Navigating Male-Dominated Spaces in the Church - Elyse Fitzpatrick and Eric Schumacher

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:

• Recognize and value your own personhood and gifting — you are here because the Spirit called you
• Recognize and value the personhood and gifting of the men around you — honor one another above yourselves, even when it's hard
• Persevere in faith when facing injustices — overcome evil with good, not with silence or bitterness
• Refuse the "I don't need you" dynamic in both directions — partnership is not optional, it's God's design
• Speak the truth in love — even when you feel unheard, even when it costs something
• Entrust yourself to a faithful Creator while continuing to do what's good

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.