BETH MOORE / PASSION
Sometimes I wonder how many women in the church have the gift of teaching, but will never use it, or even entertain the possibility of possessing it. When roughly 90 percent of evangelical pastors and 80 percent of evangelical seminarians are men, it can be hard for gifted women to find role models in the church. With such a void, do some women even consider the thought?
As a college student, I was confused about the direction of my call and the place of my gifts. At my church, women mostly occupied administrative positions. Even in my college parachurch organization, we rarely had a woman speak. Given the scarcity of female role models, I wasn’t sure where to turn.
However my life was forever changed when, in my early 20s, I attended the annual Passion conference, a popular worship and teaching gathering founded by pastor Louie Giglio. Beth Moore took the stage, and though I was only vaguely familiar with her at the time, I won’t ever forget that moment. When she opened up her Bible, she taught the Word like I had never heard a woman teach it before. She spoke with power, competency, conviction, and most of all, anointing. I would never be the same again.
Moore’s example opened up a new realm of possibilities for me and many other evangelical women. Seeing her teach launched my own journey to earn my Master of Divinity and my PhD, all to equip myself for writing and speaking about the Christian life. As a part of my doctoral research, I interviewed evangelical women in seminary and discovered their experiences were much like mine.
“Everyone I’ve ever admired occupationally has been a man, except for Beth Moore,” one student told me. “Beth Moore was my, ‘Wow, look at her, she’s a woman doing the kinds of things that I would like to do.’”
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SOURCE: Christianity Today
Sharon Hodde Miller
