We think that Tara Beth’s story will resonate with many female leaders in ministry, and if you hear anything from this episode (and this season!) we hope you hear that you’re not alone. If you’re seeking support on your ministry journey, consider joining our Fall 2024 Resilience Circles. These 8-month programs offer a space to connect with others facing similar challenges and to develop more resilience to flourish in your calling. Learn more and join the waitlist to be the first to know when registration opens at transformingengagement.org/womeninministry.
Listener Resources:
- If you’re a woman in ministry, we’re here to support you! Explore our curated collection of resources and specialized offerings designed to empower you in your calling. Discover more at transformingengagement.org/womeninministry
- If you are a Christian leader or pastor seeking a space for support, growth, and transformation for yourself or for your team, we invite you to participate in one of our cohort programs, called a Circle. To learn more and to get on the waitlist to be notified when our next Circle is offered, visit transformingengagemeng.org/circles
- Each episode spotlights an organization making a positive impact, and Tara Beth is deeply committed to empowering women leaders through Propel Ecclesia. Discover more and support scholarships for women attending the 2025 cohorts here.
- Look out for Tara Beth Leach’s upcoming Bible study, Threaded: Unraveling Our Story Through God’s Covenants, coming in 2025.
About our guest:
Tara Beth Leach is a pastor at Good Shepherd Church in Naperville, Illinois. She previously served at First Church of the Nazarene of Pasadena (“PazNaz”) in Southern California and Christ Church of Oak Brook in the western suburbs of Chicago. She is a graduate of Olivet Nazarene University and Northern Theological Seminary.
Tara Beth is a regular writer for Missio Alliance and writes and speaks widely about women in ministry and church leadership. She is the author of Emboldened, Radiant Church, and Forty Days on Being a Six. She has two beautiful and rambunctious sons and has been married to the love of her life, Jeff, since 2006.
Episode Transcript
Jenni: Welcome back Friends to Transforming Engagement. I’m Jenni Wong Clayville here with Rose Madrid Swetman. And today our special guest is my good friend Tara Beth Leach. Tara Beth is a pastor, a preacher, and an author, and she speaks widely at conferences and universities across the country on women in ministry and church leadership. She’s a graduate of Olivet Nazarene University and Northern Theological Seminary, and she has authored three books and is currently working on her fourth. We’re going to talk about one of her books a little bit today. I need to brag on my friend a bit here because Tara Beth was the very first female millennial to become the senior pastor of a mega church in Southern California, and today she serves as a senior pastor at Good Shepherd Church in Naperville, Illinois. Tara Beth Co-founded Propel with Christine Caine and is a co-host of the Pastor’s Table podcast, and she’s married to the love of her life. Jeff, I’ve told her many times that they’re gross and they together have two sons. So Tara, Beth and I first met actually when we were invited to speak at a Barna panel, and we’re the only two women there. We quickly found out that we had so much in common as pastors, as wives, as moms, and as women in leadership. So we just clung onto each other in a corner in the room and held on for dear life. And in other words, she hasn’t been able to get rid of me ever since. So welcome, Tara Beth, we’re so glad to have you here.
Tara: I have been looking forward to this conversation. Thanks so much for having me.
Jenni: Yes, absolutely. Rose and I are super excited. In fact, rose and I met through you, and so thanks for introducing us.
Tara: Hey, that was a thrill and I’m so happy that this worked out. And the two of you are a dynamic duo.
Jenni: Yeah, we’re having a great time. So we want to hear a bit about your story. Who is Tara Beth, would you share a little bit about that with us?
Tara: Yeah, sure. So I grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago, though some would argue whether or not that was really the suburbs. I grew up on a farm, a 40 acre horse farm and a 60 miles south of Chicago. And we were a family of cultural Christians. Some pastors joke and call those priests. We were there in Christmas and Easter and Mother’s Day was who we were very much culturally Christian, but I couldn’t have, no one in my family would’ve been able to articulate what it meant to be a follower of Jesus store. And when I was in early high school, I started to have a stirring in my heart. In particular, what drew me to this place of curiosity and stirring was the students in my high school, they had relationships with Jesus, and these particular students would talk about the Lord in ways that was just so weird to me, but in very good kind of weird, they talked about Jesus. They knew him and had a relationship with him, and I wanted to understand that, and I wanted what they had. And so I ended up making my way to a local campus life outreach through the Ministry of Youth for Christ, where I started to hear about Jesus. I eventually started to read my Bible and read through the Bible. And actually it was while alone in my bedroom at night, I was reading through the Gospel of Luke. And for the first time in my life, things started to click just a little bit. I mean, I had no theology of atonement by any means, but I understood that the cross meant something pretty, pretty major. And there was something in my spirit that was connecting to the spirit of God. And I got down on my knees and surrendered my life to Jesus. And a couple months after that, I had this really pretty dramatic calling experience. My co-host for the Pastor’s Table podcast that I host often calls me a mystic and affectionately will call me a mystic. And just because I do often recount on these just moments, moments with God that just captivate me, that grab me. And that moment where I had a calling into ministry, it was a Damascus road moment, and I had never seen a female pastor. So it wasn’t like I saw someone doing it that I thought I want to be like her one day. I just felt like I was going to explode if I did not tell the world about Jesus. And I wanted to scream it from the rooftops that Jesus has changed my life and he could change your life. And I think from that moment, that was in the mid to late nineties, and from those days, I feel like I have been led by the spirit. And I feel like at times I’m making this up as I go along as to what it looks like to be a woman of ministry and often context where I’m the only one. And it’s been a thrill. It’s been a joy. It’s been moments of highs of I couldn’t imagine doing anything else. And I wake up every day. I was made for this. And moments where I’m flat on my face thinking, God, get me out of this. But at the end of the day, as I count the cost, it’s worth every moment.
Jenni: And it is different for us. I know Rose feels this way too. We just, you Tara Beth, and our husbands are not pastors, we’re not co-pastor with them. We’re doing this. They are pastors, husbands. And what kind of a toll does that take on you as a mom of two boys that need you and a husband that needs you, but also the shepherd of your, how does that feel for you?
Tara: Yeah, so there’s been so many thoughtful, reflective articles out there on the mental load that women often carry, and that is very real. My husband, Jeff, Jenni, you’ve spent a lot of time in our home and you see how much that man does. He’s a remarkable, unusual man, and he runs so much about the household. And yet I think because women are raised within families to be the one ones that are concerned about the details of the household and the care of the household and those that live in it, it’s even still as much as my husband does, it’s hardwired because of the way that I was raised in culture to my family to be concerned about these things. And so while my male colleagues might be able to walk into the office and they’re able to shut it all off and they can focus on their jobs, I can’t shut it off. That would be decades of undoing that was formed within me since I was a young one. And so I often think about the mental load even. And again, it is not my husband’s fault. He was also raised in a very particular way to not worry about those things. And thankfully, he has incredibly high emotionally intelligence and can pick up on things. But I also am not always the best at communicating like, Hey, there’s a gap here. This needs to be done. So all that to say, I would say the greatest impact for me when it comes to holding all of those things as a mom, as a woman in ministry, as a wife, the mental load is very real.
Jenni: Yeah. Something I love about you, Tara Beth, you have shown this to me, is I think there’s a lie out there that if you are at the table, there’s no room for another woman at the table. Or if you see a table with a woman, there’s no room for you. And you are a woman that pulls other women up and make space at the table that you are at. You’ve done that with me. You’ve pulled me up into many, many spaces, and you’ve even part of what you have co-created with Christine Cain for Propel CIA is for women like you and I and Rose, where we have been alone, isolated doing this and thinking we’re the only one for so long. Agree. Can you tell us a little bit about Propel Ecclesia?
Tara: Yeah. So Propel Ecclesia came about through really, I mean, it was this night I was sitting out to dinner on Newport Beach with Chris Kane, and I had been going through a season where so many young women were coming to me and saying, will you be my mentor? Can I have coffee? Can I pick your brain? Can we talk about ministry? Can you help? I’m dying on a vine. And my mama heart wanted to say yes to all of them. And I probably said yes to way too many, which is sometimes my downfall.
Jenni: I have literally seen you do this. Yes,
Tara: Yes. And I’m like, yes, I can mentor you. I want to help them. And I get in over my head. And so in conversations with Chris Kane, we started talking and praying and I said, what if we created actual pipelines and pathways where women can be mentored and coached and can find community? Because too often women are out there on a vine alone, on an island alone. And so Prop Glacia is an equipping and coaching ministry created to hold space for women to find one another, to be equipped and to be coached.
Jenni: Yes. And I know that they have, women have said many times out of Ecclesia that they have never known that they weren’t the only ones. And for them to see for the first time that they can have accountability and encouragement at this level is so incredible. It changes the trajectory not only of their lives, but what they do in their church community. So I just want to say thank you for not only dreaming that up, but making it come to fruition and just bringing people in to help with love on women the way they need to be loved. So that’s pretty great.
Rose: So important. And Tara Beth, let’s talk about your book Embolden some of the concepts, because you talk about this in the book a little bit like imposter syndrome, balancing home and ministry facing opposition. Will you talk about some of those issues that you have faced and how you sort of navigated those waters?
Tara: Yeah, those are very specific issues that women often experience in ministry. And embolden was not written to have a conversation about whether or not women should be in ministry. That book assumed that we were all on the same page. It was about helping women actually live into that call because so many, well-meaning egalitarian churches weren’t equipped, weren’t ready, didn’t know how to come alongside of women, weren’t aware of the everyday realities that women were dealing with, like imposter syndrome. And for me, imposter syndrome, I didn’t even know what it was until I was actually having a conversation with my mentor. At the time, I was a TA for Scot McKnight, and I had an invitation for my first actually academic writing opportunity, and it was to write in an academic book. And I remember emailing back and forth with him saying, this is an accident. I should not have this opportunity. I’m going to be found out. And he just responded back, have you ever heard of imposter syndrome? And I was like, I haven’t. So I googled it and I was like, oh my goodness, that’s me. Imposter syndrome is this overwhelming feeling that we are going to be found out any minute that the tables that we caught to the opportunities that we have were a fluke or an accident, or somehow we snuck into there. And soon they’re going to realize that we are, were just flawed and an imposter, and we’ll lose our spot at the table. And these are the things that women and people of color most struggle with because they’re used to seeing tables of white only men. And so when they find themselves at those tables, they’re like one of these, it’s not like the, there’s that Sesame Street song. And so they begin to internalize that. And for me, overcoming imposter syndrome truly was first naming it, we got to name it to tame it, as they often say, name it to tame it. No, this is imposter syndrome. I am not an imposter. I belong at this table. I have gifts. And so a lot of it is calling back the things that God already says about me and the things that I believe to be true about the spirit of Pentecost, that God equips women and men to come alongside of one another to live into the gifts of the Spirit. And so when it comes to imposter syndrome, I think that another thing that really helped me was starting to listen to other female preachers and other female leaders because that nourished my own imagination for myself. There’s been different seasons where I’ve had to do that. I had to do that when I became a mom. I said, okay, where are there preachers out there that are moms? And then when I crested 40 and I thought, okay, I’m 40 and older, where are the women that are in this for the long haul? I need to see what this looks like because I need that imagination nourishment over and over and over again. That’s great.
Rose: I think it’s something you just hit on, so important for women especially and young women, is to have visible representations, seeing women preaching, seeing women, writing the product, all of it. Because it wasn’t too long ago, it was hard to find in all directions. And I just want to do a quick shout out about Scot McKnight. I mean, even back in 2006, he had Jesus Creed blog, and I had written a thing about someone we won’t talk about on the podcast in Seattle that was casting. And Scott put it on his blog and it went viral and actually really changed some things in Seattle with that situation. But I just have viewed him over these last almost 20 years being such a proponent of women in ministry. They’re giving us space, platforming women. So I just wanted to say he’s such an ally.
Tara: I wouldn’t be where I am today. I mean, there’s no saying God voted, called someone else, of course. But at the same time, I am where I am because of Scott McKnight’s fee. All of my earliest first time I ever got invited on his podcast was because of him first writing opportunity I got was because of him first speaking engagement was because of him. I mean, he just opened every door for me. Yeah,
Jenni: Scott McKnight’s incredible. And I think it’s a good reminder for us as women that there are actually many Scott McKnights out there. There are men that are allies that are propelling us forward. We just want to invite men to continue doing that and for women to be kind to be kind. We shouldn’t put all of the men into one category of like, oh, all men, we can’t do church. We can’t do this. Without them, it would be lopsided and it would not be the kingdom. So it’s a good reminder.
Rose: Yeah. Talk to us about facing opposition. How have you gone through challenging times where there really has been opposition? How did you ground yourself? What was that like for you?
Tara: Yeah. I think I could tell you how I responded to it 12 years ago and how I respond to it now, which is very different. I mean, how I responded to it 12 years ago was how I wanted to respond to it. Now, I think it’s just through the years, God has matured me and maybe made my skin a little bit thicker and maybe more grounded in truth. But years ago, I made the decision that I was not going to be bitter and angry and that I was not going to lead with that. And so I have always been committed to that. But a pitfall that I did not see 10 years ago was the impact of leading as a wounded woman in ministry. And so I was committed. I’m not going to be bitter, I’m not going to be angry, but I didn’t understand what it meant to be wounded and leading as a woman. And that has just a totally different kind of impact. And I do think, I love the way Henry Noun used to talk about being a wounded healer. I think that because of the wounds that I went to, I went through, I’m able to be that. But I think that there’s power in being able to allow the healing grace of God to do work in us and ground us in what is true. And so as women, we are going to hear crazy opposition. We’re going to be told that we don’t belong at the table as a pastor, that we are jezebel’s spirits, that we are, that there’s no such thing as a female pastor, that we’re acting out of sin, that we’re leading churches to hell that, I mean, these are all things that I’ve heard. And then there’s just even some of the more insidious rejection that we get, and these things we can say, we can can pound our fist on the table and say, don’t take it personal, but we do. How do we not? It’s directed to us and our being and our personhood and our womanhood. I can’t disconnect who I’m, I am a woman. I am a woman in ministry. And so for me, the journey has been growing and maturing and understanding who I really am, what my calling really is and what’s really true. And so there’s things that will seek to rattle me, to knock me off of that truth. But if I can come from a place of confidence and not woundedness, if I can come from a place of the grace of God meeting me instead of pain, I find that I’m able to shepherd in times of opposition more effectively than when I’m bitter, angry
Rose: Or wounded. That’s really good. I remember years ago, you guys might be too young for this, I don’t know, but back in the late nineties, early two thousands, there used to be a pastor’s conference in San Diego every year, like big gigantic pastor’s conference. So I mean, it had to be in the very late nineties, early two thousands, I was in a workshop for women in ministry, and my colleague, I didn’t know him at the time, Dan Aller was leading a workshop for women in ministry. And so he had us write on little post-it notes and put on the wall, what is one of your challenges? And I wrote on my post-it note, she has an agenda. People would say that about me. Oh, she’s a female progressive woman in Seattle. She has an agenda. Be careful if you go to her church. And people would tell me that, probably a hundred women in here. But he pulled that post-it note off, and said, who wrote this? And I raised my hand and he said, you do have an agenda. And I said, no, I really don’t. I just want to serve Jesus. And no, you have an agenda and you need to own it, rose. Every time I stand up to speak, I have an agenda to convince people of something that God has put on my heart. So you have to start owning that you are a woman that God has called, and you have an agenda to do what God has called you to do. And don’t ever be ashamed of that. Again, you guys, that was one of the most powerful moments ever that somebody said that to me. And I, it kind of what you’re saying, Beth, rather than being angry or bitter or whatever, oh, wait, no. That sort of gave me that confidence to say, no, I’m going to be obedient to this, not all those voices.
Jenni: Yeah. And also sounds like Rosa, you’ve really postured then gave you a way to repost something that was negative, to become a positive, something you’re called to, right? Yes. That’s beautiful.
Rose: Yeah. Yeah. So what else, Tara, you have so much wisdom. How many churches now have you been the lead pastor of? Two?
Tara: And hopefully we stay that way. Yeah, two. So I was the lead pastor at a church in Pasadena, California, and I learned a lot there. We’ll get back to that in a moment. I’m now the lead pastor at a church where I was on staff with for many, many years. And so I return now back as their senior pastor. And it’s a tale of two churches with a female senior pastor, churches, very similar sizes, but very different kind of readiness for women in ministry, which makes all the world different. And so one of my passions now is helping churches. And when I say passions and helping this, it’s not like I have a system or business or company, but I’m like churches. Hey, if you want to hire a female pastor, please call me first or call someone that knows, because not every church is ready for a female. And one of the things that I am just I care so deeply about is I don’t to push. I don’t want women to go into senior pastoral roles where the churches aren’t ready because not only will it cause damage on the local church, but it will harm the pastor too. And I just think that instead, I would rather see those churches get ready by raising up women on their staff and getting women in the pulpit before they just hit the gas pedal and call a female senior pastor. So the church that I pastored in Southern California, the church board called me and I should have known something was afoot because the church board wasn’t unanimous, and I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And so I thought, well, that must be normal. And then larger churches, you have a lot of people who aren’t members, like voting members. And so the amount of people that show up for votes is like 20% out of the attenders. And so it was an 81% vote of affirmation. I talked to a mentor and she said, that’s really good for a woman. You should go, even though we all know that men don’t go under those circumstances. And so eventually we ended up losing 35% of the congregation, and it was tumultuous. And there was vitriol, and there was a very public campaign that began called Save PazNaz. And the premise was Save PazNaz, the church that used to be the jewel of the denomination, but has now lost its favor because they called a female pastor. There was an email address and there was an Instagram page, a Facebook page. There was Yelp reviews, Facebook reviews. I mean, it was a calculated attack. I mean, that ran deep by the morale. And it created, I became a lightning rod. So those who saw what was going on that were for me were almost just for me to the point where it was like, okay, I’m not flawless. And so it created a very polarized context, and the church just wasn’t ready. I should have thought, realized that it was probably a bigger deal, that the church had not had a woman in the pulpit in a decade. There should have been just things that I should have paid attention to that I now know. And women, when they get these calls, they’re so grateful, oh my goodness, this is an opportunity. I have to say yes to this opportunity. And if I say no, then I’m saying no on behalf of all the other women that I have to say, yes, actually, oh my gosh, we don’t. Right? We don’t have to say yes, not at the expense of our own soul, not at the expense of our own mental health, and not at the expense of the local church. And so there are certain things that I would say pay attention to. So fast forward, I, I’m called to a Good Shepherd church, and it’s not 81% vote of affirmation. It’s 99.9% vote of affirmation. We didn’t lose 35% of people. We gained 35% of people in tenant everything. Just, it is possible. And three years ago, I was completely disillusioned and jaded and said, women cannot be senior pastors of these churches. It’s not possible. And let me tell you, God’s rewriting a story. It’s possible. Yeah.
Jenni: I love that. It’s like the years that locusts have eaten, it’s just that’s a healing for you. I love it.
Rose: That’s right. I love it too. In our resilience circles that we do here at the school, one of the sessions is on God writing redemptive narratives because it can happen, the redemption can come. But I want to know in between this redemption coming, and when you said you were so disillusioned, what kind of work did you have to do? What was happening for you to get well from that experience?
Tara: Yeah, great question. So work, lots of work. So I was in therapy at that time, twice a week. I was in therapy twice a week. I was seeing a spiritual director. I was starting to integrate my life to having more friendships with women in ministry. It was about that time I met Jenni, and that was something that I just didn’t have because I was just so at the grind. And I also peeled back. I peeled back big time. I was a senior pastor of a church in California and kind of in a little bit of a spotlight at the time. And I peeled way back. I was kind of just hidden in a good way. I needed to be benched for a little bit to figure my life out. I moved back to Chicago to care for my parents. My dad was dying of cancer. My mom very advanced dementia. So my dad eventually died, and now my mom lives with me. We’re her full-time caretakers. And so there was just this kind of eroding of my life that I went through. But that turned out to be really hard. Yet holy work of it was like everything that I knew to be true, everything that I thought to be true was just kind of came undone and unraveled, and God had to rebuilt me.
Jenni: Yeah, I was there for a good chunk of then. I feel like Tara Beth, I don’t know if eroding is the right word. I feel like the ground was being tilled for what’s to come. And this is just the beginning of the crops that are shooting up. And there’s so much beauty and growth happening in your life right now and at your church. It’s just, it’s healthy, and you can’t get that unless there is a hard turning of the ground. And it was uncomfortable and it was hard work. I think sometimes we want it to be easy. Life is hard enough, and we just want it to be easy. And we have to remember as women, we’re getting there. We’re not there yet. So we have to prepare the way for those that are coming behind us. And it does take hard work.
Rose: Jenni and I had a conversation with Faith Eury, I think Faith Eury, too. And we talked about wilderness experiences. Tara time was like a wilderness where a lot of formation, a lot of healing and being formed from what do you take forward from? And that’s also the gospel, isn’t it? Like we’re to pick up our cross, that means we’re going to go through death seasons. We’re going to go through things that we,
Tara: Yeah. And I knew too that when I was in the wilderness, I knew it was a liminal space the whole time. It didn’t necessarily make it easier, but what that meant was I knew that hope was coming. I knew that I wasn’t going to be there forever. I knew that it was a season of formation in the fire. And so I did what I could to put myself in places where the grace of God could nurture me and heal me so good and put me back together. So
Rose: Important for listeners that are in a place like that to hear putting yourself in places of grace, like therapy, spiritual direction, a community of people that love you, and that’s their only agenda for your life, is that they love you and want the best for you. So man, it sounds like you’ve been through it, but that you’re opening into a new season. Yeah.
Jenni: Yeah. And you know what, maybe I want to dangle that carrot of that book that’s coming out that you are working on. Can you share a little bit about that? I know all of it always comes out of your life.
Tara: Yeah. So there’s actually a few projects in the works. The big major one is a book that actually came out of this season that we’re talking about. The book is called The Great Morning Revolution. And it actually began when I was in this liminal space. I was dejected. I was waking up most mornings, despondent, and the spirit of God just met me and just called me to rise early in the morning with God. And so I began to do that, and I began integrating different practices. And eventually the spirit of God dropped in my soul. This idea called Great Morning. And it wasn’t a book idea that the Spirit dropped in me. It was a practice where the spirits that do this and great morning is a double entendre. First, it means I was rising. I was choosing that it was going to be a great day. And for someone that was waking up every morning completely despondent, I needed that hope. And Great Morning is also an acronym that stands for Gratitude, reflection, exaltation Ask and Trust. And so it’s a practice that I do every morning rising in the morning while it’s still dawn, or it’s before the dawn, depending what time of year.
And I begin with gratitude. And then I move into that time of examination that we call reflection and then into exalt, and then asking God my request, and then ending with trust. And it’s been a completely transformative practice that carried me through the wilderness and carried me through today. And so we’ve got a book coming out with Zondervan next year. Harper Collins is going to, we’re going to do a study and a curriculum and video to go along with that. And then also with Harper Collins, we’re starting a Bible study series called Threaded talking about the story of God woven together. Yes, I
Rose: Love it. I can’t wait. And we’ll put it in the episode notes for our listeners to be able to,
Tara: So many great things coming. Yeah.
Rose: Tara, thank you so much for spending this time with us. I mean, you have just an abundance of wisdom just from your own life story, and we so are so grateful that you would share that with us. So we would love to give a shout out to an organization that you would choose that is doing good work, that we will make a donation to and encourage our listeners to as well.
Tara: Oh my. Any organization?
Rose: Any organization that anyone
Tara: You’d like. Oh boy. Okay. Let’s go with let’s, Hey, can we just go with Propel Ecclesia towards the scholarships? Yes. Yes. Like let’s scholarship women in ministry. I love it. And so if you reach out to a woman by the name of Bethany Hammer, she works with Propell Ecclesia, she will find a way to ensure that that money goes to supporting a woman to go through this program.
Rose: Okay. Awesome. Again, thank you so much for being with us.
Tara: You’re the best. Thanks for having me.
