?  Statistically over 57% of volunteers within the church are female.  How are you engaging the women leaders in your church?  Do they know their potential to serve?  We’ll discuss why clearly embracing the essential role of women in ministry will set your church up for reaching a generation of leaders that are discounting the church’s interest in engaging their gifts.

I believe that the next great crisis for our churches is the engagement of today’s young women. Today’s 20/30 something woman looks a lot different than women 20 years ago and I think there are things that we as a church can do to more actively engage their gifts and their strengths.  In fact, I believe that if we don’t engage them, we’ll lose their gifts to other organizations that are vying for their time and their talents.

Did you know?

• The average age women get married now is between the ages of 28-31
• There are more single women than married women in the US today
• Women are more educated than ever before

With those statistics in mind, consider these questions:

• Where do women most visibly serve in your church?  The café, the nursery?  How about production, on stage, on leadership teams?
• What percentage of your key leaders are women?
• When do you offer women’s groups and at what times?  Are they mostly during the day and targeted to moms?  Or do you have evening groups and subjects that connect with professional women and singles?
• If you were a single, professional young women would you be able to easily identify where you fit inside your church?

What do you think?  Are we on the verge of a crisis?

How is your church effectively engaging this young generation of women in our churches?  I would love to hear what’s working for you!

** If you’re interested in hearing my entire talk from Velocity, click here to listen.

I recently listened to this TED Talk from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg entitled “Whey We Have Too Few Women Leaders”.   (Thanks to Brewster for sending this my way.)

Sandberg challenges women with three key points:

1. Sit at the table
2. Make your partner a real partner
3. Don’t leave before you leave

And she made a few statements that I’m still mulling over:

Women systematically underestimate their own abilities.

Success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women.

What implications do you think Sandberg’s challenges have for women in ministry leadership?

Have you ever had a plan in mind…what you wanted to be when you grew
up, where you saw yourself in ten years, how high on the ladder you
hoped to climb…and you find yourself looking around at your life and
thinking, “This is NOT what I was expecting!” Sometimes our best-laid
plans don’t materialize the way we hoped because God’s vision for our
dreams was beyond what we had planned for ourselves.

Join us for

“God Ruined My Plans”

at October’s Nashville Cultivate Her event.

Featuring our guest speakers:

Natalie Robertson & Diana Sumpter

Wednesday, October 20th

7:00 – 8:30 AM

Cross Point Nashville gym

RSVP in the comments section of the Cultivate Her blog by clicking HERE

Hope to see you there!

One of the greatest monsters that I wrestle with in my leadership is being confident in the calling and gifting God has for me. I battle the usual suspects of insecurity, fear and the obsessive need to compare myself to others. These enemies to my confidence can get the best of me if I let them.

Continue reading at Gifted for Leadership…

I’m in Dallas this week learning from the amazing women who have been a part of the Leadership Network Women Executive Pastor Community that I’ve been a part of for the last 18 months.  This trip is bittersweet because it’s the last of our group meetings.

To be honest, I was skeptical about joining this group.  I didn’t know exactly what to expect and quite frankly… I’m often a little afraid of large groups of women.  When that much estrogen is concentrated in one place I get a bit uneasy.

But this group was unique.  It didn’t take long to realize that these women live my reality every day.  They deal with many of the same joys, challenges and complexities that I do.  They became a resource to me for questions, prayer and encouragement.

For much of my career, both in the corporate world and within ministry, I have felt a bit like a fish out of water… a professional, driven female in a sea of mostly men.  And while I’ve always loved what I do and the guys that I get to work with, I’ve found safety in the similarities I share with this group.

I will gratefully cherish the memories we’ve made, the animated discussions we’ve engaged in, and the decadent deserts that we’ve devoured (yes, even business women need their chocolate!).  I will make a point to stay connected to these women beyond the organization of our group and I’ll remember the safety I’ve found in hearts that hear and understand.

There is a comfort that is indescribable when you find yourself in the safety of your peers.

I’ve been blessed by the safety I’ve found in a group of similarly gifted, similarly positioned and similarly wired women.

Thank you Sherry Surratt and the entire Leadership Network team for making this community possible!

Do you have a group of your peers in whom you’ve found the safety of similarity?

I recently announced the cool opportunity that Cultivate Her gets to be a part of with Leading & Loving It and Mercy Ministries this year at the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta.  I’ve talked about Leading & Loving It before and how much I love what they do, so I thought it would be great to share a story with you about the power of Mercy Ministries.

FINDING HOPE WHEN HOPELESS… FINDING JESUS

Three years ago, a girl—we’ll call her Rachel—walked through Mercy Ministries’ doors for the first time.

Rachel was born to parents who never wanted her—and they told her so constantly.  She grew up believing she was no more than a mistake, wondering what she did to deserve such abuse at the hands of those who should have protected her. These were her PARENTS!

When most girls turn 13, they’re giggling about boys and trying on lip-gloss.  When Rachel turned 13, she was sold into sex trafficking by her own family, for less than $100, abandoned like trash on the side of the road.

Tormented by nightmares and tangled in a web of lies, Rachel never knew she had a way out.  When she escaped this horrific trap and led to Mercy by a friend, Rachel met the God who was watching over her even in her darkest moments.

She began to change her thoughts, learning Jeremiah 29:11 by heart: “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”

It didn’t happen overnight, but gradually Rachel began to see herself as God saw her—loved, valuable, and chosen by name.

She found Mercy…  She found Jesus…

Sarah was far too young to be a mother when she got pregnant—by her own biological father.  To hide his sin from the rest of the family, Sarah’s father knew he couldn’t bring her to a doctor.  He took matters into his own hands and used a coat hanger to kill the unborn child.  This was her FATHER!

Sarah was locked up in shame and self-hatred when she arrived at Mercy.   How could anyone look beyond her horrible past?

Sarah’s counselor told her to listen to Joyce Meyer’s teachings while here at Mercy, and as Joyce shared how her father abused her as a child as well, Sarah learned to hope again.  After all, if God could rescue Joyce from that pit and use her story as inspiration to thousands of people across the globe, then maybe, just maybe, He could do that for Sarah, too.

When she realized that God had sent His son to redeem her long before she even existed, she slowly began to believe, “This is never what God wanted for my life.  He loves me.  My biological father may have hurt me, but I have a new heavenly Father who promises that nobody will ever take me from His hand again.”

Sarah found Mercy… She found Jesus…

Like many Mercy grads, Rachel and Sarah left the program with their lives transformed and their hearts anew.  Many of Mercy’s grads have wonderful families of their own, loving the Lord, and some on the mission field – these young women are now thriving as productive members of society.

Since Mercy Ministries opened in 1983, girls like Sarah and Rachel have been set free from all forms of abuse:  human sex trafficking, unplanned pregnancies often times due to incest or rape and life-controlling issues that include eating disorders, depression, self-harm and addictions.  This FREE Christian residential counseling program offers help to girls 13-28, again at NO COST! There are homes all around the country in Nashville, TN; St. Louis, MO; Lincoln, CA; and Monroe, LA.

More than 2-thousand other young women have successfully completed the program. They, too, found Mercy…. They found Jesus…

For more information on Mercy Ministries, visit www.mercyministries.com.