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Sandra Glahn: Influencer of Influencers

“My current ministry was birthed from an identity crisis,” Dr. Sandra Glahn, Associate Professor of Media Arts and Worship at Dallas Theological Seminary, often tells those who inquire about her career as an author and seminary professor. A native of Oregon, Sandra began her affiliation with DTS when her husband, Gary, studied there in the 1980s. Having earlier earned her B.A. at Washington Bible College, she pursued a career in communications while he studied.

As time went on, they began a ten-year struggle with infertility that carried over into pregnancy loss and failed adoptions. Thus began the self-described identity crisis: if motherhood was the pinnacle of Christian womanhood, as was commonly taught in the church, where did that leave her and other women dealing with infertility?

Toward the end of that season, Sandra—by now a seminary student herself—partnered with her seminary-trained obstetrician to write the book When Empty Arms Become a Heavy Burden. In it, they addressed infertility from the personal, spiritual, and medical perspectives. This led to a season of writing and speaking about bioethics, sexuality, and reproductive technologies. Not content just to instruct readers, the duo also teamed up to write several medical suspense novels, including the CBA bestseller and Christy Award finalist, Lethal Harvest.

While studying at DTS, Glahn mentored other writers and assisted the school’s media arts department. By the time she graduated with her Master of Theology degree, she was teaching writing courses at DTS and serving her church as director of women’s ministry. There, Glahn wrote her own Bible studies for the women. Those inductive studies became the foundation for a new line of published works, the Coffee Cup Bible study series, which currently includes eleven titles.

As she pursued PhD studies at the University of Texas at Dallas, Glahn joined the faculty of DTS as associate professor and editor-in-chief of the seminary’s magazine, Kindred Spirit (now DTS Magazine), which won numerous awards during her tenure. Teaching courses in writing and on gender in the church, she finds students—women in particular—struggling with the same fear of being “less than” that she faced decades earlier. She repeatedly affirms to her students that a woman’s greatest calling is not to support a husband or mother children, but to image God and exercise dominion over the earth.

Most recently Glahn demonstrated her own theological expertise by pulling together and editing fifteen other biblical scholars who wrote Vindicating the Vixens, which examines unfairly maligned or ignored women in the Bible. Championing accurate historical and cultural analyses that clarifies what biblical authors were trying to communicate, Glahn continues to challenge her students toward thinking that transforms.

She and Gary, a missionary with East-West Ministries, live in Texas with their daughter, Alexandra.

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Examples of other women of influence we profile: Jennie Allen of IF:Gathering, author Jen Wilkin, speaker Priscilla Shirer, professor Karen Swallow Prior, speaker/author Jackie Hill Perry . . .

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