Designer Women: Made By God (book review)

The issue of women in ministry can be a divisive one and there has been much written on the subject from very disparate perspectives. Ruth Tuttle Conard, rather than argue whether women should or not, skips the argument and instead goes straight to the fact that women were used by God throughout history.

In Designer Women: Made by God, Conard looks at ten (11 actually) women from the Bible and the extraordinary way God used them in their unique settings, circumstances and personalities to be part of His plan. As she says, “These women, as leaders and strong examples in varied facets of life, did not act because there were no good men, but rather because they were good women, created in God’s image, gifted by God and working in obedience with their Maker.”

Conard’s tone throughout this book is warm, supportive and reminiscent of a chat across the kitchen table. She has faced the “hoops” that many women in the church face when trying to exercise their gifts and still is confident in God’s desire to use women to advance his kingdom. Too often, it is easy to become strident or militant when defending a woman’s place in the church, but Conard avoids that pitfall and focuses on the qualities of the women God used in extraordinary ways through the Bible. She encourages modern women to develop those same qualities to prepare for God’s opportunities and in the last chapter recommends some tools to do just that. She also footnotes her work for those who want to study further.

Conard does take a brief look at some of the “problem” passages of the Bible, that are frequently used to downplay or dismiss women in ministry or leadership and, again, provides some recommended titles for those that want to explore further. But as she so excellently points out, “ there are some who will probably keep laboring over the minutiae of certain words and customs and never come up with the perfect answer to all of this. … What is extremely fascinating to me is that this continual battle over women does not seem to have caused any problem for God and how he designed his daughters. … God is still creating baby girls, all over his world, who grow, confess Jesus as Savior, and are given spiritual gifts from the complete list of gifts, as the Spirit wills, even while men and women continue to say that it just isn’t possible!”

Highly, highly recommended.


Review copy provided by The B&B Media Group.