Daily Women and Church Leadership

Dear God of Welcome and Justice,

In 1853, Antoinette Brown Blackwell stood before the World's Temperance Convention in New York City to speak — and was shouted down for an entire day. She never left the platform. She simply stood, Bible in hand, waiting. When the jeering finally exhausted itself, she spoke with a clarity that silenced the room.

Deuteronomy 10:19 calls us to love the stranger, "for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." The Hebrew word here — ger — means one who dwells among you but has no established place, no seat at the table, no voice assumed to matter. Lord, how many gifted women have stood in our churches as gerim, as strangers in their own spiritual home? How many have carried the fire of Your calling in their bones while being told the pulpit was not their platform?

You who chose Deborah to judge a nation, who sent Mary Magdalene as the first witness of resurrection, who poured out Your Spirit on daughters and sons alike at Pentecost — forgive us when we have drawn boundaries You never drew.