Using the Center for Women in Leadership

Kelley M. >> Welcome to Beyond Ordinary Women. This is Kelley Matthews, and I am here to introduce to you another Kelly. So we’re hoping we don’t get ourselves all mixed up here. This is Kelly Dippolito and she is the Executive Director of the Center for Women in Leadership. Now, I’ve known Kelly for a long time. It feels like several years at least.

And we have a shared love for this subject that we have today. So I am super excited to talk about her ministry that she works with and also their specific project called the Visual Museum for Women in Christianity. Welcome, Kelly.

Kelly D. >> Kelley, thank you so much for having me on today. And I’m really looking forward to talking about the Visual Museum and the Center for Women in Leadership with you.

Kelley M. >> Yes. So give us a little bit of the origin story. Let’s start with the center because it’s sort of like the umbrella organization. Where did it start? Who’s involved— that kind of thing? And what do you do each day?

Kelly D. >> Well, I serve as the Executive Director of the Center for Women in Leadership. The center was created by Dr. Lynn Cohick when she was provost at Northern Seminary. She is currently at Houston Christian University, of which you are one of her wonderful students.

Kelley M. >> Yes I am.

Kelly D. >> Right. So we transitioned the center into becoming a 501C3. A little over a year ago. And within that, we have a couple of projects, including producing her podcast, The Alabaster Jar and housing The Visual Museum of Women in Christianity, which is the project we’ll be talking about today.

Kelley M. >> Yeah. Let’s do real quick. Tell me about The Alabaster Jar. I know that you act as a cohost and sometimes it’s just the two of you chatting. So what’s the general focus of the podcast overall?

Kelly D. >> Well, we release an episode every Monday. Dr. Cohick is the host, and we cover a variety of topics in biblical studies and in topics that affect women in ministry, both in the church, the academy, and also the marketplace. What is it that’s impacting our lives? How can we support and equip women? Those are the topics that we like to cover.

Also, we have some we try to do some series drops on Thursdays is related specifically to the Visual Museum, and in order to provide that content in a different way than just the website.

Kelley M. >> Yeah, Okay. Those are fun. Those come periodically. They’re not every week. So. Yeah. And you guys do a good job of saying here they kind of. Yeah, it’s going to be fun to look forward to. So.

Kelly D. >> All right.

Kelley M. >> Let’s talk about the Visual Museum. And I have known about it since almost the beginning. So give us I know Dr. Cohick is one of the founders. Tell us about the other two and kind of how I got started.

Kelly D. >> Well, Sandra Glahn of Dallas Theological Seminary, who you know very well and who is a regular guest on your podcast, she has long led trips to Italy, where you see the you see the art, you’re overwhelmed by the art. But you also see the women, both in the biblical story and in the early church, represented so gorgeously. And through years of seeing this and having heard her students and alumni see this in fresh eyes, she had the idea of—I would love to give these resources and give this experience through pictures to other people and to make it accessible.

So she had the opportunity to apply for a Luce grant, and that’s when the visual museum went from being an idea to being a thing. And through this generous Luce grant, the collaboration of the team of principals came into being. And so it’s Dr. Glahn and then Lynn Cohick and George Kalantzis are the three principals of the Visual Museum.

Then it’s housed under Center for Women in Leadership which is how I’m involved. There’s also a Director of the Visual Museum, Josephine Stringer. And then there’s a whole group of students who have been involved over the past couple of years. An editorial team has come out of that to help us build our resources. So when the when they received the Luce Grant one of the things that happened was the beta site and the beta site was actually the thesis project of Josephine Stringer when she was working on her Master’s in Women in Ministry. Also about Josephine, she was working on her Master’s in Women in Ministry as research for her Ph.D. in leadership.

Kelley M. >> Josie is kind of amazing.

Kelly D. >> Josie is amazing.

Kelley M. >> Yeah. Yeah.

Kelly D. >> Just feels Josephine is amazing. A tremendous asset to the Visual Museum. And she’s a phenomenal human.

Kelley M. >> Be true Yes. So she was in one of my classes. I think we started in our cohort together or she was just taking that class with me. So that’s how I got to know her. But all of this was in the very early stages back then, but she has just taken it so far. So what a great resource the behind the scenes, you know, to the brains.

Kelly D. >> So I believe the class that you took with Josephine was Women in the Early Church. It was an intensive. And Dr. Glahn came on as a guest in Lynn’s class and did a presentation, right?

Kelley M. >> Yeah.

Kelly D. >> Because I was sitting across the table from you. So I remember that specifically. Yeah. Well, it’s after Dr. Glahn did the presentation on Zoom that the class took a break, and I just happened to go by Josephine, and she said, Would Lynn let me do that as a thesis? Can I be involved in that? It was right at the moment that the beta site began.

Kelley M. >> That’s awesome. Oh, that’s fun story. Like the background. That’s awesome. Okay, so we have a site. It’s up. We’ll give you all the address, so don’t worry. And we’ve got three different.

What does Dr. Kalantzis—what brought him into it? I mean, because we don’t know much about it, at least right now here. Yeah.

Kelly D. >> He’s a professor at Wheaton College. He’s also from Athens. So he’s a very interesting person. And he has deep scholarship in early Christian studies and actually founded the Center for Early Christian Studies at Wheaton.

Kelley M. >> Those really merged very well then.

Kelly D. >> And they merge incredibly well, incredibly well. So especially hearing him talk about topics like the virgins in the early church and what that meant for martyrdom and how countercultural that was. And the deep commitment to the faith to make that commitment and what that did to the family structure and things like that. Those are topics that he really delves into because of his deep scholarship in early Christian studies in a very unique way.

So he’s a tremendous asset of the team.

Kelley M. >> Okay, wonderful. Let’s see, we’re going to go from what is it to how do people use it? What sorts of content are on the site right now?

Kelly D. >> Well, at its very core, as you’ve mentioned, it’s a website, VisualMuseum.gallery. What we provide are two things, two parallel things that are both very important. And they are images that can be downloaded for free without any copyright restrictions. You can use them any way that is a benefit and a blessing to you as long as it’s not for profit.

So there’s this image that’s available for download, but accompanying every image is a teaching element. We tell you about the woman represented in this image. It’s about her story. It’s not just about giving something that’s beautiful, but it’s also about teaching as we go. So you learn biblical studies. You learn the biography of the woman. You might encounter some art commentary on the image if that’s what’s really important to draw out the meaning, you’ll learn church history because when you learn about martyrs in the first and second century, right?

If you when you learn about the martyrs, you’re learning church history. And we’re recovering the stories of the women that have been forgotten Yes.

Kelley M. >> Yes. Okay, so the fun part for me as a church history buff and working on my own DMin is using the library, the museum. I have to I always go back and forth, but it’s a museum because it’s pictures, right? So in using that, because there’s art history, I’ve learned so much about art, which I’ve never known anything about it.

So it’s been really fun as long and as well as the history that goes along with this person. I was on one of those trips to Italy after the museum got started, and I was just pretty blown away by the sheer volume of imagery where women are included in the history of the church. And usually, of course, they’re on the walls of cathedrals and you know, in a lot of museums as well.

But these are the stories of the ancient saints of old and biblical people that the early church really thought was valuable enough to put them, you know, in mosaics and paintings and stick them on the wall for everyone to see. So bringing that to this website so everybody can see it, it’s pretty amazing, I think, because not everybody can go right and I know we have some from Italy and we’re trying to expand.

So what’s the next step at this point? You know.

Kelly D. >> We currently have a collection of images from Spain and a collection from Ireland that are going to be the next big doses of content that are going to be put up on the site. We also just hosted another trip to Italy just a few months ago. Right? We just got back. So there’s going to be another batch from Italy that will be added content.

Kelley M. >> Oh, fantastic, Okay, so this is an ever growing museum. Is it just going to keep expanding and more and more images?

Kelly D. >> Ever growing. And it’s important for us to expand who we represent and where they are represented. So geographical representation is really important. For example, the way Mary Magdalene is, the way she is depicted in art in France is very different than the way she is depicted in the art in Italy. So we want to be able to express all of that through the art and give that to the people who use the visual museum.

Kelley M. >> Excellent. So say somebody goes to the museum website and starts clicking around. What would be a suggestion for how to maneuver? I know there’s different categories— that kind of thing.

Kelly D. >> My suggestion would be go to our collections page. The collections are designed to give you an overview of the woman on the collections page that is really beautiful and well-researched. From there, you’re more invested in that person’s story. Like Praxedes and Pudentiana to their collections page story, and then it will send you to the different images that we have in our collections that represent these people that they’re in the image.

Right? And so by going to the collections page, it’s going to refine your search and send you to the story of a woman. From those images, you’ll get the teaching element about a specific image. And so it drills down in detail, but I do I prefer the collections. They’re just really a starting point for me.

Kelley M. >> Yeah. You start there and you’ll see the whole collection, obviously, of all the images that so far we have for that person. What I found interesting is once I get into that and I go to the art commentary. And of course we always give who was the artist about when was it constructed or painted or whatever. When was the person alive?

So those are all very different things, right? But sometimes I’ve noticed a link for the artist, so you might even learn more about the artist themselves. So I feel like you’re just going to get so much background that you probably never counted on, right? There’s so many levels to it.

Kelly D. >> There’s so many levels because it’s an interdisciplinary endeavor, right? We are in biblical studies. We’re in church history; we’re in art history. We’re in art commentary. We cross so many different areas of people’s interest.

Kelley M. >> Yeah.

Kelly D. >> Yeah. But what is unique is they’re coming at it from a perspective of biblical studies. You know, the three principals on the project that is their main source of scholarship. And they grow out from there. Right? So we are people of faith. We are women of faith coming at this project very committed to a high view of scripture and then looking at how women are represented in art. What it can teach us. How it shapes our imagination. And therefore how it shapes us theologically to see these women in images, both biblical women and women in the church.

And I think that’s one of the important things about the Visual Museum is that art shows us—it reflects back to us, our imagination, and it draws us into imagining something differently.

Kelley M. >> And it shows us what they were thinking then what did the church value at those different times in the history of the last 2000 years? So we come to the Scriptures, into our Bible study and our faith life from our own filters, whether we think we do or not. And they’re very 21st century for most of us, probably America whoever’s listening or watching this could be elsewhere.

But, you know, probably most of us are here. And so to see a faith expressed so differently opens our eyes like there’s more to this than everything I was taught in my little church— that kind of thing. So I appreciate that whole it broadens our view of Christ, of the Bible and of the history of our people.

Yeah. So say you are teaching a lesson and you are wanting to use this site. So here’s my plug. I think every pastor should have this as a shortcut on their browser, right? When they’re preparing sermons, right? And they’re putting their Bible studies together in writing, whether you’re a writer or pastor or Bible study teacher, whatever you are.

So you don’t forget that, you know, not just the books. Like there are images that teach some of the same theology just in a different format. So, yeah, so I’m excited by this so very good.

Kelly D. >> Your question was how to use it.

Kelley M. >> Yeah. Now let’s get back.

Kelly D. >> I can give a really recent example. So I’m currently teaching my thesis, which is a curriculum. I’m developing a curriculum, teaching the meta-narrative of Scripture with a focus on women. So I’m using illustrations of the Visual Museum as I develop my thesis. And this past Sunday, I taught on the women in Jesus’s ministry. Well, one of the examples that I gave and taught on was Mary Magdalene—that we misunderstand her.

We focus on her being the woman that, you know, had seven demons. Yes. And you know, Jesus healed her, but we kind of keep her in that box. Well, she’s a delivered! There’s joy; there’s celebration. So when we think of her as just the penitent Mary Magdalene, and we keep her in that box, we’re not being fair to her story.

We’re not being fair to the Mary Magdalene who was there throughout Jesus’s ministry and was there at the cross and there at the tomb. So how do we express the fullness of Mary Magdalene? Well, if we look at the art, there are many places where she is the penitent Mary Magdalene, and if that is the only place our theology is shaped, then we are in that danger of her being in the box.

But if we also look at the art and broaden our minds to the delivered, joyful, the one to celebrate Mary Magdalene, we have gotten the better picture theology from the Bible, from the scriptures of how Mary Magdalene was involved in Jesus’s ministry. So I’ve used those things as examples of how we can actually expand our sense of observation to interpret the text well.

Kelley M. >> Has there have been any pushback, has anybody come to say, well, we should have learned from images, we need to go only to the Bible? Have you heard any of that?

Kelly D. >> I’ve not.

Kelley M. >> Okay, good.

Kelly D. >> No, I haven’t. I haven’t gotten any feedback like that. And I hope that the way we’re presenting it would prevent that sort of feedback because we are coming from a biblical studies point of view. We are coming from a high view of Scripture, and that is very clear on the teaching elements on our site. For example, and I hope that that comes through with the example I just gave about Mary Magdalene.

I’m looking at what Scripture says about her and then thinking about the ways that my imagination has been shaped that for me theologically, right? But how my imagination is used in a way that honors and improves my spiritual interpretation, it doesn’t go against it. Another example . . .

Kelley M. >> Okay, I was thinking there are a lot of images out there that we’ve grown up as very popular that can mislead us. Yeah. Okay, what’s your other example?

Kelly D. >> My other example is I recently went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York on a Visual Museum expedition. (And so I know, right. It was so much fun.) So while I was there I was scanning some of the permanent exhibits, specifically for art that would be, you know, would be suitable for the Visual Museum. And I came across a painting that I’m still thinking about, like it’s the type of image that’s now in my imagination.

I’m still thinking about this painting because it showed Peter denying Christ. So he’s in the courtyard, and it’s Peter’s denial, but Peter is shrinking back. He’s actually in the dark. He’s not the focus of the painting. Instead, the woman questioning Peter is the subject of the painting. She’s the one that the light is on. So when you look at the painting, you actually see the woman. You don’t really see Peter.

And the title reflects that about being the woman questioning Peter. And if you had asked me three weeks ago about, you know, just list a couple of women in Scripture, list some women in the New Testament, she wouldn’t have been one of the people on top of mind for me.

Kelley M. >> Mm hmm. Pretty normal.

Kelly D. >> Pretty normal. But today I’m observing that in the text differently.

Kelley M. >> Mm hmm. Very good.

Kelly D. >> Okay, because I came across this painting because of the visual museum. I’m seeing women in the text differently. And therefore, I’m going back to the Scripture and saying to myself, what was that like for her? What was it like for her to be a first century Greco-Roman woman in Jerusalem? And confront a disciple of a man who was just arrested?

What was that like?

Kelley M. >> What we’re finding in this Visual Museum is a way to approach Scripture slightly differently, right. To the I just think of the whole the visual part. I think of the lenses that are we’re changing them out. And so it just it can only help us read scripture better. So it’s not just for women. It might be about women, but it is for the church worldwide.

So men and women who are teaching men and women who are reading their Bibles and learning and sharing with their friends, this is a resource for all of you that can only enhance you know, your understanding of the church and of Christ.

Kelly D. >> Yeah, it gives illustrations to us being brothers and sisters in the faith.

Kelley M. >> You know? Well, I’m thrilled. We’re going to wrap this up real quick. Only in the sense that there’s more, there’s always more. And you mentioned earlier on that the Center for Women in Leadership is a 501c3, which means that it is a nonprofit that takes donations to keep going, and the grant that originally set this off—one day it will run out.

Kelly D. >> And so it has.

Kelley M. >> Oh, it has?

Kelly D. >> Yeah, it was a kickstart grant. It was a great kickstart. But we rely upon donations in order to keep the Visual Museum going. And those funds I mentioned—the director, there’s me, there’s the director, there’s an editorial staff. And the reason for that work and the expenses thereof is because this is a curated website. We can accept images and research from people and we are greatly appreciative of that.

But we also curate this. And so there’s a knowledge base necessary and lots of work and hours that go behind every single image and teaching element because the quality of that image and of what we’re teaching is really very important to us.

Kelley M. >> Yes. So it goes. Websites don’t just exist. They definitely have to be paid for. So we would love to see this continue so just throwing that out there, if anyone falls in love with this site, connect with Kelly for future, you know, association. So thanks for coming. For all of you who are listening or watching the Beyond Ordinary Women website has a ton of resources for anyone who is working with or leading women in the church.

So it could be about how to be a leader. It could be a theology question. Application. There’s just we have a variety of collections, different topics. So this will be added to it. And we know that this is going to be a really great resource. So thanks for being here, Kelly.

Kelly D. >> Thank you so much for having me.

Kelley M. >> Yeah.