On a recent Zoom conference of women in leadership, I was asked this question? How can we mobilize more Christian women to act? Here’s my response…
Last year I was in 11 countries and just returned from Finland. As a result, I feel uniquely honored to meet women and hear about their different challenges – but I often hear the same stories. As countries merge into a connected world, women for the first time are seeing how their issues are not just unique to their own country and culture.
Mobile devices and social media have brought our world closer as never before.
But I’ve also observed that women around the world look to American women to set the standard – even when it comes to moral issues. As an American Christian woman, I recognize that we have a huge responsibility to infuse God’s Biblical wisdom and the redemptive story of Jesus into the lives of women and to lead with moral integrity.
Taking the time to share wisdom is essential but harder than ever with our culture of nonstop schedules and responsibilities. How do we stay personally and intimately connected with each other and yet become a force of global influence in the digital world? Often conflict erupts when individual groups connect over petty issues that keep unity from happening. Can we agree and disagree and not become so alienated that it prevents significant cultural influence from happening? Can we be known for what we are for rather than what we are against?
We can if the goal is to lift up Jesus and not ourselves.
Unity was the last prayer Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane for a reason. He knew it would be our greatest and most perilous challenge we would ever face. All gatherings provide opportunities for the global church to be strengthened and mobilized – even gatherings where Christian viewpoints are not in the majority. We learn to speak the language and grow in understanding of how others think and make choices. We may not all agree with all choices but God calls us to a culture of love, kindness, and goodness.
What matters is our response.
It matters that we lead with courage, graciousness and wisdom, but our culture has taught us to respond with “fight or flight.” Peter let his anger take control in the Garden that night and cut off the ear of a soldier and one of the gang of religious leaders coming to arrest Jesus. Violence was not going to change what had to transpire.
Sadly, as Christians, we have chosen this way too many times. We need to remember that much of what is happening in our world today is not what we want but what has to transpire for the second return of Jesus. The Bible tells us that the world is not going to get better but we are to endure until Jesus comes. Responding in anger or running away doesn’t bring unity it only brings confusion, division and further separation.
We are to be shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves.” Matthew 10:16.
Those of us who work in the media and entertainment industries have an opportunity to serve by using our skills and talents to mentor and encourage. Christian women in leadership positions will be needed more than ever to make intelligent choices and become bridge builders in order to lead where there are global challenges. These will be opportunities for women of God to shine.
It’s why I began Influence Women.
I edit a bi-monthly journal that challenges women to use their talents and skills to change the culture. I also gather women together for quarterly meetings in Hollywood to discuss cultural issues so that they can grow in wisdom and not just hear the latest trending information. Influence Women encourages women to cut through the “noise” of the thousands of media messages we’re bombarded with daily and listen for the voice of God.
Then finally, I encourage women to build relationships among themselves and to privately share their faith and what God has taught them. As our world becomes more isolated and lonely due to technology our priority must be on personal relationships. It’s how Jesus led.
It is our personal relationship with God that matters most to Him and it should matter the most to us at all times.
For hundreds of years women gathered at water wells daily to wash clothes, gather water, and commune with each other. As life progressed women gathered in neighborhoods as their kids played and for those who work in factories and corporate offices they gathered in break rooms. Today women gather on social media platforms. They are the new global watering holes. In the digital age, we have the opportunity to reach more women with God’s love than ever before. But we need wise women of the Word, who are instigators of peace, kindness, goodness, love and most importantly long-suffering. We need women who want to lift up the name of Jesus and be led by His truth knowing it is what makes us free.
I encourage you to share this journal each month with a woman of influence in your life. Will you be a voice in the movement to mobilize God’s influential women?
Seek the Kingdom first and all will be added. Matthew 6:33.
