Leadership as a woman is rarely straightforward. There are moments when the work is thrilling — when something clicks, when a conversation changes someone, when you can feel the weight of being right where God intended. And there are moments when the same role feels complicated, lonely, or quietly contested. Living in that tension without losing your footing requires something more than strategy. It requires a foundation.
In this recorded teaching, Rebekah Hannah — president of Anchored Virtual and staff member at Redeemer Lincoln Square — lays out a biblical framework for what it means to be a faithful female leader: not a list of techniques, but a grid for thinking about who you are, whose work you're doing, and what you're actually building.
Becca walks through three movements that undergird faithful leadership:
She also addresses what makes women's leadership distinctive — not a different list of virtues, but a different vantage point — and why the church is healthiest when men and women lead alongside each other rather than in competition.
The session includes a rich Q&A on: how to lead faithfully in complementarian contexts without making it your flag to carry, what the church's role is in affirming women's callings, how to navigate being direct without losing gentleness, when personality frameworks are helpful versus when they become an excuse, and what to do when the season calls for stepping back rather than pushing forward.
Leadership invites a particular kind of wounding. A friend who turns her pain into accusations. A colleague who breaks your confidence. A congregation that critiques you in ways you can never fully respond to. A mentor who abuses their power. Ministry doesn't protect you from being sinned against — it often puts you directly in the path of it. And then Scripture asks you to forgive.
In this recorded teaching, Ellen Dykas — director of equipping at Harvest USA and 18-year veteran of ministry to women in some of the most painful relational circumstances imaginable — opens up the biblical anatomy of forgiveness specifically for women in leadership. She shares her own recent, still-unfolding story of being wounded by a close friend inside her church community, and walks through what it actually looked like to forgive faithfully without pretending it didn't hurt.
Drawing on Tim Keller's framework and Ken Sande's Peacemaker, Ellen unpacks three movements at the heart of forgiving well:
The session also includes a rich Q&A on: how to receive criticism without letting it either feed your ego or poison your soul, when to confront versus when to overlook, how to distinguish being sinned against from simply being disappointed, the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation and restoration, what to do when you genuinely cannot pray for the person who hurt you, and how to walk someone toward forgiveness without minimizing their pain.
You lay your head on the pillow at night and the voice starts: Why didn't you get more done today? You go through every area of your life — your kids, your marriage, your church, your work — and you're not winning at any of them. And somewhere underneath all of that is a quiet assumption you've never actually examined: that a better-organized, more disciplined version of you actually could do it all.
In this recorded teaching, Dr. Kelly Kapic — theologian at Covenant College and author of You're Only Human — makes the case that exhaustion in leadership is not primarily a time management problem. It's a theological one. And the fix is not a better to-do list. It's recovering a truth the church has largely forgotten: finitude is not sin.
Kelly walks through what it means to be a creature — limited in time, knowledge, energy, and space — and why those limits are not a failure to overcome but a goodness to receive. He traces the confusion between creaturely limitation and sin all the way back to the Garden, and shows why every attempt to build Christian humility on a foundation of sinfulness tends to make things worse, not better.
Key ideas for leaders:
The session also includes a wide-ranging Q&A on: how to discern faithful stewardship from cultural pressure to do everything, how to say no to genuinely good things (which is harder than saying no to bad ones), what to do when you're already overcommitted, what honoring your limits looks like during an actual harvest season, how to cultivate real humility that isn't just focused on what a terrible sinner you are, and a particularly honest conversation about what it costs women leaders to constantly feel like they have to prove themselves in rooms that weren't built for them.
There's a particular temptation that comes with ministry: letting your study for teaching become your own spiritual nourishment. You open the Bible to prepare for your women's group or your next talk, and it feels productive — it's still time in the Word, after all. But if that's your only time there, something quietly starts to dry out. You're not abiding. You're just creating content.
In this recorded teaching, Glenna Marshall — pastor's wife of 20 years, author, speaker, and women's Bible study leader — walks through John 15 to make the case that everything in ministry flows downstream from one thing: staying attached to the vine. Not as a chore, not to check a box, but because apart from Jesus, the branches wither.
Glenna unpacks three layers of what it means to abide:
The session also includes a rich Q&A on: what God's pruning has looked like in 20 years of ministry, how to maintain healthy relationships with your church when it also employs you, how to keep devotional prep from becoming just teaching prep, what to do in a dry season when you don't feel like opening your Bible, how to see your own spiritual growth when you're always focused on everyone else's, and how to decide what to study for your own personal growth.
You have gifts. You have a calling. And you regularly find yourself in rooms, on teams, and in churches where the systems, the culture, and sometimes the people weren't built with you in mind. Knowing how to show up faithfully in those spaces — without losing yourself, without becoming bitter, and without abandoning the mission — is some of the hardest work of leadership.
In this recorded teaching, Elise Fitzpatrick — author, biblical counselor, and 50-year veteran of navigating ministry spaces — and Eric Schumacher — pastoral ministry director and co-author of Jesus and Gender — bring both personal experience and biblical grounding to the question of how women lead faithfully when they're not always fully seen.
Elise walks through six practical postures for navigating male-dominated spaces:
Eric brings a case study from Numbers 27 — the daughters of Zelophehad — and makes the case that women's initiative, insistence, and persistence are not insubordination. They are what submission to the mission actually looks like. When these women brought a concern to Moses, they weren't being pushy. They were making sure God's will was done.
The session also includes a candid Q&A on: how to tell if you're being valued or merely tolerated, when a problem is a gender problem versus just a leadership problem, how to raise awareness with men who don't see it because the system was built for them, how to hold onto hope when your stories have been hard for a long time, and whether siloed men's and women's ministries help or hurt partnership.