Breaking Through The Stained Glass Ceiling

This collection of lively Q&A interviews with key contemporary female religious leaders focuses not only on the discrimination faced by women in religion, but documents the emerging leadership of women in several faith traditions.

Some of the largest, most influential and effective ministries and churches around the world have placed a high value on women and their roles in the church. These days it is refreshing to see God's hand of favor and blessing on Christian women and Bible teachers who are being used both nationally, regionally and in their local churches.If...

The reality of a stained glass ceiling is familiar to most women called to the pastorate. Despite being more likely to be seminary educated, female clergy constitute less than 10 percent of Protestant leading pastorates and those who do hold such pastorates are generally paid less than their male counterparts. In light of such statistics, Pastor Chris Smith explores how to overcome the challenges in breaking through the stained glass ceiling and she goes a step further. She shares the lessons learned and best practices of the success stories those women who are currently serving in solo or senior pastorates. Based on a national survey of female clergy, this volume is rich in insights based on data as well as personal anecdotes insights that will empower not only women called to the pastorate but also their male colleagues and denominational leaders who want to support them.

Can women successfully pastor large membership churches? In 2006 at an international meeting of United Methodist clergywomen, this question was raised about how women were breaking gender stereotypes to serve in churches with 1,000 or more members. Two years later, the Lead Women Pastors Project was launched with 64 clergywomen by the General Board of Higher Education and Ministry. Breaking Through the Stained Glass Ceiling: Women Pastoring Large Churches emerged from the project which sought to affirm, empower, and nurture women who pastor large churches in the UMC and is a compilation of stories from some of the clergywomen participants.

Are you willing to create positive change in your life to fulfill your leadership potential? That's where Robyn's leadership coaching strategies can help. They will: Guide you not only to understand but to activate your potential to lead. Help you find new ways to understand your leadership skills to gain better results. Nurture your distinct vision of the future and teach you how to engage others to embrace that vision. Being a woman isn't an obstacle to your leadership, it's your asset!

Stained Glass Ceilings speaks to the intersection of gender and power within American evangelicalism by examining the formation of evangelical leaders in two seminary communities.Southern Baptist Theological Seminary inspires a vision of human flourishing through gender differentiation and male headship. Men practice “Godly Manhood," and are taught to act as the "head" of a family, while their wives are socialized into codes of “Godly Womanhood" that prioritize prescribed gender roles. This power structure privileges men yet offers agency to their wives in women-centered spaces and through marital relationships. Meanwhile, Asbury Theological Seminary promises freedom from gendered hierarchies. Appealing to a story of gender-blind equality, Asbury welcomes women into classrooms, administrative offices, and pulpits. But the institution’s construction of egalitarianism obscures the fact that women are rewarded for adapting to an existing male-centered status quo rather than for developing their own voices as women. Featuring high-profile evangelicals such as Al Mohler and Owen Strachan, along with young seminarians poised to lead the movement in the coming decades, Stained Glass Ceilings illustrates the liabilities of white evangelical toolkits and argues that evangelical culture upholds male-centered structures of power even as it facilitates meaning and identity.

Encompassing nearly 2,000 years of heists and tunnel jobs, break-ins and escapes, A Burglar's Guide to the City offers an unexpected blueprint to the criminal possibilities in the world all around us. You'll never see the city the same way again. At the core of A Burglar's Guide to the City is an unexpected and thrilling insight: how any building transforms when seen through the eyes of someone hoping to break into it. Studying architecture the way a burglar would, Geoff Manaugh takes readers through walls, down elevator shafts, into panic rooms, up to the buried vaults of banks, and out across the rooftops of an unsuspecting city. With the help of FBI Special Agents, reformed bank robbers, private security consultants, the L.A.P.D. Air Support Division, and architects past and present, the book dissects the built environment from both sides of the law. Whether picking padlocks or climbing the walls of high-rise apartments, finding gaps in a museum's surveillance routine or discussing home invasions in ancient Rome, A Burglar's Guide to the City has the tools, the tales, and the x-ray vision you need to see architecture as nothing more than an obstacle that can be outwitted and undercut. Full of real-life heists-both spectacular and absurd-A Burglar's Guide to the City ensures readers will never enter a bank again without imagining how to loot the vault or walk down the street without planning the perfect getaway.

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