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Barna’s latest data reveals a historic shift: women now attend church less than men. But what if the Bible’s most debated words about women actually overflow with dignity and strength? Join author and Bible teacher Jen Oshman as we cut through cultural noise and reclaim a Scripture-first vision of womanhood.
Barna’s latest data reveals a historic shift: women now attend church less than men. But what if the Bible’s most debated words about women actually overflow with dignity and strength? Join author and Bible teacher Jen Oshman as we cut through cultural noise and reclaim a Scripture-first vision of womanhood.
Jen Oshman is an author, speaker, church planter’s wife and mom of four daughters. She has served as a missionary and church planter for over two decades on three continents. She currently resides in Colorado, where she is the director of women’s ministry at Redemption Parker, which her family planted eight years ago. Jen’s book titles include “Enough About Me,” “It’s Good to Be a Girl,” “Cultural Counterfeits” and “Welcome.” You can keep in touch with Jen at jenoshman.com.
Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.
SPEAKER_01:
Welcome to the Next Talk Podcast. We are a nonprofit passionate about keeping kids safe online. We’re learning together how to navigate tech, culture, and faith with our kids. Today we have Jen Oshman on the show. She is an author, speaker, church planner’s wife, mom of four daughters. The resume goes on and on. Jen, welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Introduce yourself to our listeners.
SPEAKER_02:
Oh, thank you. Thank you so much, Mandy. It is sweet to be with you all. Yeah, so I currently live in Colorado. I’m a Colorado native. But my husband and I, along with our kids, were missionaries for 15 years overseas in Asia and in Europe. We moved back to Colorado about 10 years ago. And that’s when the Lord opened some doors for me to begin writing and speaking. And we planted a church here in Colorado. This year we just became empty nesters. Our youngest daughter is 18 and went off to college. So it’s a new season of life for us. But yeah, just love being able to open the word with the local church, the global church, any opportunity the Lord gives.
SPEAKER_01:
So thanks for having me. Yeah, thank you. I I’m becoming an empty nester in a few months. My last one is going off to college in the fall. So I feel like I may need to pick your brain behind the scenes here.
SPEAKER_02:
I know. I know. It’s such a weird transition because we’ve spent so much time investing in these little lives inside our homes. But I mean, as you know, as you’re experiencing now, they leave more and more. You know, as high school goes on, you’re like, they’re not they’re hardly around. So you kind of get some practice, you get ready for it.
SPEAKER_01:
It truly does prepare you for what’s about to come. But I also know the drive home from college is not going to be easy.
SPEAKER_02:
I know it’s what there’s there might be some tears.
SPEAKER_01:
It’s a it’s a bittersweet season for sure. Okay, so you have written a new Bible study for women.
SPEAKER_02:
Yes.
SPEAKER_01:
And, you know, I was I was looking at this. It’s not out yet, comes out April 1st, uh, published by Lifeway. One of the things that I love about it is, you know, we’re we’re looking at this Barna research coming out, and we’re learning women are attending church less frequently than men. I was actually diving into this research. I mean, out of parents, married dads attend church more than any other parent demographic. That’s wild to me.
SPEAKER_02:
Yes.
SPEAKER_01:
Why do you think that is?
SPEAKER_02:
Oh, Mandy, I am truly sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for Barna to give us more data on this because I think it is so interesting. I do think anecdotally, you know, I see this in my friends from now, I did not grow up in a Christian home. So it’s my friends from college, my friends from adulthood, and then in our own church plant, seeing women come and go. I’m seeing the phenomena anecdotally. And I would love to know more about exactly why it is. You know, I think we can make some hypotheses and look at our political landscape that’s really polarized right now. And whether someone leans really progressive or really conservative, I think women feel like maybe they’re being missed by both camps. And if it’s being lumped together with their faith, then I can easily see how church would be a turnoff. But I don’t know that that’s the sum total of it. You know, I also think it’s busyness. We live in a day that says women can have it all. So if we’re going to have it all in terms of a career and doing, you know, organic farm to table and carpool and volunteer for the PTA and climb the corporate ladder, then women are probably tired and they’re like, listen, I for decades women have been serving in church and our volunteer hours have been running the church and they might be saying, Not anymore. I’m gonna sleep in on Sunday. I mean, Mandy, what do you think it is? I I I I’m I’m looking forward to the data because I I can make a lot of guesses, but I don’t know for sure.
SPEAKER_01:
Well, I mean, you know, more than anything, I think it’s Satan feeding lies to women. Well, there you go. On both sides, but I do think you have a lot of good talking points, especially on the political side. I think everything is being politicized. And um, you know, feminism, like there’s so many patriarchy, there’s so many like trigger button topics that I can list off as to why I think it, it, it, it, uh, it is part of the problem.
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And as I just said, um, we have served the church in Asia and in Europe and in the United States. So I’ve had the privilege of seeing how the gospel impacts very different cultural settings. And I think when we moved back to the States 10 years ago with four daughters in tow, the pressing question for me on a daily basis is what does God’s word say about women? And how should women be treated in the church and equipped in the church and cared for in the church? You know, I’ve seen it done differently in so many different settings, but I want to go back to actually what do the scriptures say and equip my daughters with a scriptural foundation for who God says they are. And then I just want to bring that conversation into the church because as you said, things are very politicized, culture is very loud, and I think we’re having a lot of unhelpful side conversations about identity and worth and dignity and where we should be and what we should be doing, whether it’s a cultural conversation or a church conversation. And I just I wanted to be able to sit down with um with my Bible and write a study for women and I could give them a resource and say, here, this is what the Bible says about being a woman. Take this and find out for yourself.
SPEAKER_01:
I love that heart behind your study. And it’s called very good. Why did you phrase it that way? Like, what do you why did you title it that way?
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah. I so I was super intentional with the title and honestly the tone of the entire study because I think what I noticed when we moved back 10 years ago was that the conversation has an overwhelmingly negative tone. Um, I think, and I and I say this with all love, I love the local church. We planted one. The church is precious to me. But the the conversation that I think you’re hearing, at least in the bigger sea church here in the United States, tends to feel negative and restrictive. And here are the rules, and don’t do that, and don’t overstep here. And we’re gonna need women to back away from this and back away from that. And again, I know I’m being general because there’s other conversations happening elsewhere that are like, you know, no women should be, you know, in these places. So, but I just wanted the conversation to be positive. Like the Bible says so much more about how God made women, how he equips us, how he calls us, how we’re actually required, not just sort of cordially invited, but required for the kingdom of God to go forward. I want to have a conversation that’s positive. And the truth is in Genesis, God said all that he made was very good. And that’s after Eve is on the scene. All that he had made was very good. Eve is very good. Men and women created in the image of God are very good. So let’s have a positive conversation about that.
SPEAKER_01:
So I want to dive into maybe a talking point in your study that we can kind of dive into a little bit deeper here. So you mentioned Eve. And um, I I wanna I want to tell you too, you said you didn’t grow up in the church. So for me, you know, my grandparents took me to church when I was little, but when I got older and was a teenager, walked away from the church. Like I just felt like, and a lot of it was, I’m gonna be honest, the messaging around women.
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:
Like I don’t think it was a positive thing for me. Um, and there was a lot of shame, a lot of um, I don’t know, I just it was, it was a really horrible, sinful time in my life too. So I could have been, you know, Satan was really feeding me a lot of lies. It could have been all on me. But as I gave my life to Christ and came back to, you know, back to the Lord, and I started learning about what God says about women, especially like in marriage and our role there, it was like an awakening that I was seeing wow, the messages that I was feeding myself, whether they were me, Satan, or the actual church, they were wrong. And so I’m super passionate about what you’re doing here. But it but if we go back to the garden in in Eve, the Bible says that he created a helper. And that I I remember reading it when I first came back and you know, gave my life to Christ. I was like, I don’t know if I like this. I don’t, I don’t know if I like this language. Can you dive into what that word means?
SPEAKER_02:
Helper. Yeah. I do think this is such a this is like a secret that I want us to like sort of let out and proclaim from the rooftops because you’re not alone, Mandy. Actually, in multiple ways, you’re not alone. When I start to have this conversation with women, I hear all the time a very emotionally heavy response, like, oh, I just didn’t grow up knowing this truth. And so I just want to acknowledge there is a lot of pain here behind this conversation that I want to have in a very positive way. I acknowledge there are so many women and girls who are hurting. And as you said, sometimes it’s at their own hands and their own sinful choices. Sometimes there’s things they’re learning in the church that aren’t true, that aren’t don’t honor God and don’t honor women. So there’s that, that you’re not alone in that response. And then you’re not alone in thinking that that word helper feels ridiculous to us, right? I mean, we read that word in the 21st century and we feel like we honestly, our knee-jerk reaction is the Lord, you know, needed to create an intern or an assistant for Adam. You know, like he’s sort of this primary, but he needed, he needed somebody to go pick up the coffee and bring it back to the office. That’s what we get. The word helper for us in the 21st century is not a positive one. But what I loved learning and what I love telling women is that Hebrew word helper, ezair, people pronounce it a variety of ways. I’ve just landed on ezir, easy e r, um, is a word that is used in the Old Testament repeatedly and often for God Himself, God as our Ezre. So if first of all, we know, okay, if this word is used to describe God, and it’s the same word he used for Eve, then we know this is a word full of dignity and worth and value and power because it’s used to describe God. So when we see, for example, in the some of the Psalms or other places in the Old Testament, God is my help, God is my protector, God is my shield. It’s this picture of a strong and capable ally, somebody who came alongside Adam to finish a task, to finish a call on Adam that he could not fulfill himself. And I love knowing that because the truth is the call and the commission that God gave to Adam, he could not fulfill alone. And it wasn’t just that we, you know, Eve was a nice addition or sort of this afterthought that God tacked on at the end. It was that God gave humanity a calling and a commission that neither gender could fulfill alone. He made us to need one another. And so that’s really when God made Eve, he made a companion, an ally, a helper so that Adam could complete the task and fulfill the call God had on his life. Such a dignified, powerful definition that is missing for most of us.
SPEAKER_01:
Man, I feel like God filled you with so much wisdom on how to communicate that to us. And this is exactly why we have to dig into scripture and learn it. It’s not just picking one verse here or picking one verse there and then thinking that’s not for me. Like we really have to get to know the character of God and how he’s using these words throughout scripture and in the cultural context of the day versus versus today, also, right? That’s right. It’s a study of scripture, of learning and understanding.
SPEAKER_02:
That’s right. And I think based off the story that you shared about your experience as a young woman in church, I think so many women are afraid to find out what the Bible says for themselves because there’s this sense of like, well, I want to be, you know, I want to honor my church. I don’t want to leave my church, it’s my community, you know. But I’m afraid of finding out really what God says about women and what the Bible says about women. Because if I’m confronted with something that I don’t like, then I might have to change my behavior or my attendance or my allegiance. And what I want to say to women is you don’t have to be afraid because actually what is in here is very good. When you get those tools and you study the language and you study the setting and the culture and you find out for yourself, you are not going to feel devalued. In fact, you’re going to feel more uh just equipping and empowering and encouragement than you ever have before, because the living God is going to tell you himself how much he values you and his call on you to participate in his kingdom.
SPEAKER_01:
I love how you said like men and women need each other. Yes. Like we each have specific roles. I want to dive into that a little bit in the church because as a parent, the more my kids have gotten older, I see that so much in Matt and I. Oh my gosh. Like, like there are moments when his style of parenting, which is a little bit more abrupt and less compassionate than mine, right? There’s sometimes it’s so needed. And then there’s other times like my compassion and my empathy do need to be front and center, you know? And it’s like I have learned from him to be a little bit more bold. And I think he has learned from me to be a little bit more compassionate. And it’s amazing to see that happening in marriage, like learning from each other. And I keep thinking, man, this needs to happen in the church, right? Like what I’m learning in my own marriage, that needs to happen in the church where we’re learning from each other.
SPEAKER_02:
Yes. Yes. And you know what? This is so interesting. I’m so glad you brought this up, Mandy. The way the New Testament talks about the church, more than any other way at all, is that we are a family. We are meant to be a family made up of brothers and sisters and aunties and uncles and grandmas and grandpas. And as a faith family, we are meant to be pouring into each other and filling up what is lacking in other members of the body. But I think, you know, for so many sociological and historical reasons that I could get into, but primarily I think there was sort of this, you know, in the late 1900s, this sort of war on the family where divorce became more prevalent, um, you know, the sexual revolution took hold and children were being had out of wetlock, wedlock, and I could go on. But in that time, the church, rightly, in some ways, sort of circled up and said, okay, we’ve really got to protect the family. How can we equip nuclear families, moms and dads and children to really thrive? And that is good. But I think the unforeseen flip side of that is that we became really sort of inward focused as families. And so it was mom and dad, son and daughter, you know, dog and cat, white picket fence, close the door. And we as a nuclear family in here are going to make sure we take care of each other. But then we have excluded other people in the church from speaking into our kids’ lives, from being those older aunts and older uncles, those older brothers and older sisters. And we have forgotten ourselves, like, actually, I’m a spiritual mom, I’m a spiritual sister, I’m a spiritual auntie to so many other men and women in my church. And I don’t shouldn’t be closing my front door, I should be opening it. And like you said, the gifts that are given to your husband, the gifts that are given to you. We see that beauty in the nuclear family, but I think that the New Testament especially calls us to put it on display in our faith family and be inviting other people in to shape our nuclear families. And we should be shaping theirs as well.
SPEAKER_01:
I think this is so good because community is so important. Um, you know, I I love seeing transformation in a person’s life to get to know the Lord and get involved in the local church because they do see that wow, I have a family. I have this behind me, I have this person speaking into me. I just, I just think that’s fascinating the way you said it. The other thing is God has really been working on my heart in a in a in listening more to my brothers and sisters in Christ. And what I mean by that, you know, there’s a lot of cultural lies out there. And I see on social media all the time, it’s like, okay, let’s just punch back at this Christian and punch back at this brother and sister and then from Christians. Like these are just not like non-believers and believers punching back at each other, but believers, like just going at it in public. And I’m like, can we take a step back here? Maybe something this person is saying is true, and maybe something this person is saying is true because if they both believe the Bible and they’ve put their trust in Jesus, like we need to be better listeners of one another.
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:
It’s just been breaking my heart really recently. And I’ve noticed like the Lord has convicted me that I’m guilty of it. Um, you know, one of the things that I’m very passionate about is teaching your kids to use technology before they leave your home, you know, and I’m not saying don’t give it, don’t give them phones at eight, eight years old. I’m not saying that, but I’m saying you have a window before they leave. Like, don’t miss that skill. And sometimes I do get super judgmental of other believers who have a different stance of that. And the Lord has so convicted me on it because it’s almost like the Lord is sharpening me through them to make sure I don’t get too lenient on it, right? And and I just think the Lord speaks through our brothers and sisters, and we need to uphold them. Yes. And and your Bible study, I think, is just beautifully laying out how important it is to have those conversations between men and women. Yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:
I mean, the church, God’s vision for his people from the very beginning is that we would be made up of many nations, many gifts, many ways of life. And there are clearly sort of first-degree, you know, uh salvation issues that we cannot disagree on. We have the Apostles’ Creed, we have the Nicene Creed, we have the things that are like, this is not debatable. But then this having lived on three different continents, I have seen the church in very different settings carry out and obey the commandments of God in very different ways. And I think we do need to have some flexibility there, as you say, and learn from other nationalities, learn from other ethnicities, and learn from men and women, learn from that diverse body of Christ. The Lord did not call us to be cookie cutters and to be exact replicas of one another. He is creative and therefore we are diverse. Our diversity is as much as his creativity, you know, which is endless. And so through that diversity, how do we hang on to what is true and not flexible, but enjoy how the Lord has made us different and how we see people living in different ways as they respond to God’s call. And I think, you know, a lot of this comes down to just feeling very secure in the Lord and knowing He’s gonna, the Holy Spirit is going to move in others’ lives in different ways, and that’s okay. And we can enjoy that and ask him to move in ours or theirs or you know, throughout the world.
SPEAKER_01:
I and trusting that, you know, tr and trusting the Lord that, okay, you’ve put this pastor in in position here, and I’m gonna pray for him. I may not think that he’s approaching this specific thing, but we agree biblically. And so I’m gonna pray for my brother. That’s what I’m gonna do, right? I think that we need this in the church so, so much. Um, okay, so so motherhood, you know, we here we are. We are our kids are older now. Um there’s been seasons of my life where um, you know, I’ve worked from home, I’ve worked out of the home, and I’ve been a stay-at-home mom too, and uh with no outside work. And I think this is always such a trigger point in the church, and I hate the judgment around it and the shame.
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:
Can you speak a word into that? Because I feel like I I these young moms that are raising kids today, not only do they have this whole debate of this, they have all these other options, right? Like I just feel the pressure on them is so much. And so, how do we help younger moms not grow up in a situation where they’re so shameful if maybe their way of serving outside the home may not look like another mom’s way of serving?
SPEAKER_02:
Can you speak into that? Absolutely. Yeah. So I share in the Bible study an opening illustration to one of the weeks of study where in my very early days as a believer and as a young woman, I hosted a Bible study in my little apartment, our very first apartment, and invited women from different places, women I had just met in different spheres of life around my city and said, Hey, do you want to come to my apartment for some for a Bible study? And shockingly, weirdly, they said yes. And so I had this diverse group of women in my living room. And I don’t remember exactly the context, but somebody said something about, you know, well, obviously I will be staying home with my children. And another woman in the room was like, Why, why do you why is that obvious to you? Like, obviously, I am going to have a career when I have my children. And all of a sudden, this powder keg blew up of these very different struggles. Strongly held values, both women citing scripture, both women saying, This is how God made me, this is the context I’m in, this is the calling on my life, this is right. And of course, we were young. We were in our early 20s when, you know, at least for me, that was a time of life where I was like, oh, yeah, I definitely have this all figured out. You know, the older I got, the the Lord, the more the Lord really humbled me and gave me daily servings of humble pie and eating my own words. Um, but it was in that moment that I got the first glimpse of women who love God and love his word having very different convictions about what it looked like for them to live that out in their specific context. And as you say, things are polarized and very divided. And in this age, when you can sort of shop online for your church at length, when you can listen to online teachers, when you can get preaching online, I think that we run the risk and we’re seeing the fallout of dividing ourselves into these silos where everyone else thinks and lives the same way that we do. But here’s what’s true. What’s true is that having diversity inside our church bodies, one, it keeps us honest because we have to really think through am I doing what I’m doing because it’s biblical and God has called me to it? Or am I doing it because it’s the safe option? I’m copying other people, I’m just doing what they’re doing. You know, a contradictory opinion makes you think through the conclusions that you’ve come to and it sharpens you actually. It helps you refine how you really think about it. So I think having a multiplicity of visions for women who love God and love the Bible inside one church is really, really healthy. And if there is this pressure to conform to what it specifically looks like to be a Christian mom, you know, again, we’re adhering to the things of our faith that aren’t debatable. But there’s so much that is. I mean, Mandy, one of the things, when I sat down to write very good and spent years, you know, truly studying from Genesis to Revelation, everything that the Bible says about being a woman, there’s very little in the Word of God that is prescriptive that says, if you’re a woman, do exactly this. If you’re a woman, this is exactly this is the list of 10 things that you have to do. What I found is that more often than not, what God calls men and women to is the same thing. It’s that we need one another to carry out. I mean, look at the commands in the garden: be fruitful and multiply, rule and subdue the earth, steward this creation, grow culture. That is not something only women can do or only men can do. And the commands of scripture tend to be given to both genders, not just one or the other. The list of um commands that are gender specific is extremely teeny tiny. And so I do think we need to be wary of voices that say if you’re gonna be a woman who honors the Lord and the Bible with her life, it has to look just like that. I’m just calling that out and saying, I don’t agree. I don’t think that’s what the scriptures say. I think I see a lot of diversity. The the women in scripture in the Old Testament and the New Testament, I mean talk about a wild bunch of women. They are all over the place when it comes to um the ways that they lived and the ways they carried out their values and stewarded what God gave them. And so I just want to encourage any woman listening, let’s let’s fight shame, let’s fight uniformity, let’s seek the scriptures ourselves, let’s seek the word of God. Let’s call in mentors, let’s call in women who are older than us and say, what do you think? Tell me about how you followed the Lord. Um, and let’s come to these conclusions. I’m not saying outside of a church family, but inside a church family, and let’s encourage each other to just obey the voice of God.
SPEAKER_01:
Well, there are so many things, like you said. Once the first thing is, is the Bible true? And are we following that? Okay, that’s been proven, right? We’re on the same wavelength with that. We’re gonna hold true to the truth found in scripture. But then other than that, there’s so much. Yeah. I mean, and I think about, you know, Instagram, you scroll and you just see the trad wife and the, you know, the traditional wife and and and all of these pressures to check a box, or you may not live up to this, or that Satan will instill guilt in us when we may be fulfilling a calling, but we’re looking on Instagram. I mean, we just have to be so careful of the lies and manipulation of Satan here.
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah, yeah, totally agree. And I am so thankful that when I was a young mom and a young wife, there was no social media. I mean, it existed, but I was I lived in Japan and I wasn’t really on it. And I’m thankful because I am someone who is prone to really wondering what do other people think of me? Am I doing it the way she does it? I should do it the way she does it. And not growing up in a Christian home, I was really prone to gravitating toward a more conservative, strict, fundamentalist, here are the rules to follow, because that felt safe. After growing up with none, it was like, actually, that feels safe. But what I found there actually is that’s not there’s there’s a lack of grace in that particular setting. So, you know, and then if you’re a woman who’s like, well, I’ve got to be all in on, you know, working mom and career and have it all, or I’m failing. I mean, there there are multiple ditches on all sides of this issue that we can fall in. My heart’s cry for women in the church is to love the Lord, love his word, love your sisters, and give tons and tons of grace and pray for each other and celebrate each other. And um, together as a family, let’s just build one another up, call each other to, you know, repent when it’s necessary. But are these rules that you’ve made or are these guidelines that the Lord has given?
SPEAKER_01:
What is one passage of scripture that after someone goes through this study that you want them to remember?
SPEAKER_02:
Oh, I love this question. I would say it’s gonna be a surprise probably for you and the listeners. I would say Romans chapter 16, that is the closing chapter on the Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, where he thanks and calls out the people that have labored in the gospel with him. And in Romans chapter 16, we find the most extensive list of women in ministry. And here’s why I hope people remember this chapter. Paul has written a lot of church churches’ letters in the New Testament, and we have them, and they and he is probably responsible for the most sort of difficult to understand or controversial passages about women. So when you pull those verses out of context and draw conclusions about Paul or the early church based on those verses alone, you’re going to have a wildly mistaken perspective on Paul, Christianity, the early church, the roles of women, and the call of women. But if you look at Romans 16 before going to those other passages, then you see that the apostle Paul labored alongside women, that women served him, that women risked their life for Paul, women risked their life for the gospel, for the early church. You see these women who loved Jesus, loved the church, and left it all on the field for the sake of the gospel. So that’s the that’s the truth about women in the church, and it’s always been the truth about women in the church. And I just want women now to understand that and to and to run with that.
SPEAKER_01:
We hear a lot in our culture about like church hurt. And I do think that really plays into women leaving the church. I in this Barner research that we talked about in the beginning. If if we have a listener out there who is a woman and she’s like, I have been hurt by the church, what would you say to her?
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah. I want to would acknowledge that that is that I’m I hate that for her. And I know that that is possible and that that has happened time and time again. And my heart goes out to her. I my strong encouragement to her would be to seek Jesus, open your word, see what it really says for yourself about who God is and who he made you to be, and seek out some women who love you and love God and love the church and have some honest conversations with them. Don’t go it alone, don’t go it online. Do this work in real life with a real physical paper Bible in your lap with a real physical woman who you can trust because you know she loves you. She wants the best for you, but you also know that she loves God and she’s not going to um deal lightly with this. So I think, yeah, it’s so tempting to run to those online voices. But my encouragement would be do this in real life and pick up a real Bible and see what God has to say to you.
SPEAKER_01:
And I would, I would just be, I think the Lord would speak to the to the mentor that you’re calling to. I mean, you God will just show up in so many different ways if you have hearts surrendered to him and you honestly want to learn about what his word says. Is there anything else you would like to say to our listeners? Maybe they’re new to you. They they are thinking about maybe getting this study. What what are some last parting thoughts?
SPEAKER_02:
I think the last thing I hope that every woman who comes into contact with me or any of my work would be that she would just know that the Lord delights in her, that he created her very good, that he is pleased with her and he wants to grow her and pursue her and use her. And what I want to say to women is we are not an addendum. We’re not an optional, you know, dessert on the menu. If there’s time, we’ll get around to it. We’re not, you know, sort of the afterword of the book. But from Genesis to Revelation, women are necessary. They’re created good and they are necessary. And the Lord doesn’t just invite us, he actually commands us to be on mission with him. And so I want women to take hold of that because Jesus came, as John 10, 10 says, he came that we would have abundant life. And I think women who don’t know their creator and don’t know their savior are missing out on the truly good life. And that grieves me. And so, women, I want you to have a good life. I want you to have the good life, and it’s found in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01:
So this study comes out April 1st. It’s a it’s a workbook and also videos that go along with it, right? So this is perfect for like church group settings. You can do it in your living room with your friends, all different sorts of ways you can do it. If they want to pre-order it, how do they do that?
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah. So, and I also want to say, Mandy, there’s going to be a version for teens coming out August 1st. So, mothers and daughters or teen ministry workers and teens youth groups, you can do it side by side and the all of the content will complement one another. Um, but yeah, they’re available right now for pre-order on LifeWay’s website, lifeway.com or Amazon. They’re anywhere books are sold, you can find all of the books I’ve written, including this very good Bible study.
SPEAKER_01:
Thank you for being with us so much, Jen. I appreciate your voice, your expertise in this in this area. And I just can’t wait to see what God does with it. Thank you for being obedient and for your ministry. Thank you, Mandy. It’s a joy. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00:
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