Customer Reviews

Gifted to Lead: The Art of Leading As a Woman in the Church

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I have loved this book. Nancy Beach addresses the challenges of women interacting with men who are not always sure a woman can or should lead in church circles. Beach avoids doctrinal disputes and adresses practical concerns with practical answers.
While she deals with the special challenges of women in leadership roles, most of her leadership advise is applicable to men as well as to women. Her book is not a rebel cry for women to claim leadership authority but rather, a reassurance to women that God can and does use women in leadership roles beyond children's and women's ministry and how to navigate in that arena with confidence and grace.
I highly recommend this book to women already in leadership as well as to women who suspect they may be called to leadership.
Beach also addresses the concerns of pastors and other male lay leaders who are still not sure if women should lead in the church.
Sane, practical and yet, clearly inspired.

The religious and spiritual journeys of women through many generations of church life are as unique and varied and different as the women themselves: biblically, historically, or within our contemporary moments! Nancy offers wonderful insight into her journey and any reader can find many commonalities as well as many differences. The hearts, minds, and souls of church women experience great differences within both our denominations and our geographical/cultural realities. My personal journey as a clergy woman has been seemingly far more intense than what seems to be chronicled in "Gifted To Lead". This is not to compare one person's pain with another, nor to say that rejection is any more threatening to one person's psyche than another's; but it is to declare that there are appropriate, comparative differences to be found in our journeys of ministry.

My only regret about Nancy's book is the lack of inclusion of a major biblical Gospel text that is significant and quite definitive regarding women called into the ministry of Jesus by Jesus himself. Those three verses, Luke 8:1-3, are so relevant to the journey of Christian women -- and indeed THE CHURCH ITSELF that I wrote 12 chapters on them and heartily recommend it to you as well!

Certain Women Called by Christ: Biblical Realities for Today

Nancy Beach has helped pave the way for women in God's Kingdom - she is candid and honest, courageous and leading the way for all women in the church that are Gifted to Lead.

I am a female in ministry and picked up this book to see if there were any fresh ideas in it. To my chagrin, Mrs Beach has written a book to women in ministry that is wrapped in the wordly view of management. Although she does throw in the "correct" Christian lingo, her premise that women should be allowed to be in authority over men, is faulty and unbiblical. She equates the equality we are granted in Christ with "sameness". I would argue, they are not the same thing. Being gifted for leadership does not mean we should break the beautiful order that God created in the beginning to fit in with the 1960's ideology that "I can bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan"! She states that men under her sometime have an issue with her "authority" over them. Hmm, I wonder why? Could it have to do with the fact that men were not created to be under the authority of women in the church? Unfortunately, I believe this book will lead women into sinful attitudes towards the men in their church, and ultimately to an unproductive, self-serving ministry. I am not returning this book, I am throwing it out to protect any unsuspecting Christ-loving woman looking for a biblical way to serve her Lord, church and others and not just her own ego.