10/21/26 - 2170: The Biblical Truth About Women at Work

Jim: This is iWork4Him ...

Martha: where faith meets work and believers unleash their calling. In the creation account in the Bible, in Genesis 1:27, it says, "So God created human beings in His own image. In the image of God, He created them. Male and female, He created them."

Martha: God is good. He created male and female, and it doesn't take much to understand that we are different.

Jim: That's for sure.

Martha: But God does not make mistakes. Men and women both reflect God uniquely. Because men and women are different, we need resources and conversations that sometimes focus directly on one gender.

Martha: Today, let's talk about women. In fact, we will also talk about work and calling. That's right, Joanna Meyer is here back with us to bring us up to date on her book, Women, Work, and Calling, as well as the conference by the same name. Joanna, welcome to the show.

Joanna Meyer: It is great to be with you.

Martha: We're so excited, and there's just so much that we're gonna unpack today. And so the first thing I just wanna say is welcome back to iWork4Him.

Jim: It's been a lot of years. Sorry.

Martha: It has. Yeah. And I'm gonna put the link to our last interview in the show notes for everybody. But since then, you have written this book, Women, Work, and Calling, and I have quite a few questions for you. So first of all I wanna know, how did God lead you to write this specific book?

Joanna Meyer: Yeah. It really flows from my own experience. I'm a woman who happens to be single. I'm not married. I don't have kids, although that's something I've longed for. I also have leadership gifts. And so for much of my life, I found myself without a roadmap.

Joanna Meyer: I wasn't checking or following the steps that are often traditional for Christian women, so I wasn't getting married, wasn't having kids, and my leadership gifts often didn't find a place in the church. And so here I was building a career, and I did not know how that fit in the bigger picture of faith.

Joanna Meyer: And so I was looking for answers, and I have been working at the Denver Institute for Faith and Work for the last 13 years, and we soon realized early in the life of Denver Institute that women were hungry for a conversation that was unique to them. Because often there are cultural norms or a real lack of discipleship for Christian women around the roles that they play in public life.

Joanna Meyer: And so we began offering programming here in the Denver area and started thinking there are some core concepts that would fit easily in a book that could take this message and conversation far beyond the bounds of our city. And so University Press was gracious to publish it about three years ago, and we have been off to the races ever since.

Martha: That's so good. I love... I think that there's kind of a common theme, Jim, where we've talked to people where they're like, "I was looking for a resource, and I couldn't find it, so God told me to write it."

Joanna Meyer: That's right. Very much.

Martha: I love that. So talk about the format of the book because it is, you know- Just give everybody a quick glimpse of how it's set up.

Joanna Meyer: Yeah. If you would hold it up sideways, Martha you'll see- Sideways ... it's a very skinny book. See how skinny it is? When I first got the book from the publisher, I was a little bit embarrassed because I have friends that have written much bigger, meatier books. But we designed the book to bring really thoughtful, rich concepts from the faith and work conversation, and communicate them in ways that were accessible to working women.

Joanna Meyer: I remember being at an event, standing at the book table, and a woman held up Every Good Endeavor and Women, Work, and Calling- ... and said, "Which do you think I'll read?" And that was the reality, is that Christian women are so busy that they often don't have time to be spending a lot of time digging into deep theological tomes.

Joanna Meyer: And so the question for us was, can you take some of these rich concepts and communicate them in ways that are accessible, that are easy for discussion? The book really suits book club conversations or personal devotionals. And the four areas that we look at: what's a biblical foundation for thinking about faith and work? How do we think about our own souls and how they're shaped on the job? What are common workplace challenges that Christian - that any woman faces? And then how do we respond to them from a Christian perspective? And finally, what is the role of building networks of relationships in a woman's discipleship journey?

Joanna Meyer: 20 short conversations with very deep implications for how we live and work.

Jim: I love that. And what's great is at iWork4Him, we realized this years and years ago that, hey, Christian working women deal with way different issues than christian working men. Which is why we launched the SheWorks4Him brand in 2022, and have 75 episodes, and this is gonna be a brand-new episode on SheWorks4Him as we relaunch that brand because it is so important that conversation be carried forward.

Jim: Because as Martha mentioned in the opening, men and women are different. How we experience work is different. How we experience relationships is different. Pretty much everything is different about men and women.

Martha: Yes.

Jim: Yeah, we have noses and ears.

Martha: Even, like, when I look at this book, I think, "Oh, this is, I hate to say, I don't know, "cute." I don't know if cute's the right word, but it's yes, I can absorb this.

Joanna Meyer: It's designed, And you notice it's not pink. That's one thing that's very true about the Women, Work, and Calling discipleship movement is that it moves and sounds differently than typical women's ministry opportunities, and women find that very refreshing. They feel that they can find themselves and their life experience in that context more easily.

Jim: It, it's fall colors too, so is that why your events women, Work, and Calling are always in the fall?

Joanna Meyer: Maybe. Maybe.

Jim: But you're wearing-

Martha: It just feels right ...

Jim: but you're wearing summer colors, so-

Joanna Meyer: Yeah, I am. I am.

Jim: It's confusing. You're confusing the messaging for us.

Martha: We're embracing the end of the season.

Jim: Oh, is that what it is?

Martha: Okay.

Joanna Meyer: All right. It's Denver Broncos orange and blue if you look at the cover of Women, Work, and Calling. They, it's a little interesting observation. When they sent us the first cover options we sent them right back and said, "This does not reflect the book at all," because the first drawings either looked pink and purple, although those are colors I love and wear personally, that is not... We do not cloak Women, Work, and Calling in Christian stereotypes for women.

Joanna Meyer: And also they sent us ones that looked like they were more about beauty than about work. They had women that had long, flowing hair. And I was like, "Listen, this is a book about work." So if you look at the cover, you'll see they've changed the imagery to include industrial images and scientific labs and a greater diversity of styles of women. We just sent it right back and said, "Hey, this does not reflect the book. You can do better." And they did.

Jim: And you know what's funny? I never noticed there was images there. I just thought it was just like a big pattern.

Martha: You answered the question then who it's for. But I just want - is there anything you wanna add to that?

Joanna Meyer: I was gonna say one thing that's unique about the Women Work and Calling movement is that, with rare exceptions, men are always welcome at our programming, 100%. We always encourage men to come. It's not... Our programming, whether it's an event or a book or a webinar, it's not designed with them in mind because we've really thoughtfully contextualized the conversation for women, but when men are curious about women's experience or desire to partner better with them in the workplace, that's exactly who we want at the table.

Joanna Meyer: So men are welcome to read this book. You may find it really encouraging, and there will be truths that apply to men, too, in what they find in the book.

Jim: And what better resource for a guy to start understanding his Christian working woman wife-

Joanna Meyer: Yeah ...

Jim: and be able to understand what the kind of things they're dealing with and the kinds of issues they're dealing with when they go to church on Sunday. And a woman like you who's an executive and speaks in front of thousands of people, and, "Hey, Joanna, you wanna just serve in the nursery on Sunday?" Instead of saying, "Hey, Joanna, how about leading this?"

Jim: That's what frustrates me so much is that the spiritual giftings of women are so often overlooked and ignored within the local church. But in the big C Church, certainly in the Faith at Work movement, we understand 'cause women work and calling... 55% of the workforce is women.

Joanna Meyer: Yeah. And in the post-pandemic years, we reached the highest level of workforce participation by women in the United States. 70% of US women at its peak, it's gone down a little bit, were working full or part-time outside of the home. So it's a reality that so many women, either by choice or by necessity, are working.

Martha: And it something I just wanna point out about the book is, number one, I love... I've said this to you before in person, so this is not a surprise to you, but I love listening to you talk because you are just so engaging. But you talk at a level of great conversation where everyone can grasp what you're saying. And we were joking before the show because you're in the academic world. That's not always the case.

Jim: So far only one six-syllable word used.

Martha: So the... And that was our last name.

Jim: No , contextualize.

Martha: But I think people get that one. That's not six syllables. Anyway. Anyway, the book is tailored...

Joanna Meyer: to the unique needs of an audience. That's right. I was certain if I used the big word I had to define it.

Martha: That's right.

Joanna Meyer: So I would say it's tailored to the unique needs and perspective of an audience.

Martha: So I just wanna say it's so readable, and I love that about it, and at the same time, living in the academic world as you do, the resources at the end of the book are extensive. Your acknowledgements, your, just the, all the, the notes that you wanna give credit to, and I appreciate that. Just because you have a collaborative heart, and you are, like, give comment to who it's due. And I just wanted to highlight that for the listener as they're considering picking up this book. And I highly recommend that you do.

Joanna Meyer: Good.

Martha: Yes.

Joanna Meyer: And there's a free... If you hit the Women Working & Calling website, under the Learn section, under Books, we have a free digital discussion guide you can use for a book club. So there are discussion questions at the end of every chapter, but if you wanna read it with friends, we have resources for that, too.

Jim: We'll make sure we put a link in the show notes.

Martha: Yes, we will. That's awesome. And I think I remember you saying that you walked into some coffee shop somewhere, and there were women actually doing the study. Wasn't that when you were traveling this summer?

Joanna Meyer: It's really fun. Yeah. One of the joys of what we're doing with Women Work & Calling is that we have designed as a holistic discipleship model for Christian women. So they're growing in depth of understanding of scripture, of soul care, of professional skill, of relationships, of influence.

Joanna Meyer: They're having an imagination for how God can use them in the world. So we describe this holistic model, and we've developed leadership training and resources that help people take these concepts and apply them wherever they are. And so I was in Chattanooga, Tennessee, this summer, where we are partnered with Faith Co-op there, and they're running our first Women Working & Calling partnership.

Joanna Meyer: And I walked into a coffee shop, on my birthday, no less, and discovered that there was a group of women from Faith Co-op that were reading the Women Working & Calling book, facilitated by a volunteer, which to me is, that was the best birthday gift I could have had, 'cause my passion is, beyond the book and beyond the event, is that we would change the conversation for Christian women, that the roles that we play in public life would be valued from the faith community, and that we would be equipping women for significant faithful influence in those spaces.

Joanna Meyer: That doesn't happen accidentally, and there's a real gap, both in the biblical understanding and in the actual real-life training to develop women in those spaces. So the more we can make our concepts sticky and transferable and adaptable to the places where women are, the better. And so that's amazing to see that happen.

Martha: That's so good.

Jim: And it must have - Did you walk up to that group and sit down and say hi, I'm Joanna Meyer." "That's my book you're reading"?

Joanna Meyer: No, I wish I had just said hello. If a listener is going to do a Women Working & Calling book club, track me down, and I will Zoom in for an author question and answer with your group.

Martha: That's fabulous.

Jim: Or if there's free coffee involved, she'll show right up.

Joanna Meyer: Yeah.

Jim: All right. So talking about being sticky, what's really cool is that we're talking about this, and you got an event in a week and a half. On October the 30th, you're hosting the Women Working & Calling annual event. What's the theme this year?

Joanna Meyer: Yeah. The theme this year is we're looking at the lives and work of working women in scripture. This came from my own understanding. I realized I had a lot of depth about theological concepts. I understand it at a high level how work is a part of God's redemptive plan in the world. But I couldn't put my finger on specific stories or specific verses as easily as I wanted to, and so I just started looking to see where the stories of working women were in scripture so I could better teach from it, and I realized that so many of our biblical heroines actually were working, and the way that God accomplished his redemptive purposes was through their work.

Joanna Meyer: And that is actually invigorating. I will share a chart with you for your listeners of a chart of a comprehensive look at all of the ways that women were working in scripture, and their work was advancing God's purposes in the world. It's amazing. So that's the theme of the event. So we'll be looking at Eve, the model of the ezer kenegdo that we know from Genesis of how God has created women to have strength.

Joanna Meyer: We're looking at biblical courage in the lives of Rahab and Deborah and the Hebrew midwives in Exodus, and then we're finishing the day with the model in the Old Testament of the Hebrew word, the tsadiykim, or the righteous, of people who used all that they had, have, and all that they are to love and serve others.

Joanna Meyer: And so we'll be looking at those biblical models and then saying, "Okay, what does this mean for our own work, and how can God shape me and use me to be ready for that type of influence?" So it's gonna be a great conversation.

Martha: And nobody needs to miss that. So let's talk about that for a minute because, okay, you may not be able to fly next week to Colorado to attend this in person, but there are other options. Why don't you talk about that, Joanna.

Joanna Meyer: Thank you for asking. Yeah. So we live stream the event on Friday, October 30th, so you could watch if you want to just as a solo viewer online. We have a really engaging facilitator in chat, so people around the country and the world are engaging in that space.

Joanna Meyer: We also have 22 partners around the country who will be gathering in cities from Chattanooga to Athens, Georgia to the Bay Area in San Francisco who will be watching it in groups. And so you may find on the Women, Work, and Calling website that there's a location right near you. At a minimum, join us online, or if you can't set aside a full day, register for the event, and you'll have access to the replays.

Joanna Meyer: Within about a week, we'll have all of the videos ready for you, so that's an easy way for you to get access and become part of the ongoing conversation for Women, Work, and Calling. So that's at womenworkandcalling.com under annual event, and ticket sales will stop on October 27th, so make sure you make a decision sooner rather than later to participate.

Jim: So my question is, let's just say somebody's listening today and they're like, "But I wanna set up a location. I want to have, invite a bunch of my friends over." Is it too late to set up a location?

Joanna Meyer: Yes and no. No in the sense that we really support our host sites. It's a multi-month process where we help them do a great job. But you could easily host an informal watch party in your home or your office. So just have everybody in your group register to watch online so they have access to all the materials and the resources, and then find a location where you have a big screen you can project on and good sound quality, and off you go.

Martha: Good deal. And really, that's a great way to test drive it, and then next year maybe they can be a host site.

Joanna Meyer: Totally.

Martha: And really say, "Yes, this is something I wanna bring to my community at large."

Jim: I'm thinking Marionville, Missouri, people.

Joanna Meyer: Yeah, it's a really fun conversation. We just hear that from people over and over again. They say, "This is my favorite day of the year," or, "This is a place where I feel..." It's not unusual to hear women say, "This is a place where I feel fully seen and known in a way that I don't in other parts of my professional life or faith community."

Martha: That's so good. Thank you for your intentionality in putting it together, because it's obvious that a lot of thought and prayer have gone into the theme and the digging deep into the scripture and what you're gonna pull out.

Martha: I know several of the women that are gonna be on stage, and can't wait to hear them myself. I think that's so awesome. Why don't we talk a little bit more about the book because I think that, and maybe you know what? Before we talk more about the book, 'cause I have a couple chapters I want to just kinda dig into just a little bit. The Women, Work, and Calling as a whole. Say people attend the event, whether it's virtual or in person, they've read the book, what else?

Joanna Meyer: Yeah.

Martha: Is there something else?

Joanna Meyer: Totally. We have our home in Denver at the Denver Institute for Faith and Work, which is wonderful. We draw richly from their resources. But we have asked hard questions about what it looks like to build a discipleship movement for working women, and so we support that in a couple ways.

Joanna Meyer: One is we do online things. Like we'll be doing in January, we'll do our annual online kickoff where women around the country or around the world will join us. We're in the middle of a webinar series called Ages and Stages. It'll be over by the time this episode airs. But we're looking at how women work and lead across seasons of life, which is really exciting.

Joanna Meyer: It's a four-part series. It's part of a bigger eight-part project we've been working on to really serve women in the unique seasons of their lives, which can vary greatly. That's going on right now and will be available online in our video library, so lots of resources there.

Joanna Meyer: We've created digital discussion guides that are complementary to the book. They go a little deeper. They're wonderful for personal devotions or discussion in small groups. So we have one called Getting Clear About Calling, that's a five-session conversation, or Good Work, Deep Rest, and we're gonna create another one after the event on working women in scripture. So loads of resources that you can do personally or with friends.

Joanna Meyer: But if you might be intrigued about becoming a leader in discipling women for work, we have a whole lane that we've built out over the last three years that develops women for that. We have a six-month online intensive called the Ministry Leaders Intensive that helps you have a foundational framework for thinking about faith and work and some core tools for discipling others.

Joanna Meyer: We have an annual summit for our leaders where we're coaching them and helping them grow that people all over the country can come to. And then we just do, about every other month we have a, what we call our community of practice. We realize that helping others in their discipleship journey is a learned skill, and so we wanna be supporting leaders helping them think about discipling women for the fullness of their calling. So that's an, a drop-in open invite to anyone that's wanting to begin learning or is already doing kind of women's discipleship around work to help support them as they go.

Martha: That's so good.

Joanna Meyer: Yeah, we've trained 57 organizational leaders in the last two years

Martha: Oh, my word. That's, that's fabulous. So I will put links in the show notes for people to find you and how to connect on all of that, and then really just to spend some time on your website is what I would encourage people to see- ... what is of interest. But with the event coming up, that's a really timely first step, if you especially hear this podcast before the event happens.

Jim: Otherwise, you can look for the event for next year.

Martha: Yes. Okay. And all, all the other resources. So we, I'm only gonna dig into one chapter, because I just we obviously want people to pick up the book and read it for themselves. Our goal is not to give CliffsNotes here, but to just describe it and get people interested. Jim, you did a really good job of being a book model though.

Joanna Meyer: Yeah, your next job might be replacing Vanna White.

Jim: I don't have her legs.

Martha: No, that's a good thing.

Jim: Actually, nobody knows what her legs actually look like, right? 'Cause she's always wearing long gowns.

Martha: Exactly.

Martha: So I'm picking chapter 10 because it seems like we must be really slow learners, because we hear about God's gift of rest, as your chapter is Discover God's Gift of Rest. Tell us why we need to learn about that.

Joanna Meyer: Oh my goodness. I think if you could've picked any chapter, you picked the one that I struggle with the most. Yeah, you'll catch me in progress.

Joanna Meyer: So I think one of the challenges is that when you don't see the goodness of work and how it fits holistically into life with God that's lived in service to others, you can treat work like it's a necessary evil, something that you do to earn a paycheck or to stay busy or to, accomplish building status or prestige in life, and you don't really think about, now this actually is interwoven with rest in my life.

Joanna Meyer: So rest isn't an escape from work. It's a necessary complement to what it looks like to live wholly with the Lord. And so when you shift to that foundation of saying, "Okay, these ne- both need to be part of my life and thoughtfully balanced with each other," it shifts the conversation from this fragile sense of work/life balance towards a greater stewardship of how do I think about honoring all of these important things that God has given me in life.

Joanna Meyer: And so for women, that can be a helpful conversation. 'Cause sometimes when you don't have a positive biblical vision for work, in some faith communities or even just in the world at large, your job can be treated like it's a threat to the other things in your family.

Joanna Meyer: And so women will have this ongoing sense of grief of "I love my job, but does that mean I don't love my family?" And I would say no. Our work can be an idol. Our family can be an idol. We can get imbalanced in either or the other things that are important in our lives. So beginning with a healthy foundation helps us begin with a framework for thinking about how we steward those various areas of our life. Where it gets hard is in the area of the soul care or spiritual formation.

Joanna Meyer: We have to wrestle with the questions of what leads us to overwork. It might be we're afraid that God won't work if we don't hustle ourselves. I think that's how I'm feeling leading up to our annual event. I just think, "Can I trust God to be good if the attendance numbers don't land where I want them to be?"

Joanna Meyer: I'm revealing my tender underbelly here. But I think a lot of us have certain metrics of performance in our jobs, and we think, like- I am afraid that God won't show up. We have questions of identity. I'm afraid of what it will mean for me if I don't achieve these external measures of success, or I worship my work, my hobbies, my title and status and money.

Joanna Meyer: You name it, there's lots of things we can worship more than I worship God and have surrendered to him. There's so many areas of just foundational discipleship with him that show up in our tendency to overwork or be imbalanced in work and rest. So super important for women, and not an easy one, especially if you have caretaking responsibilities. That really complicates the conversation.

Martha: Sure.

Joanna Meyer: A side note is that I feel like I need to be an advocate to the business community to ask them to better understand the needs of employees who have caretaking responsibilities, which extends to men, too. It's not just women. But to really, if, as Christian business leaders, they have an opportunity to serve their employees and help families thrive by creating workplaces where healthy balance or healthy stewardship happen more easily. So there's a lot of ways we can address this question.

Martha: Good word. So I just think for our listeners, like imagine reading this book alongside some friends, taking some time to actually digest these ideas, bounce them off of each other. How do we, how do I navigate that? What does that look like for me?

Martha: Whatever I learned, and how we can grow as women through that process. I think I see so much value in that, Joanna. So hopefully people will pick it up. I'm already thinking of a couple people that have just been asking me recently about good resources, and this is one I'm gonna pass along. You have a question, Jim?

Jim: No, I just, trying to go over the Broncos color thing.

Joanna Meyer: Isn't that awesome that a book about women and work would not be pink and have the Denver Broncos cover on the cover?

Jim: That I agree. The Broncos is just an issue I've got.

Martha: But they can embrace it there.

Joanna Meyer: What has been so fun is that women will see that bright, vibrant cover and those three words, women, work, and calling and just say, "I need that."

Jim: Yeah. That's right.

Joanna Meyer: They may not even know what it's about, and they just, it's enough to make them reach out and grab it.

Martha: That's great.

Jim: So what about, let me just turn it around from a different perspective. Because I believe every man who works with a woman or manages women or is married to one, all of the above-

Joanna Meyer: Yeah ...

Jim: need to read this as well. Because you've got stuff in your head and in your book and in your study guide and in the whole division of the Denver Institute for Faith and Work that men need to understand.

Joanna Meyer: Oh, totally.

Jim: So why don't you speak to those men that are listening today regarding the women that they work with?

Joanna Meyer: Yeah. Wow. I think there are a lot of areas that I would invite them to consider more, but I would encourage them to just get curious about the lived experience of the women in your life. One thing I've noticed in Christian circles, whether it's the church or in public life, is that often we, without realizing it, default into a masculine perspective.

Joanna Meyer: And that can come simply because it's always been that case. In church circles in particular, you have deeply entrenched patterns of leadership development, of relationships, of concern for propriety between male/female relationships. If we had more time, I could write a doctoral thesis on why some of these artificial social barriers exist.

Joanna Meyer: But until you get curious about a woman's experience, how it might be different, or how your own perspectives might be limiting or hindering opportunities for women, until you get curious about that, you won't be open to some of the things that God has for you to discover, or some of the principles in the book.

Joanna Meyer: And so it just starts often with listening. I have some men in my life that are incredibly well-intentioned. They want to see women thrive, but they just have never stepped outside of their own experience, and in so many places it's been built around a male experience that they don't realize that there's any difference. It's just the water that we swim in is often masculine.

Jim: There was a lot in that paragraph. What I love is that this is an ongoing conversation. That Women Work & Calling is not just a one-time event, and it's not just a book. It's a movement for Christian working women across the nation, and as you've said many times, around the world.

Jim: Because these issues are the same around the world, because women are different than men. They experience their faith different, and they also experience their work different. And I love the fact that there's so much emphasis on here's how we're trying to equip those women, and it's by women, not by men. And it's women speaking, not men speaking. It is women for women who understand women.

Jim: And Joanna, I just love it. And I wanna encourage everybody, go out there to womenworkandcalling.com and get signed up for the event that's next week, and get a copy of the book, too, and the study guide, and start one of those local studies.

Jim: But encourage people, and men listening, from another guy who figured out a long time ago that Christian working women are undervalued, underappreciated, under-equipped, and certainly underutilized, just pay attention because there's so much there.

Jim: Those spiritual giftings that women have been given the unique set of gifts, talents, and abilities that women have been given, use them. Come together as a team. God said we are one when we come together.

Joanna Meyer: Yeah. It's so fun, and men have often said "80% of what I heard at the annual event or on their webinar was really relevant to my own life." And I'm like, yeah, 'cause some of this is just foundational truths about life with God and understanding of our work and His purposes in the world.

Joanna Meyer: And then 20% of it is really contextualized, and it's delivered by women which is really unique to hear Christian women who are leading across industries and are incredibly thoughtful. I call them extraordinary ordinaries because they're not the social media influencers. They're not on the, the speaker circuit.

Joanna Meyer: They actually just are doing incredible, extraordinary work in their own unique field. It's good for men to see that 'cause chances are they aren't gonna see that anywhere else, and they can show up knowing they're not gonna get ganged up on. It's a very male-friendly event, and so come. Come to anything we do. You are invited.

Martha: That's awesome. Joanna Meyer, thank you so much for being obedient, writing the book, leading the Women, Work, and Calling at the Denver Institute so gracefully as you do, and we look forward to the fact that we're getting to share this event with our listeners and seeing what God does through it. We are praying for you, and thank you so much.

Joanna Meyer: Thanks. It's a gift to be here and to be friends with you two.

Jim: You've been listening to iWork4Him with your hosts, Jim and Martha Brangenberg. We're Christ followers. Our workplace, it's our mission field, but ultimately, iWork4Him.