Lauren Ducommun

Book Review:
Empowered & Equipped: Bible Exposition for Women Who Teach the Scriptures by Julia Higgins
B&H Academic, 2022

While specifically written with women in mind, every believer should read this book! Julia Higgins, an assistant professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, is a gifted communicator and has written a lovely book with almost everything you need to know to study and teach the Scriptures. From Haddison to Helm, I feel like Higgins has concisely summarized everything I’ve learned about hermeneutics and homiletics from seminary and Simeon Trust into this one book.

After briefly sharing why women should read and teach the Bible, she moves right into important topics such as how the Bible is the revelation of God, the metanarrative of Scripture, genres, history of hermeneutics, Bible translation (form and meaning), exegetical ideas, and more. 

I also appreciated her ending, asking pastors whether or not there is space in their church (yes, complementarian churches) for women to teach God’s Word. “If not, how can you become an advocate for helping the church understand where it might be lacking?”

As Jen Wilkin succinctly challenges us, “It is one thing to say that women are permitted to teach women, and quite another to deliberately cultivate and celebrate their teaching gifts.”

Quotes:

✨“When a woman stands and teaches the Bible in this manner, the women who watch and hear another woman who is capable of discerning and articulating the meaning of the Bible hopefully will be enlightened to the idea that she, too, should take seriously the study of the Scriptures.”

✨“While qualified men are responsible to teach and oversee the local church, that does not negate the fact that both men and women are given the spiritual gift of teaching.”

✨“The Christian teacher, then, must be committed to more than just proper hermeneutics and faithful exposition; they must also consider the way they live out what they teach.”

✨“While the pastors/elders of the church have been given the responsibility to shepherd churches through biblical teaching and protecting doctrine, each church member must know true doctrine, have the ability to discern false doctrine, and teach sound doctrine to others.”