How Virtual Access Will Work

Virtual attendees should join CBE’s 2026 Conference Band Group in the Band App to be able to access the virtual sessions. All in-person and virtual attendees have access to the group, and links for virtual sessions will be posted in the group. 

For each session there will be a link that will be shared in the Band App Group that will take you to YouTube to watch the live session. Afterward, each session will archive to YouTube, so that the sessions can be shared with attendees after they have aired. If you miss a session, this will make sure you can access the session after they have been aired live.

If the schedule is running behind, or if we are having trouble with video, we will communicate this to you through the Band App. 

Virtual Schedule

Times listed below are in Central Standard Time (UTC-5)

Friday, August 7 at 9:30 am

The Groans of a New Creation: Healing Promised in Galatians 3:28

Mimi Haddad

The renowned New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce said Galatians 3:28 was Paul’s heartbeat—his ministry and writings arise from and return to this text. This session will explore how, throughout the whole of Scripture, God gifts and calls women of all races, ethnicities, and classes to serve and lead God’s people and the church. 

Friday, August 7 at 10:30 am 

Godly Gifted Women in Church Ministry: A Romans 14 Issue or Crucial Secondary Doctrine?

Sam Killins

Is encouraging and empowering godly gifted women in church leadership and teaching positions a matter of conscience, or is it a matter of liturgical orthodoxy? Is the freedom for women to employ all their gifts of the Holy Spirit within the whole church a universal principle, or is it a context and conscience specific preference without a specific “right” or “wrong” answer? 

Friday, August 7 at 1:30 pm 

Finding the Big Points: What Really Matters in the Biblical Equality Debate 

Andrew Bartlett

Scholarly debate is vast and can be quite confusing to navigate, but there are some big, central points. In this session, Andrew Bartlett aims to identify and explain those points straightforwardly, showing how, in the key passages, complementarian expositions add to Scripture what is not actually there. 

Friday, August 7 at 3:30 pm

What the Body Speaks: How Church Structures Communicate Biblical Equality 

Tara Korpi

Churches communicate what they believe about men and women not only through theology, but through the signs and symbols embedded in their shared life. This workshop invites men and women to explore how leadership structures, decision-making patterns, and everyday practices tell the story of their systems within the Church. Drawing from 1 Corinthians 12 and the biblical image of the Church as a living body, the session offers a way of reading church life attentively, asking what is being communicated about authority, trust, and belonging through repeated actions and arrangements. Participants will reflect on how individual and shared decisions shape culture, sometimes reinforcing inequality even when biblical equality is affirmed in theology. Rather than debating gender models, the focus is on cultivating interpretive discernment and practical wisdom. Attendees will leave with concrete questions they can use to read their own contexts more clearly and to realign leadership practices toward mutuality, shared responsibility, and the flourishing of the whole body of Christ. 

Friday, August 7 at 6:30 pm 

Excavating Women: The Archaeology of Leaders in Early Christianity

Carina Pereira de Oliveira Prestes

This keynote session will present and examine Dr. Prestes’s new book, Excavating Women, tracing the archaeological markers used to honor women leaders in pre– and early Christian centuries. From Greek and Roman temples to tombs, churches, and catacombs, archaeologist and professor Dr. Carina Prestes excavates women’s leadership at odds with literary texts of their day. Learn how one generation spoke to another in the language of archaeology, repeating and repurposing leadership markers in clothing, objects left in tombs, mosaics, and inscriptions that, once seen, are impossible to ignore.  

Saturday, August 8 at 9:30 am

God’s Design: Man and Woman as Sacred Space in Genesis 2

Ingrid Faro

The creation story in Genesis 1 tells us that humanity as male and female was placed on the earth to represent and rule together as God’s partners in the world. Genesis 2 then provides imagery that helps us understand what this calling looks like in practice. First, Genesis 2:15 presents humanity as priests appointed “to serve and to protect” God’s garden tabernacle. Second, Genesis 2:18–20 makes clear that this work was never meant to be done alone but together, alongside a strong and corresponding partner (ezer kenegdo). Third, Genesis 2:21–22 describes humanity as man and woman constructed as two sides (tsela) of sacred space. This often-overlooked image offers a powerful vision of God’s design: men and women created for collaborative strength, working and serving together as equal partners, rightly relating to one another in order to uphold the worship and presence of God in the world. 

Saturday, August 8 at 10:30 am

Making Us Whole: Practicing Honesty, Hope, and Hospitality in a Context of Hierarchy 

Joy J. Moore

Moving beyond simple platitudes, this session highlights the importance of context and empathy, aiming to help people see the world and scripture in a fresh, transformative way offering practices to become an answer to Jesus’s prayer for unity. 

Saturday, August 8 at 1:30 pm

“By all means, keep moving”: Pursuing Wholeness After the Church’s Stroke 

Israel Steinmetz

The patriarchal denial of full equality, dignity, and Spirit-gifted-ministry to female members of the body of Christ is akin to a spiritual stroke within the Church which has compromised and at times paralyzed half of Jesus’ followers. Stroke recovery requires a process of re-learning how to function, often by developing new neural pathways to create new mechanisms for functioning, bypassing dead and dysfunctional portions of the brain. 

Recovery of the body of Christ may require something similar; but what might this recovery process look like? Drawing on New Testament examples, I highlight the power of telling a better story, embracing the Spirit’s work, and re-envisioning power, status, and structures. Ultimately, I encourage us to draw strength and inspiration from the wisdom of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who challenged those pursuing justice in his time: “By all means, keep moving.” 

Saturday, August 8 at 7:00 pm 

Panel Discussion on Leadership

Moderator: Mimi Haddad 

Participants: Jo Anne Lyon, Joy J. Moore, Carina Pereira de Oliveira Prestes, Kathleen Rankin 

This panel will discuss leadership in ministry: the challenges and highlights of being a woman in an often-male context. In this conversation, we will learn what leadership is (closeness to God, servant heart vs. influencers), as well as offer practical advice for people starting out in ministry whether as women, alongside women, or intending to encourage and lift women up. 

Sunday, August 9 at 9:00 am 

Galatians 3:28 and the White Nationalism Movement: Healing a Wounded Body 

Johnie Wood

Drawing on years analyzing extremist movements in counterterrorism as well as work training pastors, this session will show how White Christian Nationalism (WCN) misuses Scripture to sacralize hierarchy, protect group power, and sideline women and people of color in the name of “biblical order.” Contrast these distortions with the New Testament’s vision of a reconciled, multiethnic church where gifts are shared across genders, power is exercised as service, and no one part of the body is elevated over the rest (1 Corinthians 12; Galatians 3:28). Participants will leave with a simple diagnostic tool for spotting WCN “tells” in sermons and church life, and with concrete pastoral practices for responding with truth, humility, and courage rather than shame or contempt.

Sunday, August 9 at 10:45 am 

Enriched by God: How God’s Gifts Are Designed to Promote the Health and Healing of the Body of Christ 

Roy Ciampa

This presentation will discuss what Paul says about gifts in 1 Corinthians and how this relates to practices of patronage common in the Greco-Roman world. More specifically, it will explore the significant impact of understanding—as Paul does—that every believer is given one or more gifts directly by God (in a world where patronage usually occurred in a hierarchical, trickle-down fashion from higher social tiers to lower ones). Using their spiritual gifts, each member of the church becomes both a benefactor and a beneficiary in relation to every other member. This helps us better understand how God’s gifts are designed to promote the health and healing of the body of Christ. Key texts include 1 Corinthians 1:4–9 and 1 Corinthians 12:4–26.