How to Overcome Insecurity

Holly Wagner is such an empower of others.  She not only leads well - she raises up others who lead well.  I've been blessed by her counsel and wisdom so many times - and of course she's also a breast cancer survivor.  She's my sister, my friend, a mentor, a role model. That's why I'm so excited to be invited to share on her GodChicks Blog under another arm of her ministry called She Leads!

Today, I'm sharing about my own story of  "Overcoming Insecurity."  I hope you'll check it out and if you find it helpful, please share with others who could relate.

More than my blog - there are lots of resources here for your benefit.  If you are a woman in ministry, this is just for you. Here's what She Leads is all about!

We believe in your potential as a leader in ministry. You have been given unique abilities and gifts to serve the Body of Christ. You have been divinely purposed to bring strength and leadership in your home, in your friendships, in your local church, in your communities, and beyond. Basically, we think you are pretty amazing.

And we also believe you don’t have to figure it all out on your own! That’s where we come in.

She Leads exists to connect, inspire and resource women in ministry today.

We know that leading in ministry looks unique for each of us, and we are all facing different obstacles and challenges as we lead. Here at She Leads, we want to learn from one another and the different experiences and perspectives we have. We also want to support and cheer one another on, celebrating moments of progress and victory. And we want to expose you to experts in different areas of leadership and ministry as a way to resource you as you bravely and boldly lead in life.

She Leads is here for you! We believe in you! Our prayer is that as you read one of the weekly articles below, view one of our leadership conversations, tune in for an interactive webcast, or join us for a live gathering that you feel connected to women in leadership from around the globe, equipped to lead right where you are and inspired to fulfill your God-given potential!

–Holly Wagner

So if you are a woman who wants to lead others well, be sure to sign up for her email updates.  You'll be blessed!

Why We Love to Gather

I admit it. I still love to gather women.

After all these years of serving the local church as a women’s pastor, I still get excited as the cars begin to stream into the parking lot. A smile breaks across my face as they line up at the door, waiting for them to swing wide. My heart skips a beat and my palms sweat a bit as they pour into the lobby. And as the opening moments of our gathering draw near, I feel a deep satisfaction and a realization that all the hard work is worth it.

I’m definitely not a traditional pastor, as I would define it. I don’t prepare a weekly sermon, conduct many funerals or weddings, or even walk around with a robe or collar. But I do care for, think about, and gather the female members of our church with the intention of shepherding them into greater faith and stronger community on a regular basis.

In my early days of serving women, my “pastoring” looked more like friendship and a face-to-face conversation across my kitchen table. With our Bibles opened and a cup of coffee in our hands, we’d begin to share our lives. As I welcomed her into my own home, I created a sense of warmth, hospitality, and beauty. I thought about her needs and what would make her feel most valued. I prayed for her and hoped that our time together would be an encouragement for her heart and a catalyst for spiritual growth.

Soon I wanted to reach more women, so I opened my home to a small group who began to meet on a regular basis. Every week, I was excited to welcome them into my home and into my life. Here I learned a lot about what makes a woman feel cared for, heard, empowered, and loved.

Eventually we started hosting events at the church or retreat centers, building getaways, larger Bible study groups, and training opportunities for leadership development and evangelism. I discovered the joy of being a part of a larger community of believers and experienced the empowerment of a corporate gathering.

Today, I am privileged to serve as a part of a team that is committed to the value and vision of gathering women. For the past fifteen years, we’ve gathered women countless times for all kinds of reasons: conferences, women’s nights, global trips, leadership development, small groups, community service, prayer events, and even just for fun.

Regardless of the size of the gathering, I still fall back on the essential building blocks I first learned around my kitchen table. I still think about every element of the gathering and ask myself what is required to get her interest and how can I create a gathering place that is beautiful, safe, and honoring to God.

Today, my “kitchen table” is a bit larger and my bringing many friends together a bit more complex. My pastoring must look like a strange mix of corporate representation, relationship building, and party planner.

Although gathering women is a ton of work, it is essential in order to build the local church. Women often represent 60% or more of the local church membership and are the primary volunteer force. In addition, if you can capture the interest and heart of a woman, she will bring along her family. She sets the emotional environment of her home and is often the person that draws her family into a deeper investment in spiritual life.

This is the whole reason that most women’s ministries are birthed.

Generally, there will be a couple of women who want to get together to encourage each other. They want to study the word, share life, and pray for one another. Out of this healthy desire, more formal and broader reaching gatherings naturally occur. Before you know it, someone’s gone to the leadership of the church and asked to do a thing or two to gather women, and suddenly, another women’s ministry is launched.

Other ministry leaders often ask me questions about gatherings. How do you get women to come? How do you decide what to do? What kinds of things should we include? When is the best time to gather women? How do you know if a gathering is successful? Although these are goods questions, I don’t think they are the most important.

The question I’d rather you ask is “Why?” Why gather women?

There are many reasons to gather but there are two primary reasons that motivate me.

First, it is important to create a place of safety and belonging where a woman can effectively experience the presence of Christ and secondly to fulfill the mandate of Titus 2: teach the younger. This used to happen naturally in homes, families, and local communities. Several generations often lived in the same home and if not in the same home, most certainly in the same community.

Our mother and grandmothers taught us the basics of our spiritual development, our family relationships, and our sense of belonging. Today, the average woman’s life is much more complicated. She is far more likely to live in a different location than her parents or siblings. She usually works outside her home, is involved in some type of volunteer organization, and still manages to care for her family and home. She has aspirations for her life to be purposeful in many ways yet often feels isolated and alone.

The sense of community and camaraderie that were common for our grandmothers is unusual for us today. We now form community around social media tools and depend upon the worldwide Internet for our counsel and education. Don’t get me wrong! I love the generation in which we live, and I think that women are in the midst of the most empowering, meaningful season of any prior generation. But no amount of on-line community or education will replace the sense of belonging that happens when you are a part of something bigger than yourself.

We have an inherent need to be a “living stone” in the house of God. Women are natural gatherers. If you leave them alone, they will intuitively form clusters and groups. They tend to find someone they can relate to and who shares a similar passion or life season. They gather around all kinds of issues and topics, from workplace interest to PTA; from life stage or personal interest; and even from passions for music, movies, books, or videos. Without intention, she will search for and relate herself to others for influence, relationship, and fun. T

his tendency definitely makes the work easier, but it doesn’t make it simple. The church is competing with thousands of voices and opportunities for women. If we want women to develop a healthy, Bible-based, God-centered world view, and healthy relationships to boot, we’ve got to create gatherings that are varied and interesting enough to draw them into our circle.

Just consider these questions:

To whom is she listening?

Where is she getting her counsel?

Who is helping her to grow as a woman, a leader, a wife, a mother, a daughter, an employee, a friend?

Why would she add a church gathering to a long list of life demands?

What do we offer that she can’t get anywhere else?

How can I provide a gathering that will draw her attention from so many other voices and bring her near to experience a divine connection, a spirit-led inspiration, a unique gathering that will meet her needs?

If you ponder these types of questions until you begin to find the answers, then you will build a gathering for women that are based upon the “why.” All the other questions about how, when, what, or where will naturally fall into order and clarity.

So go ahead.

Invest the time, thought, and energy into building, stewarding, and enjoying gatherings for women. Your work will be rewarding, and the Kingdom of God will be expanded. The women you serve will grow healthier and more confident. Your own heart will overflow with joy at the work of your hands, and the church will fulfill its mission. Christ will be lifted high.

Empowering Women in Leadership

Sometimes I wonder if the topic of women in leadership is the “final frontier” of our day. (Now just for fun, imagine my best Star Trek voice.) These are the voyages of women everywhere. Their lifetime mission: to explore strange new worlds of authority, to seek out new leadership opportunities and communities, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Seriously, sometimes it feels like we are forging territory we’ve never crossed before, as if an empowered woman was something to view as a strange phenomenon, something heroic and daring. Yet the truth is women have been in positions of authority and influence since the beginning of time. Remember the quote “the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world”? Mothers raise their children with the intention of empowering them to grow strong and mighty. Her greatest desire is to teach them to walk confidently into their destiny.

We can easily scan the Scripture and find example after example of women who used their influence and their position to positively influence the next generation. There are many empowering and empowered women in our presence today; they simply are appearing in bold and new ways. You and I live in a generation where women can be a mom and CEO; a pastor or president; single and a leader. This shift in opportunities for women has left many confused or fearful about how to navigate in our generation.

The real question is how do we empower women in a way that releases the very best of their strength, gender, and compassion?

The answer is grace.

If you and I could learn to become “grace-filled” leaders, we would naturally become empowering leaders. Grace is not leniency, indulgence, or even acceptance of bad behavior or sloppy work. It’s not about softly coercing others into following. Rather grace is the key to power. So what is grace? Grace can be defined as unmerited favor. We can’t earn it, and we don’t deserve it. It is the gift of the unearned kindness and favor of God toward us. We first experience the grace of God at the moment of our salvation.

“For by grace (unmerited favor) you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (NIV, Ephesians 2:8-9).

Once we know Christ, grace overflows into all aspects of our lives, giving us a divine ability to compassionately accept ourselves and others while releasing a confident expectation that we are becoming more and more like Jesus. Grace drives out judgment, condemnation, and belittlement. It destroys hopelessness and is essential for real transformation in our lives.

That is what grace is, but what grace does is the key to empowering others.

Grace is power – a divine power to “will and do” (NIV, Philippians 2:13) according to God’s purpose.

“With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them” (NIV, Acts 4:33).

When we receive grace, we are empowered. When we give grace, we empower others.

Grace enables us to change, to become like Christ, to mature, to dream, to experience revelation, to become something and someone more than we have ever been. It involves the tenacious belief in the best version of who God created people to be, and it refuses to allow those we lead to live beneath the vision of God’s highest dreams for their lives. When we lead by grace, we demonstrate a courage and confidence in how God created us – and we naturally extend the same grace to those who follow.

People follow leaders who exhibit a compassionate understanding of where they are right now while empowering them to make courageous, faithful choices that help them become successful.

I personally experienced grace in a transformative way when I was diagnosed with Stage IV breast cancer in 2009. I was already working as a part of the women’s ministry team at Gateway Church. We were in a particularly busy season with lots of ministry projects that required attention. Soon after I was diagnosed, I began to think about how the team would need to shift or change in order to continue with the forward momentum we needed.

I am naturally strategic in my thinking, and, as an only child, I am also pretty practical. In addition, I tend to be performance-driven. Because I have a strong gift of leadership, I can barrel through and make things happen. I thought I knew what needed to be done. I needed to step aside, and others would need to step up. Ministry deadlines would not yield to my circumstances, and as a result, I would need to drop out or move to the side. I was very unhappy that cancer would steal my involvement in a team and ministry that I loved.

Yet, when I visited with my friend and boss, Pastor Debbie Morris, she had a different strategic vision in mind. Rather than sitting me down, she stood me up. She recommended that we wait and see. “Let’s see how you handle the treatments and then determine how it will impact your work. We can stop ministry and wait until we know more.”

We can stop? We can wait?

At that moment, God released a sweet, sweeping sense of grace. She was telling me in my weakness – at the moment I could not perform or lead – there was still a place for me. She valued me over the work of the ministry.

This changed my life.

I approached treatment with a desire to keep working. Pastor Debbie gave me permission to attend to my medical needs and to continue to work as I felt able. Over the next 18 months, I experienced 19 rounds of chemotherapy, a full regimen of radiation, and a lumpectomy. I did not work everyday, but I did work consistently.

And somehow, all the ministry moved forward. God graced me with the ability to accomplish more with less. I learned that my weakness was not a disqualification but rather an opportunity to rest in grace.

That experience changed how I lead. Now I want to pour out grace on others. I want them to feel the sweet, sweeping impact of grace and how it makes us feel valuable, empowered, and blessed. When grace is poured out on our weaknesses, we will experience the beauty of a powerful leader and become empowered to move forward.

Now that we’ve established how powerful grace can be, let’s think about the concept of leadership.

What is leadership?

Leadership is not control, manipulation, coercion or the use of might to motivate others. “

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead you must be a servant and whoever wants to be first must be your slave, for even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many” (NIV, Matthew 20:24-28).

So much of the leadership we see in the world looks like “lording it over others.” There are plenty of opportunities to practice this style of leadership. It’s full of selfish ambition, desire for control, and is rooted in forcing others into cooperation. Apparently this has been an issue for a very long time because Jesus clearly felt the need to redefine leadership as servanthood. He didn’t just talk about leadership, He modeled it. His whole leadership development program was based upon a “come, follow me” style of compassion and service to others.

'Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms” (NIV, I Peter 4:10).

When we set out to serve one another, to share the gospel, or to offer encouragement, God bestows a divine authority on our work. With that authority comes an equal measure of responsibility. We are responsible to steward our authority for the good of others and for the destruction of darkness. Leadership is also about teamwork and partnerships. You and I partner with God and one another to accomplish a divine purpose.

This is at the core of Godly leadership.

The church is a team. Our families are a team. Our circles of influence are a team. Leadership is service in its purist form.

It’s more about our willingness to take the lower, more humble position than it is about our ability to lead the charge.

If we want to be a better leader, we must become a better servant.

So, what’s empowering you?

If you are empowered by pain, fear, selfish ambition, or lack, you will be a leader that struggles to empower others. But, if your power comes from Jesus Christ, the source of all authority, you will lead with grace empowering others and producing a beautiful array of fruitfulness in your life and in the lives of others.