Kay >> Hi. I’m Kay Daigle. Welcome to the Beyond Ordinary Women Podcast and video. We are so happy that you’ve joined us today. We have two special guests. We have Dr. Sandra Glahn with us. Welcome Sandi.

Sandra >> Glad to be here as always.

Kay >> Yeah, it’s always a treat to have you. We always look forward to having you. Dr. Glahn is a professor at Dallas Seminary. She is a professor of Media Arts and Worship there.

She’s written over 20 books. She has so much to say about her that you just need to go to our website and read her bio because she has done a lot and she has produced a lot of work. And you can find her in many of our videos. So hopefully this won’t be the last when you watch go on to BeyondOrdinaryWomen.org and search for her name. And you can connect with some of her other conversations that we’ve had.

And Sandra invited another friend to be with us, the third male that we have had on our podcast. And it is Dr. Lucas Rogers. Welcome, Lucas.

Lucas >> Thank you so much. Great to be here.

Kay >> We are so happy to have you. Lucas is the lead pastor at Easton Bible Church in Hainesport, New Jersey. And he has both a master’s and doctorate degrees from Dallas Seminary as well. And we’re really happy to have you.

And despite the fact that you’re only the third man, we really appreciate it.

Sandra >> That’s true.

Lucas >> Well, it’s my honor.

Kay >> Well, since our ministry is Beyond Ordinary Women, we have tended to focus on women in these conversations. But we’re so happy to have you. And I’m going to turn around over to Sandi and Lucas to talk about our topic today, which I’m very excited about. I feel like many, many churches need to hear about the research that Lucas has done.

Sandra >> So Lucas has done a hard look at the best practices for churches that are reconsidering where they stand on their position on women in ministry leadership. So let me start out by lobbing a question like why don’t you share with listeners how you and I met and how you ended up diving into this topic?

Lucas >> Yeah, well, I first started my doctorate back in 2017, and it was during that time that looking into different topics and, and I think we’ll probably get into a little bit about why I chose this one, but really I was interested in women in church leadership. And so, Dr. Glahn, that’s when I reached out to you and asked if you’d be one of my readers on my dissertation and which is obviously aware of your work and all of your research that you had done.

And it was, that was the beginning of that relationship. And it’s been a great journey.

Sandra >> And the topic of your dissertation was?

Lucas >> Was essentially, women and church leadership. But really the question that it was seeking to answer is looking at churches, and specifically churches that are theologically conservative. I come from a Bible church tradition, all of my life. I went to Dallas Seminary and looking at churches, they kind of shared that DNA, if you will, of conservative theologically, biblically. And then recognizing that over the last two decades or so, more and more of those churches are reconsidering and revisiting their position on women in church leadership specifically.

And the question that I wanted to wrestle with was, why is it that you’ve got churches that on paper all look more or less the same. That on paper they would all affirm the same things biblically, theologically, and yet when it came to this issue, they were landing in different places. And so it became clear to me that just to say, well, we’re reading the Bible and this is what the Bible says just wasn’t sufficient.

And so I wanted to kind of delve into that more and try to unearth what are some of the factors that are going into the way these decisions are being made. What are some of those factors that are influencing how churches and elder boards specifically are wrestling with the question and how they’re interpreting and then applying the Scripture in their churches?

Because it just isn’t uniform. It doesn’t look the same at every church anymore. And that was just something that really fascinated me.

Sandra >> Well, I mean, there are a zillion topics you could choose. You’re a guy. What made you choose this topic?

Lucas >> Yeah, I think, you know, one of the advice I was given is find something that’s personal to you. You’re going to spend a lot of time delving on a topic when you’re writing a dissertation as we can all attest to.

And so for me, interestingly, enough, in 2017, when I was beginning this process, I had the opportunity. I was invited to observe at a church there, elder board, walking through this kind of deliberative process. They wanted to revisit how women were serving and leading within their church. They wanted to unpack, you know, what did the scriptures say? Where they getting it right in a sense, this kind of the way they wanted to approach it.

And so I got to observe that firsthand. And just to be candid, I walked away kind of disappointed. I walked away just feeling like they didn’t have the tools and the resources necessary to even begin the conversation and to begin the discussion. And it wasn’t necessarily, you know, it certainly wasn’t a moral failing. These were not bad people, but there was just a lack of understanding of even how to go about research, about just being aware of some of the biases that they were bringing into the conversation.

And so, I walked away from that thinking, how can I help? You know, h