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This Week on Seminary Dropout…
Originally from Australia, Mandy Smith is lead pastor of University Christian Church, a campus and neighborhood congregation with its own fair-trade café in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is a regular contributor to Christianity Today publications, and the Missio Alliance blog, and the author of Making a Mess and Meeting God. Her latest book is The Vulnerable Pastor: How Human Limitations Empower Our Ministry (IVP). Mandy and her husband Jamie, a New Testament professor at Cincinnati Christian University, live with their two kids in a little house where the teapot is always warm.
Often as pastors we feel like we need to project strength and competency in order to minister effectively. That’s why we go to conferences and emulate the latest superstars. But we know we can never live up to those images. Deep down, we know our own limitations, our weaknesses, our faults. We fear that if people knew who we really are, we’d be disqualified from ministry.
Not so. Mandy Smith unpacks the biblical paradox that God’s strength is revealed through our human weakness. Transparently describing her pastoral journey, Smith shows how vulnerability shapes ministry, through our spiritual practices and relationships, influencing our preaching, teaching and even the nuts and bolts of the daily schedule. Understanding our human constraints makes our ministry more sustainable and guards us against disillusionment and burnout.
We don’t have to have it all together. Recognizing our weakness makes us rely on God, so our weakness can become a ministry resource. God has called you to lead not as a demigod, but as a human, so the world can see that the church is a place for humans like them. -From the Publisher
Mandy is also the director of SheLeads.
Lead Together
It’s time for women and men together to rediscover God’s vision for shared leadership in the Church and Christian ministry.
When we lead together, we see the family of God restored.
When we lead together, we learn a new vocabulary for mission.
When we lead together, we better reflect the person of Christ.
When we lead together, we more fully embody Jesus’ gospel.
Out of these convictions, Missio Alliance has created the SheLeads Summit.
The Summit exists to encourage and equip our sisters and to welcome our brothers as we imagine together where God is leading His Church, for the blessing of the nations.
Will you join us for this honest, grace-filled and hopeful conversation?
If you liked this episode then you might also like…
Seminary Dropout 150: #SheLeads: Reclaiming the Blessed Alliance for Faithful Mission – Austin Panel
Missio Alliance Comment Policy
The Missio Alliance Writing Collectives exist as a ministry of writing to resource theological practitioners for mission. From our Leading Voices to our regular Writing Team and those invited to publish with us as Community Voices, we are creating a space for thoughtful engagement of critical issues and questions facing the North American Church in God’s mission. This sort of thoughtful engagement is something that we seek to engender not only in our publishing, but in conversations that unfold as a result in the comment section of our articles.
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