Date of Award
5-2026
Document Type
Thesis
Primary Advisor
Tera Harmon
Secondary Advisor
Carson Reed
Committee Reader
Jennifer Schroeder
Abstract
This thesis addresses women in Christian leadership in the Monash City Church of Christ Melbourne, Australia. The problem identified within this ministry context was a lack of appropriate theological teaching around women in leadership, especially in the areas of preaching, teaching, and leading, which has led to misconceptions and prejudices in the minds of church members, negatively impacting the congregation’s mission. The purpose of the project was to develop a curriculum specific to MCCOC that provides a theological foundation for advocating for future senior leadership roles for women. The curriculum provides biblical teaching on women in leadership that will equip them to understand their roles, recalibrate their practices, and look anew at their views and biases. The core research team comprised people from different age groups, ministry positions, and ethnicities. I recruited them to develop the eight theological frameworks at the core of the curriculum: the creation account; women in both the Old and New Testaments; women in Jesus’s ministry; women in the early church; the concept of oneness in Galatians, 1 Cor 11:2–16, 1 Cor 14:34–36, and 1 Tim 2:9–15; and the promise of new creation. These resulted in the final product: “A Curriculum to Empower and Equip Women for Leadership in the Monash City Church of Christ in Melbourne, Australia” (Appendix I). The team members and an outside expert evaluated this curriculum. The intended results of this curriculum are: (1) to help women at MCCOC to view their God-given capacities and giftings through a positive lens rather than through past negative experiences, conservative theological views, or gender limitations and (2) to help the men of MCCOC avoid hindering women from stepping into their God-given callings,including senior leadership roles. This curriculum will also help women build confidence to move into senior roles that would be new to them, like teaching, preaching, governance, and eldership within the church itself. In some cases, this curriculum will help both women and men in the congregation become accepting and supportive of women who move into these roles, even if their own roles do not specifically change as a result.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Attygalle, Devni Yasindra, "A Curriculum to Empower and Equip Women for Leadership in the Monash City Church of Christ in Melbourne, Australia" (2026). Doctor of Ministry Theses and Dissertations. 71.
https://digitalcommons.acu.edu/dmin_theses/71
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