Reframing Christian Womanhood with Kendra Dahl (Conversational Theology)

This transcript has been lightly edited from an automated transcription for clarity and readability. While we've worked to preserve each speaker's words faithfully, errors may remain.

1. 00:00

   Kendra Dahl

   Part of our problem is when we come to Genesis 3, and we are primed to think of it as the curse. This is God’s curse that he’s bringing. And obviously, that’s true. Sin has entered the world, and God is pronouncing judgment. But because we’re primed to hear it as just only the foundation of all of this gloom and doom and judgment and fallenness, we miss that the true bent of Genesis 3 is God’s mercy. When he approaches Adam and Eve, he actually only curses the serpent and the ground. He says, “Cursed are you.” The serpent is the only one who receives that direct curse.

2. 00:31

   Kendra Dahl

   And so I think part of that, we first need to see that God is not allowing Adam and Eve to just be lost to the serpent. He’s actually saying— when he says, “I’ll put enmity between you and the woman,” he is pointing to the spiritual battle that will unfold throughout the rest of history, right? You have the battle of the two seeds. But he’s also saying, “I’m going to keep the woman as one of my own, and I’m going to preserve a people for myself from whom the Savior will come.” So already, right at the beginning of that curse narrative, you have this continuity that flows through the rest of Scripture that it’s not just everything is broken and ruined and there’s no hope for humanity, but rather God in his kindness is going to preserve a people for himself and Christ will come.

3. 01:18

   Eric Landry

   Kendra is the former director of content here at Sola Media, and it’s so good to have you here to talk about your new book. Now, the book is A Place for You: Reframing Christian Womanhood, and the book does exactly what that subtitle says. It reframes Christian womanhood away from some narratives that have become prominent in the Christian space. But you’re not tackling this question from an issue of sociology. You’re not tackling it from an issue of deconstruction. You’re not trying to topple the patriarchy. How did you approach this topic?

4. 01:57

   Kendra Dahl

   Yeah, I had a few different things in mind when I wanted to write this book. The first was to just have some compassion for women who are struggling with the church’s teaching on women, with the way they’ve been treated in Christian contexts. I’ve encountered so many women who have questions, and then their questions, they’re quickly dismissed. It’s just like, “Oh, the Bible just says that, and you should just accept it and move on with your life.” So I wanted to come in and acknowledge, these are legitimate questions. These are legitimate struggles that you are experiencing, and we don’t have to dismiss those. God isn’t afraid for you to bring those questions to him and to just have a posture of, “Let’s explore.” But then with that, I love— Kathy Keller has this little book, Jesus, Justice, and Gender Roles.

5. 02:40

   Kendra Dahl

   And it was really formative for me. And she challenges women that this is not an issue of justice, this is an issue of theology. And so I really wanted it to be, let’s go back to the Scriptures and let’s be women who are committed to having our minds formed by the Bible, and that we’re going to wrestle with this theological content and form conviction for ourselves.

6. 02:59

   Eric Landry

   Which you absolutely do. I mean, this is not a book, like I said a moment ago, of sociology. This is a book of Scripture. This is a book of theology. And pretty early in the book, you do some deep dive into Genesis particularly.

7. Eric Landry

   [~03:11] KENDRA DAHL - That’s right, yeah.

8. Eric Landry

   [~03:12] ERIC LANDRY - Yeah, so people who are gonna read this, you need to know kind of what you’re stepping into. But in Genesis, you really start working through those early chapters, trying to advocate for a biblical understanding of what headship means in the creation narratives.

9. 03:30

   Eric Landry

   And you, again, in the subtitle of the book, Reframe, you reframe the topic of headship, and you reframe what it means for Eve to be a helper. Can you unpack that in five minutes?

10. 03:42

    Kendra Dahl

    Right. So read the book. No, I do think it’s so important to sort of reframe our approach to Genesis 1 through 3. And I think that language of reframing can be terrifying to people. So I want to explain what I mean and what I don’t mean.

11. 03:56

    Eric Landry

    What do you mean?

12. 03:57

    Kendra Dahl

    I don’t mean, let’s just throw everything out and pretend all interpretation is outdated, and let’s start fresh. But rather, I think so often we come with kind of our assumptions and questions and how we’ve been trained to understand the text already, right? We come with thinking Genesis 1 through 3 is going to answer all of our questions about what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. And that’s what we’re looking for as we study it. So this reframing, I want us to think about, what did the author intend for us? Why is Genesis 1 through 3 Genesis 1 through 3? And what is this foundation that it’s trying to lay for the rest of Scripture? And so my hope is to help us see those chapters as the foundation for the whole Bible, not just this foundation of “here’s how to be a man, here’s how to be a woman.” I do think it speaks to those things, but not in the detail that we often want and bring our questions.

13. 04:45

    Eric Landry

    And not answering the questions that we often have.

14. 04:48

    Kendra Dahl

    Exactly. We have to let the text speak to what it’s speaking to and not make it answer the questions that we want it to answer. So when I talk about reframing headship and reframing helping, that’s what I have in mind, is I talk a lot about covenant. I’m a big fan of covenant theology. And I think that it actually informs a lot of how we understand not just the Scriptures, but our lives. And if we reframe headship and helping with that covenantal context in mind, then headship isn’t about something that all men are called to. It’s this covenantal function where the head is given a responsibility and held accountable for their ability to live up to that responsibility. And the same with helping becomes this function, this covenantal function of, okay, if you’ve been given a shared mission for which the head will be held accountable, then the helper’s role is to come alongside and help to carry out that mission.

15. 05:38

    Kendra Dahl

    And so by trying to reframe these things, not as functions that are rooted in our gender, but are rooted more in this covenantal calling that we first see in Scripture as the redemptive unfolding of salvation, but also then how we function as human beings in communities with one another, I think it helps to sort of peel back the layers, both to say, this isn’t a prescriptive way for a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. It is a way that we can relate to one another that is fruitful and complementary. And I think it really brings out that complementary aspect of the way we’re meant to live life together.

16. 06:10

    Eric Landry

    Can you think of somebody, even in your current role as a women’s ministry director, that they need to understand that in order to feel like they have a place in the church?

17. 06:22

    Kendra Dahl

    Yeah, I think it applies specifically to women, especially with the language of helping. And I spent quite a bit of time unpacking that because I think we often hear the word “helper” and we think of second class, or sort of like— I use the example of my kids in the kitchen. I hate sharing the kitchen with my kids. And so it’s always like, “Here, go over here and do this thing. You’re such a good helper.” It’s like you could be doing something or not, and it actually doesn’t matter for accomplishing the task at hand. And I think a lot of women feel that way in the church, where it’s like, “Oh, thanks, you brought the cookies.” And not the sense of, “No, your presence and contribution is actually essential to us, the church, carrying out the mission that Christ has given his church.”

18. 07:01

    Kendra Dahl

    And so I think that’s why that language is so important, both to elevate what helping is— it’s contributing in an essential way to the shared mission— but that it’s also not this diminished role. Somebody pointed out how, when Jethro comes to Moses, he’s like, “You’re tired. Look at all these people. They’re like a sheep without a shepherd.” I mean, what is it?

19. 07:25

    Eric Landry

    Right.

20. 07:25

    Kendra Dahl

    I’m like, is that the right language for an activist? Or is that Jesus? I don’t know. You know what I’m saying? But the language is very parallel to what you see in Genesis 2, when God says, “It’s not good for Adam to be alone. I’ll make a helper for him.” Jethro says that same kind of language to Moses: “This isn’t good for you. You need help.” And so I think that shows us that it’s not just like women are called to be helpers; it’s that the church is meant to be a community in which every member functions together towards this shared mission. And those who are—

21. 07:57

    Eric Landry

    And those helpers are also imaging God, who is also Israel’s helper.

22. 08:00

    Kendra Dahl

    Yes.

23. 08:01

    Eric Landry

    So yeah, it’s a very important concept for people to grab hold of. But of course, none of us do this perfectly. And Genesis 1 and 2 are followed by Genesis 3, the fall. And that has introduced lots of conversation in evangelical circles about what exactly the curse meant for both man and woman. And so I’m wondering if you can unpack some of it for us in terms of the curse that Eve hears from God, particularly that strange language of “her desire shall be for her husband.” I think a lot of us were taught that that meant that she would always struggle with this need to usurp Adam’s power, and that that’s been carried down by many biblical interpreters, but you’ve got a different take.

24. 08:48

    Kendra Dahl

    Part of our problem is when we come to Genesis 3 and we are primed to think of it as the curse. This is God’s curse that he’s bringing. And obviously that’s true. Sin has entered the world and God is pronouncing judgment, but because we’re primed to hear it as just only the foundation of all of this gloom and doom and judgment and fallenness, we miss that the true bent of Genesis 3 is God’s mercy. When he approaches Adam and Eve, he actually only curses the serpent and the ground. He says, “Cursed are you.” The serpent is the only one who receives that direct curse.

25. Kendra Dahl

    [~09:21] ERIC LANDRY - Wow.

26. 09:22

    Kendra Dahl

    And so I think part of that, we first need to see that God is not allowing Adam and Eve to just be lost to the serpent. He’s actually saying— when he says, “I’ll put enmity between you and the woman, between her seed and your seed,” he is pointing to the spiritual battle that will unfold throughout the rest of history, right? You have the battle of the two seeds. But he’s also saying, “I’m going to keep the woman as one of my own, and I’m going to preserve a people for myself from whom the Savior will come.” So already, right at the beginning of that curse narrative, you have this continuity that flows through the rest of Scripture that it’s not just everything is broken and ruined, and there’s no hope for humanity, but rather God in his kindness is going to preserve a people for himself and Christ will come. If that’s our foundation, then by the time we get to Genesis 3:16, where he says, “In pain you’ll bring forth children,” and there’ll be pain in childbearing, you’ve got this structure of a curse followed by continuity. So, “In pain you’ll bring forth children,” but there are going to be children.

27. 10:23

    Eric Landry

    Right.

28. 10:23

    Kendra Dahl

    I mean, what mercy— what mercy that life is going to continue. There’s going to be a stage upon which God is going to accomplish his redemption, that he’s going to draw people to himself. And so how are those children going to come about? Well, this man and woman who are hiding from each other in shame are going to have to be reunited, and this structure of marriage is going to have to continue for life to continue. And so I think, yes, there is obviously a battle of the sexes in the sense of there’s going to be relational conflict because of sin.

29. Kendra Dahl

    [~10:56] ERIC LANDRY - Right.

30. Kendra Dahl

    [~10:57] KENDRA DAHL - But to read into that this inherent propensity for women to try to overpower men or men to try to abuse women, I think we’re missing this merciful provision from God.

31. 11:06

    Eric Landry

    How would you apply that merciful provision to a woman that comes to you and just says, “I think everything is broken. I think I’m broken. I think my husband’s broken. My marriage is broken. And there’s no hope”?

32. 11:19

    Kendra Dahl

    You’re the pastor. That’s a great question. I’ve been teaching this summer at our women’s ministry Bible study about how to savor God’s goodness in every season, and thinking about these difficult seasons that God brings us through. And one of the things I keep being struck by over and over again is just how the way we truly know and experience God’s goodness is through his mercy, that we are so undeserving that even when all of life is falling apart, we not only have Christ himself for us, but we also have 54 shades of green.

33. 11:56

    Eric Landry

    Right.

34. 11:56

    Kendra Dahl

    And we have these delightful human relationships in our lives. And we have the taste of chocolate. And we have all these good gifts. And so when I think about entering into somebody who’s struggling with the true reality of life in a fallen world and these broken relationships, and even experiencing that battle of the sexes or that struggle in marriage, I think that the point is not to try to put a little Pollyanna bow on things and say, “Oh, that doesn’t really matter.” But it is to say that God is with us in the midst of that struggle, and that he has provided for us— that even if that hope is the eternal glory that awaits us, Paul tells us that that far surpasses any of our earthly struggles. So that’s not the practical advice that I’d be like, “Okay, so step one, just look to Jesus.” I mean, yes, that, but obviously there are some practical things as you pastorally walk alongside someone in that.

35. 12:53

    Kendra Dahl

    But I think that looking at Genesis 3 through the lens of mercy really helps reorient our perspective. That it’s like, we are undeserving, and yet God in his kindness provides so much for us. And so it gives us eyes to see that, yes, honestly, what we deserve because of our sin is only relational conflict. And yet so many of us do experience the sweetness of rich friendship, or sweet marriages, or parents that delighted in us. And yes, some of those things are broken. But the fact that any of those good relationships exist is only evidence of God’s kindness to us.

36. 13:28

    Eric Landry

    This is the value of the kind of deep Bible study that you’re bringing about in this book, is that those hopes can be grounded in the proper understanding of Scripture and in this kind of deep theology that you’re bringing out too. You said a moment ago that you love covenant theology. That’s not kind of the system of theology or even the understanding of theology that you were raised with. But what is it about covenant theology that you think gives you some sense of being able to understand a woman’s place? And I’m thinking particularly here in the book when you write about motherhood and the role that mothers play and the interplay between covenant theology and motherhood. Can you maybe unpack that a little bit, especially the temptation that some people have of viewing motherhood as a woman’s only option?

37. 14:19

    Kendra Dahl

    Yeah, sort of. I can sort of unpack that a little bit. Also, you should read the book. Will I just keep saying that? Yeah, I love covenant theology because I think it helps ground us in what God is doing on a larger scale, right? I think if we don’t have this big picture of the unfolding story of all things pointing to Christ, then we tend to take a little passage and say, “Okay, how does this apply directly to me right now in my circumstances?” And you have this cultural mandate at the beginning of Genesis where God tells Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, to fill the earth and subdue it. And this is often painted as sort of this his-and-hers cultural mandate, right? Like, okay, the woman’s job: have the babies; the man’s job: subdue the earth, right? And they—

38. 15:06

    Eric Landry

    Hoorah.

39. 15:07

    Kendra Dahl

    Exactly. And I think, first of all, that is just really a flattening of what the cultural mandate is. It’s so much richer and fuller, even when you think about fruitfulness. Yes, there is a reality of God is speaking to Adam and Eve in an empty world that needs filling. And yet, and that includes humans. But it’s also cultivation. Yes, exactly. There’s so much more fruitfulness involved.

40. 15:29

    Kendra Dahl

    And even with subduing the earth too, to imagine that that’s not also a partnership between men and women in community together. And I think part of that is also because we in the complementarian church hold that the office of elder, the ordained office of elder, is for qualified men. Sometimes there’s this, again, a narrow view that’s like, “Okay, well, what else can women do?” And so I think covenant theology helps us because it helps us to look at what God is doing in Scripture at different times in history. And so, for example, when you think about fruitfulness, you think about the Mosaic covenant, there was this rootedness in the land where if the Israelites obeyed, that they would be blessed in the land, and they would have lots of children, and they would be able to live in the land of their inheritance, and it would flourish.

41. 16:12

    Eric Landry

    The vines would produce grapes.

42. 16:13

    Kendra Dahl

    Exactly. Yes.

43. 16:13

    Eric Landry

    The trees would produce fruit.

44. 16:15

    Kendra Dahl

    Yes. And so there was a sense, even when you look at Psalm— is it Psalm 126, 127?— that’s like, children are our heritage from the Lord, where there’s this tying to— if children are our heritage in the Lord, if you had lots of children, that meant your inheritance continued in the land. You’re living in the land of your fathers. And this as a sign of God’s blessing because of their obedience. And so if you are experiencing the curses of disobedience, then that would mean the curses were tied to things like infertility, to famine, to drought, to exile. And so this language is confusing to us if we don’t have this covenantal framework for understanding it. And we start to think— I mean, I read a book as a young wife and mom that was saying how, if you’re infertile, you’re experiencing the curses of your womb.

45. Kendra Dahl

    [~16:59] ERIC LANDRY - Oh, wow.

46. 17:00

    Kendra Dahl

    I mean, it was just this outrageous application of these Old Testament texts that— it’s completely ungrounded in what the context is for those passages. So what I think—

47. 17:09

    Eric Landry

    If ever there was an argument for women going to seminary, that was it.

48. 17:13

    Kendra Dahl

    Oh my gosh, yes, it’s the worst. So all that is to say, I think when we think about motherhood, we need to think about the way the cultural mandate shifts and expands over the course of redemptive history. So God tells Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth and subdue it. And this is repeated in God’s covenant with Noah, but there’s this sense of the earth is empty— go fill it with people, but also fill it with worshipers. There’s this spiritual dimension to fruitfulness that is raising up the next generation of followers, of worshipers of God. And it shifts as we trace it through the Scriptures, where the tangible dimension of fruitfulness is tied to— it’s pointing forward to Christ. God’s faithful line bore children in faith, looking forward to this promised seed of the woman who was going to come and save them from their sins. And that seed of the woman has come. And so when Christ comes, there’s this shift where now the fruitfulness and multiplication is actually tied to God’s Word, and it’s tied to his church.

49. 18:18

    Kendra Dahl

    There’s a spiritual aspect in which we all have a participation in this calling to be fruitful and multiply as we go and make disciples of all nations. And there’s a place for women in that that is not specifically tied to their ability to have children. And I think that’s something that is often missing from the conversation. Yes, motherhood is a glorious calling, and also so is just faithfulness to Christ in whatever vocation he’s placed you in.

50. 18:42

    Eric Landry

    One thing that I really appreciate about your approach in the book is that you’re not afraid to tackle some passages that might put people off, or they might try to conveniently skip over them. And one of those is when the Apostle Peter says that women are weaker vessels. Some people see this weakness in women as an issue of their soul being weaker or that they are somehow spiritually deficient in some way. And they trace that back to Eve and that the reason she was deceived was because she was a woman, because that was her sex. But that’s not the way that you handle those passages. I’m wondering if you could try to interact a little bit with those with me.

51. 19:32

    Kendra Dahl

    Yeah. It’s also not what Peter and Paul meant. Come on. I think there’s this conflation of— it’s in 1 Timothy 2, where Paul says, don’t permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man, because Eve was deceived. And so there’s this idea of, “Oh, well, maybe women can’t hold teaching office in the church because they’re more easily deceived.”

52. 19:54

    Eric Landry

    Just fundamentally.

53. 19:55

    Kendra Dahl

    Yeah, like they’re inferior, intellectually inferior, or spiritually inferior to men. And then you have 1 Peter 3, where Peter says to unbelieving wives to submit to their husbands. And then it says, “Husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way. Honor her as a weaker vessel.” And so I think you get kind of these two plucked-out things where we’re saying, “Okay, women, see, women are weaker.” And in both cases, I think we’re lacking the context. So with 1 Timothy, I talk a lot about this importance of covenantal headship and what God is doing when he creates Adam as our covenantal head. And that creates the framework through which Christ can come as the second Adam and our representative.

54. 20:37

    Kendra Dahl

    And so I think what Paul is pointing to here when he says Eve was deceived, he’s saying, but Adam was held accountable. So it’s not to say, “Oh, she’s more easily deceived.” I mean, we can read the account. Adam was with her, right? Right. They both failed.

55. 20:51

    Eric Landry

    Right.

56. 20:51

    Kendra Dahl

    But it was when Adam sinned that the world fell, because he was our representative and we all fell in his sin. And so I think Paul is pointing to this sense of responsibility that the elders of the church are called to bear on behalf of the church, that there’s a certain way in which they’ll be held accountable for the way they have shepherded God’s people, similar to how Adam was held accountable in the garden. And so with 1 Peter, I think, again, context is important, right? He’s telling women who have come to faith on their own. So they live with unbelieving husbands. So this alone is remarkable to think about. Think about the history of the church, that women were flocking to Christianity in a way that exceeded the men. And some of these were women who had wealthy husbands who were influential, powerful.

57. 21:35

    Eric Landry

    In a position of power. That’s right.

58. 21:37

    Kendra Dahl

    And that would be a terrifying experience. It’s like, “Okay, I’ve come to faith, but my husband holds the power of life and death over me.” I mean, they were socially inferior at this time in history, where they had no power. And then they’re going to go home and entrust themselves to this unbelieving man. And so Peter is encouraging them to— he points just to Christ, who entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. And with Christ as their example, he calls women to model Christ for their husbands, to go entrust themselves to these husbands as they are entrusting themselves to the Lord. And then there’s this reality that women are physically weaker than men. I love this writer, Louise Perry.

59. 22:18

    Kendra Dahl

    She talks about— this is my teenage training for my daughters. Just so you know, 90% of men can kill 90% of women with their bare hands. They’re like, “Okay, Mom, what are we supposed to do with that?” But I think there is this reality of— it’s a bell curve. But in general, women’s bodies, our hormonal makeup compared to men, means that we are going to be physically weaker and therefore vulnerable in a way that men need to live with understanding. And that’s what Peter is calling these men to: live with your wives in an understanding way, honor them as the weaker vessel. He’s saying, don’t use your strength to exploit their weakness. So in my book, the point of highlighting— I mean, I like to tackle these hard questions.

60. 23:02

    Kendra Dahl

    I want us to know what this means and what it doesn’t mean. But I also think there’s something sweet here for us to see: that weaker isn’t worse. That when Peter is challenging husbands to honor their wives as the weaker vessel, he’s not diminishing them. He’s just observing reality.

61. 23:20

    Eric Landry

    Right.

62. 23:20

    Kendra Dahl

    And he’s both elevating and tempering in a way that helps— and so it’s a way for men and women to live together in a way that can honor the Lord as we steward these differences between us.

63. 23:30

    Eric Landry

    And absolutely being countercultural while he does it.

64. 23:33

    Kendra Dahl

    Absolutely, yeah.

65. 23:34

    Eric Landry

    One of my favorite parts of the book was at the end, as you were talking about the end of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Romans 16 has a huge number of names. You draw out that about half of them are women. He calls them all of these names, his ministry partners. You point out that he knows them. He knows their names. He knows what they are doing. He has personally benefited from the ministry that they have for him.

66. 24:05

    Eric Landry

    You also write that a woman’s place in the church is not a zero-sum game. And that’s different than the way that some people perceive this. Because even, unfortunately, in secular circles, when we talk about hiring somebody, we talk about language of DEI and representation, but sometimes that means that somebody’s going to lose and somebody else is going to win. How come we don’t have to think about the view of roles and offices in the church the way that our secular neighbors do?

67. 24:38

    Kendra Dahl

    Yeah, I like to say to my kids, “Life is not pie,” that we are so prone to look at things as just this zero-sum game, right? And it’s like, if I get a slice, then that takes somebody else’s slice, right? And I have a chapter on being limited. Our time is a pie, right?

68. Kendra Dahl

    [~24:59] ERIC LANDRY - Sure.

69. Kendra Dahl

    [~25:00] KENDRA DAHL - There is a sense where you need to think about how saying yes to something does take away from something else. But I think oftentimes we talk about, especially women’s vocation— I feel like we talk about this mostly about women— which is to say a woman who loves her career must love her family less, or a woman who gives herself to the ministry of the church is taking something away from her family. And I think this is such a shame because that’s just not how God’s economy works. We all have this primary calling as Christ’s disciples, that we are first and foremost citizens of heaven and we belong to this spiritual family. And so with that as our primary identity— called to be saints— then that is going to naturally lend itself to different vocational seasons. And those are going to overlap and they’re going to compete.

70. 25:48

    Kendra Dahl

    But ultimately, our affections don’t have to war against one another. We can, as women, faithfully live out our Christian calling to serve the church, to love our neighbors. And that includes both the church and neighbors, includes this— the closest concentric circle of our own families that we may be called to serve for a particular season. You’re about to be an empty nester, right?

71. Kendra Dahl

    [~26:12] ERIC LANDRY - Right.

72. Kendra Dahl

    [~26:13] KENDRA DAHL - And so I imagine that the season of your life is going to shift with your capacities and your competencies.

73. 26:16

    Eric Landry

    Lots of time for puzzles, apparently.

74. 26:18

    Kendra Dahl

    Right? Get those seashells. It’s a question of loves and passions that to say, if you love your children and you are passionate about faithfully serving at home, that that becomes the only thing that you can do, rather than saying that we are complex and we have different seasons and we have multiple callings and they overlap over different times. And I think that there’s room for— there’s more pie. That’s really what it comes down to. I think there’s more pie.

75. 26:52

    Eric Landry

    So as I read this book, I was reading it and thinking, I wish that it was a book that more men would just naturally pick up. And you’re writing it for your daughters so that they know that they have a place in the— What role do you think our fathers, our brothers, and our sons have to play in either helping women find their place in the church or hurting them and preventing them from finding their place in the church?

76. 27:24

    Kendra Dahl

    I love this question. What you said before, talking about Romans 16, actually was probably quoting Mike Kruger, who gave a lecture talking about how Paul related to his ministry partners. And it’s Mike who drew out that he knew their names, he knew their ministries. And he asked this question of, if pastors knew just that much about the women in their church, how would that bless the women? And I just sat there and wept. Sat there and wept. Because I think that is the thing where, especially in Reformed circles, where we have this very high view of the calling of the minister, which I think is good. But if we don’t also have a high view of the way every member of the church contributes to Christ’s body, then we are looking over the heads of our sisters who are faithfully showing up to serve in their homes, in their workplaces, in their church communities. And so I think pastors have a significant role to play in just seeing women, knowing how God has gifted them, knowing the spheres that they have influence, and asking, I mean, “How can I pray for you?” Or, “How’d that conversation go?” Or, “Okay, what do you have coming up this week? What are you teaching at Bible study? What are you learning at Bible study?” I mean, I think that interest and investment from pastors has such a way to minister to women’s hearts, who tend to think that their contribution is not important and not essential, and that if they weren’t doing it, it wouldn’t matter.

77. 28:53

    Kendra Dahl

    I think that being seen has such an opportunity to really lift the spirits of women who are just trying to faithfully serve Christ.

78. 29:01

    Eric Landry

    Near the beginning of the book, you tell a story about a pastor, I believe it was in your church, who sat up in front of the congregation and apologized for not understanding the place that women had in the church. As I think about that, I think how hard it must have been for you and others to have that conversation with that pastor, and I know that there are probably lots of women who want to have that conversation with their pastors. How would you counsel them to have that hard conversation?

79. 29:35

    Kendra Dahl

    I think that’s partially why I wrote this book for women and not for men. There are things I would like to say to men about how you can use your agency to elevate the women in your lives. And I hope that they will read this book and glean that from them. And so the hope in this book, I kind of structured around calling women to conviction and to courage. And I think that the first step for women who want to approach their pastors is to do that work of wrestling with the text and wrestling with their own hearts to form conviction. That is, I think, being willing to be honest about our pride and the ways that we’re coming in with our assumptions about what’s fair and the ways that we’re shaped by the culture around us that’s calling us to cast off the things that are trying to limit you or silence you or things like that. And so what faithfulness looks like for me is to keep pressing in.

80. 30:27

    Kendra Dahl

    And we did reach a point where my husband and I were like, “Maybe the time has come. And maybe it’s time for us to leave this church.” And it was so sweet, that moment, when we decided, okay, it’s time to kind of start the process of exiting. All the elders came to our home, and we had just the most beautiful conversation of just reconciliation and honesty. And that was still— we weren’t still yet to the part where things really started to change. Right. So I think if you can walk with the Lord in humility and keep pressing in, and you are met with a pastor who wants to engage, to keep doing that. And I think where I land in the book is to say, if you have to go, let it be in grief, not anger.

81. 31:11

    Kendra Dahl

    I think sometimes those conversations, you can’t reach a point of alignment, and you can live with that. And sometimes you can’t. And I think the point is to be convinced in our own minds by the Scriptures, but to do everything we can to live at peace with one another. And if that means that we persist, or if that means that we go, I think that’s something we have to wrestle with.

82. 31:32

    Eric Landry

    You’re very vulnerable in this book. You tell a lot of your own personal story. And I was wondering if you could go back in time and meet single mom Kendra holding Hadley and reading with frustration the Jesus Storybook Bible because you weren’t professing faith at the time and someone had given it to you and you didn’t really want to introduce this to your daughter. If you could go back to that woman, what would you say to her? How would you advise her? What would you say to the 16-year-old Hadley that you are now, looking back on her, on all of the twists and the turns that are going to make her the person that you are today?

83. 32:10

    Kendra Dahl

    I know it’s so cliché, but I would want to say to just cling to the goodness of God. I think at that point in my life, I was not convinced that God was good, so I wanted nothing to do with him. I wanted to protect Hadley from him. And I think if I had had the eyes then to see what I see now, to be able to know God through his mercy and to see even his kindness to us in the Scriptures and in the things that feel oppressive. I’ll never forget, as I was writing this book and studying 1 Peter 3, I just had this moment where I was so struck by Peter’s tenderness for these women, when he says, “Submit to your husbands so that they may be won without a word by your respectful and pure conduct.” And this, I always thought of that as such an oppressive, passive silencing, especially as a talker. I’m like, “He’s telling them to shut up.” But no, it’s like, they’re probably so discouraged.

84. 33:09

    Kendra Dahl

    They long for their husbands to know the Lord. And here Peter is encouraging them that their silence is so powerful that God can work through that. And I think those are the things that I feel like the Lord has so sweetly met me in, in these past 16 years, where it’s like, man, if you could go back and just infuse that so that you could skip some of the process of learning, wouldn’t that be great? But really, when I say that, it’s like, no, these last 16 years have been so sweet, the way the Lord has, through all of these hard things, given shape to the convictions that he’s given me. And so I would mostly want to go back and just be like, “Buckle up, it’s gonna be fun.” Yeah.

85. 33:44

    Eric Landry

    The book is A Place for You: Reframing Christian Womanhood. Thanks, Kendra.

86. 33:49

    Kendra Dahl

    Thanks, Eric.