Over and over again in my conversations with women in the emerging church movement, I hear the story of women awakening to themselves. They realize that as women they too are created in the image of God and so in theory can serve their creator faithfully in whatever way they are called. Intellectually, they understand this. They want to engage theology, attend conferences, ...

Today a 29-year-old woman came into the Emergency Room.

When I am not moving loads of laundry from the washer to the dryer, playing taxi driver to my seventh-, fourth-, and first-grade children, or making another meal, I work as a part-time chaplain at a nearby hospital. In the hospital setting, pastoral care is diagnostic. We are trained to understand a patient's ...

It's lunchtime at my local Panera. I'm here slurping French onion soup and conducting a sociological experiment at this popular lunch spot for the business set. Okay, so maybe it's more "eavesdropping on the people around me while my husband wraps up his phone call" than a scientific experiment, but still. I'm noticing something interesting: the ...

Three months ago, I learned a new word. I think. Honestly, the meaning is still vague, but when a conference speaker sketched a simple box with four quadrants that she called a rubric, it struck a nerve. It's an assessment that shows how well we meet our standards. If your dot is plotted in the upper right box (the higher the better) your assessment matches the standard; ...

Did I ever wonder if I could make a dent in an issue as big as AIDS? Of course! But the day I read that article on Africa, I had my own Damascus Road experience. I was blinded by a reality outside my own. After that, I went to sleep thinking about those 12 million children; I woke up thinking about them. The Lord and I began this internal dialogue. I said, This just can't ...

In 2007, Amy Simpson wrote "Why I Don't Do Women's Ministry," citing the reasons for her struggle to fit in an essentially shallow church culture. She may have surprised a few readers, but clearly she spoke the heart of a silent, yet critical mass of women in the church.

These are women who want to fulfill the Titus 2 mandate, to mentor and minister ...

My laptop crashes to the tile, a work-at-home mother's nightmare scenario. I turn from my cutting board to see the recipe-bearing screen lying face-down on the floor. The cord, left within my 15-month old daughter's reach, had proved too enticing.

I had to replace the trashed hard drive and rebuild the laptop (serious feat for tech-rookie me). Two days, four hundred ...

When the soul is strong and we operate from a quiet center, God doesn't need a megaphone to get our attention. We can hear his whispers.

Proverbs 3:32 says that God is "intimate with the upright"; he takes them "into his confidence." The question is not whether God is speaking to us. I believe he is sending us messages all the time - through creation, ...

My grandsons, Carter and Aidan, are growing up in their young years with a surprising truth: Grandmothers drive red convertibles. Really - both of their grandmothers drive red convertibles. Mine is an awesome Mustang, and the other grandma drives a red VW bug convertible.

So why a red convertible? I've had several people ask me, "Aren't you a little old for ...