Our Story
An initiative of WATAC (Women and the Australian Church) and the Grail in Australia, the Australian Women Preach Podcast showcases preaching by Christian women from across all denominations, relevant to contemporary Australian life.
We launched this project on International Women’s Day, Monday 8 March, 2021.
Each Monday the podcast for the following Sunday’s Gospel is available. Listen on your favourite podcasting platform with Spotify.
The podcast showcases the gifts of many talented women preaching the Gospel.
We want to demonstrate women preaching the gospel with theological insight and relevance to our daily lives.
We hope to enrich and renew our listeners’ experience of the Sunday Gospel.
Our preachers are women from across all Christian denominations.
They are women of all ages, from the west to the east coast of Australia, from a range of cultural and professional backgrounds. They share a love of the Gospel and a desire to share its meaning with others.
A goal of the project is to highlight the exclusion of women’s voices in preaching the Gospel.
Unfortunately, there are some Christian denominations where, despite feeling a deep sense of call to do so, women are unable to preach the gospel during worship services.
In the Catholic church, for instance, church law does not allow women to preach the Gospel during the Mass.
We seek to be part of the ongoing process of discernment for the Catholic Church.
In 2021 and 2022 the Catholic Church in Australia held its Fifth Plenary Council. In preparation, Catholics in Australia were asked to pray, listen and dialogue with one another to discern a way forward for the church in this country.
Prayerful and Eucharistic, one of the discernment papers which informed the Plenary Council process states,
Our Sunday Eucharist would be enriched if the voices of lay experience and insight were heard more frequently, especially the oft silenced voices of women.
Although the Plenary Council did not reach a decision to allow lay preaching, we are hopeful of change to come. The issue remains on the table for the current Synod of Bishops 2021-2024.
We strongly believe that this podcast is a gift of hope and renewal for many.
We are encouraged that the podcast continues to provide a platform for women to use their Spirit-given gifts to reflect on and illuminate scripture.
We model the church we wish to be: inclusive, diverse, and welcoming.
St Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 12, that ‘to one is given through the Spirit a word of wisdom, to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing in the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy’ and so on.
Each gift given for the building up of the body of Christ. It is by virtue of our baptism that we are all called to discern our particular gifts and use them for the good of all.
Meet the Team
The podcast is put together by a working group of members of WATAC and the Grail. Pictured in the collage below are:
