Going Deeper:

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Going Deeper

• Understanding and Encouraging a Girls Spiritual
  Journey

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A Sunday Morning Experience
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Lenses

• General Culture Lens

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Lenses

• General Culture Lens
• Church Culture Lens

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Church Culture

• Council of Macon in 585 A.D.
• Historical Jewish prayer
• Leadership in the church
• Skewed ministry to women
• Image of God as Father
• Predominately male language

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Implications for Ministry

• Provide role models for girls.
• Model equality in your ministry.
• Affirm female workers publicly.
• Incorporate female Bible characters.
• Affirm giftedness in girls when you see it.
• Affirm that God can call girls to vocational
  ministry, too.
• Provide activities that do not rely on physical
  competition.

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Lenses

• General Culture Lens
• Church Culture Lens
• Biology/Physiology

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Differences in Physiology

• Broas area, which is the motor area for speech,
  and which processes grammatical structures and
  word production, is more highly active with
  females.
• Frontal lobe, which facilitates thought and
  emotion is more likely more active in females.
• The pituitary gland more strongly or more
  directly relates fight-or-flight information to
  the body in males.
• The amygdala, the part of limbic system involved
  in emotional processes including rage, is larger
  in males.

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Differences in Physiology

• The basal ganglia, which control movement
  sequences (walking, running), likely engages more
  quickly in males.
• The right hemisphere of the brain, used to work
  on abstract concepts such as measurements,
  geography, and design, makes males superior at
  spatial relationships.
• The corpus callosum, which is the bundle of
  nerves that connects the left and right sides of
  the brain and allows for multi-tasking, is larger
  in females.
• Testosterone, which increases self-assertion, and
  self-reliance, is much more present and
  functional in males.

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Implications for Ministry

• Utilize female physiology to their advantage by
  teaching and encouraging spiritual practices that
  play to their strengths
• Drawing God and me
• Picture yourself
• Journaling with a twist
• Write or paraphrase a psalm

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