Why Women Need Women Bible Teachers

This article was first published in French at TPSG. It is an expansion of an earlier article I wrote here.

Women in the Church need to hear the voices of other women Bible teachers. While this should never replace the voice of the elders in her life, a Christian woman has much to gain from learning from gifted women who can open the Scriptures to them. Author, Bible teacher, and frequent TGC conference speaker Jen Wilkin has this to say on the subject:  

First, we need the example of women teachers. When a woman sees someone who looks like her and sounds like her teaching the Bible with passion and intelligence, she begins to recognize that she, too, can love God with her mind - perhaps beyond what she thought necessary or possible. Had I only heard men teach the Bible well, I don't know that I would have considered myself capable of doing the same. Thankfully, God gave me smart, diligent women to set an example of what it means to open the Word with reverence and skill. 

 

Second, we need the perspective of women teachers. A woman teacher will naturally gravitate toward application and examples that are accessible and recognizable to other women. Think: fewer football and action movie analogies, more HGTV and romantic comedy analogies; less about porn addiction and abdication of responsibility, more about self-image issues or sins of the tongue.

 

Don’t get me wrong. I love listening to my pastor preach. It’s little wonder – Nick is a gifted preacher who recently completed a doctorate program in preaching! I also enjoy hearing other pastors and elders at my church preach. My favourite is Dan Thornton, but you might say I’m not entirely impartial. :) Yet when I have the privilege of sitting under the teaching of solid women Bible teachers, I come away nourished and refreshed in a unique way.

 

As an English-speaking American, I can access such women Bible teachers with the mere click of the mouse. Yet, unfortunately, the same cannot be said in the French-speaking world. Sadly, you simply can't find much by way of doctrinally sound resources in French produced by women for women.

 

With a vision to fill that gap in the “market” in some small way, the Lord has begun a work in the hearts of small group of women Bible teachers. After attending a Simeon Trust (CST) Women’s Workshop on expository teaching, five sisters from Quebec and one from France joined forces to put together an inter-church collaborative Bible study. With the book of Philippians as the chosen text, each week a different woman composes a list of study questions on the passage assigned to her. She then prepares an expository message and films herself teaching it. Next, she uploads the video to YouTube and shares a link to the study questions in the description of the video. Each member of the team then shares the content with the women she teaches in her church. The participants in each small group study the passage on their own, and only after having done so do they watch the video. Finally, participants meet over Zoom with their small group leader to discuss the passage and pray for one another. 

 

If your church is anything like mine, formal women’s ministry has been on hold since this pandemic began. And while informal calls and text messages have been a blessing over these long months of confinement, I suspect that many of my sisters are ready for something more. Our team delighted to share these studies. 

 

Could the Lord be calling you to be equipped for such a ministry yourself? If so, I’d like to invite you to consider signing up for one of the upcoming CST women’s workshops. To learn more, check out a recent article on the subject. And if you have any other questions or comments about women ministering to women in the Church, I’d love to hear from you.

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Wilkin, Jen. “Women of the Word: How to Study the Bible with Both our Hearts and our Minds,” P. 129.