Let Her Lead

By Brady Boyd

A pastor’s inspiring message for Christian women—and those who love them.
 
Let her be her. And let her be heard. For Pastor Brady Boyd, these are the two main wishes for his young daughter and the world she’ll encounter as a woman.
 
In Let Her Lead, Boyd calls on the church and the wider world to let women be who they are and speak their voice with confidence and conviction. The question of women in leadership remains touchy for many people, especially church people. In this brief and engaging book, Boyd defuses the tension by offering a fresh, practical, and biblical perspective and revealing the leadership roles women play at New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Through it all, Boyd imagines a bright future that could be awaiting his daughter and what she may be invited to do. And he shows all of us—men and women alike—the roles we can play to create that better reality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781625393067

Brady Boyd

Brady Boyd is married to his college sweetheart, Pam, and together they have two children, Abram and Callie. He has a degree in journalism from Louisiana Tech, has been a radio announcer for professional baseball and basketball teams, and was the sports editor for his college newspaper. Before coming to New Life Church (Colorado) in 2007, he served Gateway Church in Southlake, Texas, for nearly seven years. Follow him on Twitter at @pastorbrady.  

Book preview

Introduction

On a bright November morning nearly thirteen years ago, my wife, Pam, and I showed up at Northwest Hospital in Amarillo, Texas, ready to pick up our adopted daughter, Callie, who was to be born that day. After the hours-long whirlwind that surrounds every child coming into this world—the anticipating, the monitoring, the laboring, the delivering—finally a tiny, red-haired, blue-eyed girl was placed in our arms.

As Pam and I prepared to leave the hospital, Callie’s birth mom looked at me and, with a slight upward nod toward my new daughter, said, Brady, make sure she’s always a daddy’s girl.

Coming from her, I knew what that meant. She’d always had a good relationship with her father, and at the tender age of nineteen still treasured being a daddy’s girl. She wanted the same care and acceptance for Callie that she herself enjoyed. Let her be seen, she was saying. Let her be heard. Let her be valued and adored and loved well.

Of course, she didn’t need to issue a reminder. Little girls—and big ones too, for that matter—are always treated this way. Right?

Callie is twelve years old now, almost thirteen, making the ridiculously quick hop between girlhood and womanhood right before my eyes. Boys ease into puberty the way winter gives way to spring, as evidenced by my son, Abram, now fourteen. It’s subtle. It’s slow. It happens in fits and starts, flying under the radar most times. But girls? One day they’re a mishmash of giggles, pigtails and pink swim floaties, and the next day they’re full-on woman, see them flourish, hear them roar.

This transition has got me thinking not only about the twelve-year-old woman who now resides in my abode—and at five-foot-seven, Callie’s frame, at least, is precisely that—but also about the world she will inhabit once she enters adulthood for real. What kind of interests will she hope to pursue? What kind of friends will she choose to have? What kind of bosses will she wind up working for? What kind of people might she lead? What kind of faith community will surround her? What kind of man will she marry? (That last question leaves me blank. My daughter still wants nothing to do with the opposite sex, which is totally fine by me.)

But to my point: Given all the promise and potential awaiting Callie, how do I help prepare her for her future? And how do I prepare that future for her?

These are the central questions banging around my brain as I sit down to write this brief book. We’re going to have a conversation about a topic—women in leadership—that is touchy for many people, especially church people, but I’m not trying to be provocative here. I’m not trying to pick a fight. I actually want to defuse this topic that has been infused with such vitriol along the way by simply revisiting a few themes that have been sidelining women far too long.

But I also want to begin by admitting that, as a dad, I cringe at the thought that in ten or twenty or thirty years, my bright, capable daughter could have doors slammed in her face for the simple fact that she happens not to be male. If she is cut out to be a corporate CEO, then I hope she’ll be hired. If she is cut out to be President of the United States—perhaps even the first female one, if Hillary doesn’t get there first—then I hope she’ll be elected. If she is cut out to be a professor or a lawyer or an engineer or a horse trainer, then I hope she’ll be chosen there too.

And if she is cut out to lead within the church, then I hope she’ll be invited to lead.

If I were to boil down my desires, dreams, assumptions, and plans for the type of world that will embrace my daughter, they’d fit into two simple manifestos: Let her be her. And let her be heard.

This isn’t just my vision for the world ten or twenty years from now, when Callie is a bona fide adult. It is my vision today, here, in our present culture. There are 30- and 40- and 50-year-old women who want to engage in leadership now. What I want for Callie is the same thing I want for them: to be seen and heard, acknowledged and valued, loved well and led well…and learned from by both women and men.

We’ve been turning an important corner at New Life Church, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where I’ve pastored for almost six years. For the first time in our church’s nearly thirty-year history, women are excelling in senior-leadership roles. Licensed female pastors in