What might a society that fulfills the Bible’s vision of mutuality look like? I’d like to suggest that it would have these five characteristics.

Galatians 3:27–29 is a central text for Paul. To be baptized into Christ is to imitate Christ, in whom social hierarchies and animosity are overcome. Whether Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, all Christians, without distinction, walk in newness of life, taking up their cross equally to serve the world as Christ did.

“Grandma’s a pastor? I want to be like Grandma!” The words out of the mouth of my four-year-old granddaughter have led me to believe God will continue to use women to advance the kingdom of God. 

Blood and water flowed mingled      from his side

It was not until I was well into my thirties that I started to see that some of my uniquely female experiences are beautiful and poignant pictures within the redemption story. Consider the motif of new life born of blood and water, pain and sacrifice.

When we realized we were being called as a team, it felt like someone had opened up the door and let the light come in. We noticed it for ourselves in palpable ways, and it was affirming when others began to notice it, too.

Every time I click on the leadership tab on the website of a Protestant church and see an all-male team of elders, I am dismayed at the foolishness of choosing not to hear the fullness of God’s “sound system.” The Catholic and Orthodox branches of God’s family tree have been even more reluctant to balance out their leadership by including the…

It is true, we become like what we see. Growing up, what I saw was my mother, Sallie. She worked hard and gave everything she could so my sister and I had opportunities to thrive. She served in the church and in the community. She loved family and was always hospitable to strangers. She was a humble woman who led—a woman of influence.

This issue is devoted to those stories that remind us not just that egalitarian leadership is biblical and right, but that God is using it to make the world new.