We were at church for the commissioning of a new children’s ministry team. There were all the usual Tanzanian positions: head teacher, teacher, secretary, treasurer, etc. The entire team was women, and the pastor commented on why. Men were not excluded from being on the team, he said, but none […]
One of the TAFES staff asked for advice on Whatsapp from senior associates about a student’s question: Is married people having one bank account good or not so good? We ask for your view and experiences. What ensued was a fascinating discussion of husband and wife’s roles in marriage, that […]
Gender is a complicated and tricky topic. I feel like I’m only scraping the surface of understanding it in Tanzania, and of course it’s a continuing conversation among Tanzanians themselves! I’ve been hesitant to write anything on it for fear of oversimplifying, but blogging is like thinking out loud, so […]
Walking through the market, two men called out to me ‘mvivu’. It sounds a lot like ‘mbivu’ which means ‘ripe’ (often overripe), a common word in such a setting. But we couldn’t work out why it was directed at me. Arthur wondered if it had some sort of sexual innuendo. […]
On Boxing Day, Zondervan released 3 new e-books on women in ministry: Bourgeois Babes, Bossy Wives, and Bobby Haircuts: A Case for Gender Equality in Ministry by Michael Bird, Hearing Her Voice: A Case for Women Giving Sermons by John Dickson, and Jesus, Justice, and Gender Roles: A Case for Gender Roles in […]
When I blogged on Women Only Communities I mentioned a paper I was intending to read on the place of women in Muslim societies. The author uses both her experiences of living in the Middle East for 20 years and scholarship to ask how understanding this might help in the evangelism […]
Meet Jesus at uni 