Felicity Dale
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Devil, Take Your Hands Off Our Little Girls!
Julie Ross, one of the co-authors of The Black Swan Effect: A response to gender hierarchy in the church compiled these scary statistics: Half the world’s population is female. They comprise 40% of the world’s workforce but own 1% of the world’s wealth. Seventy percent of those living in poverty in the world are female, …
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Can Women be Elders in the Church or Not?
Many people believe that women cannot be elders. They often base it on this Scripture: It is a trustworthy statement: if any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work he desires to do (1Tim 3:1 NASB). Many other versions say something similar. There are two problems with this translation: Nowhere in …
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The Medieval Attitudes That Prevail for Women in the Church
Tony and I were relaxing when his cellphone rang. It soon became apparent from his end of the conversation that the person the other end was interested in publishing a book called An Army of Ordinary People that I wrote some time ago. “Put it on speaker,” I whispered to Tony, eager to hear …
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How Men Can Set Women Free
What part can the men play in this? If this is just a movement of women, it will by default become a feminist movement. This is not what we want. However, if the men will join is in promoting women and encouraging them to take their place alongside them on the front lines, it will …
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A Helper for My Husband
For many years, I was taught that my purpose as a wife/woman was to be a helper for my husband. A sort of divinely appointed personal assistant to him. He was the one to take the initiative; I was there to serve him, to help him fulfill God’s vision and call on his life. If …
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Feminine vs Feminist Christian Leader
Yes, that’s right. I said “feminine leader,” not “female leader.” Why is it that people expect leaders of either gender to think/look/act as though they are men? Someone once sent me a Facebook picture saying, “I’m tired of Christian women leaders looking like men. This is how I would like a woman leader to appear.” …
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How Moses Was a Foreshadowing of Christ to Women
Someone recently pointed out an interesting passage to me. I think there are some good lessons to learn from it. “When Moses arrived in Midian, he sat down beside a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters who came as usual to draw water and fill the water troughs for their father’s flocks. …
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How God Speaks in Silence
When Tony and I moved here to the States in 1987, probably the toughest part of our lives so far at a spiritual level kicked in. Why? God became silent. He stopped talking to us. Back in the U.K., nearly everything had gone well. It was relatively easy to know what God was saying. In …
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How Women Can Heal the Half-Paralyzed Church
When I worked as a doctor, there was a diagnosis I never liked to make. Hemiplegic is the medical term used to describe paralysis down one side of the body that occurs, for example, after a stroke. If the condition was severe, it was potentially a devastating diagnosis for the person involved, who had to …
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How A Church Found the Spiritual Solution to Unemployment
Is there a spiritual realm, an unseen dimension to what happens here on earth? Is spiritual warfare just our imagination? Does what we do spiritually make any difference to what happens here on earth? Understanding the reality of an unseen dimension that affects what goes on here on earth jolts us out of religious complacency …
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Why God Called Women ‘Helpers’
For many years, I was taught that my purpose as a wife and woman was to help my husband—to be a sort of divinely appointed personal assistant to him. He was the one to take the initiative; I was there to help him fulfill God’s vision and call on his life. If I was to …
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Rape, Beatings Wouldn’t Stop This Woman From Changing a Nation
Helen Roseveare was one of my heroines when I was in medical school. Although I never met her personally, I knew various people in her family. Born in England in 1925, she became a Christian as a medical student at Cambridge University. (My father-in-law, Donald Dale, was a medical student there at a similar …
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How God Breaks the Glass Ceiling
For a very patriarchal society, God used a remarkable set of women in leadership roles in the stories of the Old Testament: Eve was the mother of all living (Genesis 3:20). Miriam is described as a prophet (Exodus 15:20). She may have been the sister who watched over Moses in his basket when he was discovered by …
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What Dr. Cho Taught Me About Women in Revival
The temperature was -13 degrees. The church hostel where we were staying was unheated because there were so few visitors in January, and despite wearing several layers of clothing, we couldn’t get warm. It was 1983. Tony, my husband, and I were in Seoul, South Korea, to visit the Yoido Full Gospel Church led …
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Should Women be Excluded From These 5 Ministry Tasks?
There are a number of activities that have traditionally been limited to men. However, I find no scriptural warrant for not including women in them: 1. Baptism. This is traditionally done by the pastor. When baptism is delayed so it can be performed by a special person, it slows the growth of any disciple-making movement. In …
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