Speaking up for women

SHE NEEDS:
Women Flourishing in the Church
By Nay Dawson
IVP. 100 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 1 789 744 521

This is a book born out of the lived and sometimes disappointing experience of the author. Set among the landscape of the church and Christian agencies, to which Nay Dawson remains passionately committed, we are given a lens through which to see the challenges many women face on their path to human flourishing.

Identity, self-worth and personal development are among the fundamental issues this book explores.

What is the place of women in the body of Christ? If women hold up one half of the world, how do we fully and flexibly reflect the image of God as male and female? Why, if there are apparently no ‘no-go’ areas for women in society, are there, in some Christian cultures, low ceilings and closed doors in the church.

She Needs is not a superficial offering. It doesn’t approach this subject area head-on theologically or historically. But footnotes and references to further reading indicate where and how the author’s worldview has been shaped.

Relatively brief, this book is essentially anecdotal. And for the better, in my view. Nay invites people to engage in a conversation with her own experience and that of her friends. It’s a dialogue which doesn’t heckle or harass with an overbearing sense of feminist injustice. Gently yet firmly it calls out the questions which certain parts of the church in particular have ignored or misheard for too long.

Questions for discussion, scattered through the pages, suggest that the book might be a useful primer and prompt for group study. Avoiding dogmatism in this way, we are helped to see that how we communicate across the room to each other is as important as what we communicate.

As a Christian leader and pastor of churches across five decades, I have benefitted from a wife who shares not just my life but my ministry. I also have a daughter who serves the body of Christ with her speaking and leadership gifts. In both cases I have observed how they have had to navigate challenges in this area that as a woman they would face nowhere else in the same way.

So, I hope that this book helps to keep the theological and cultural conversations going on among us as Christians equally committed to Scripture.

We need to create not just a talking shop, but a workshop, and for some, even a repair shop.

See also Rebekah Brown's review of She Needs.