'People told me that I was 'crazy' to do a non-glamorous role at the beginning my career.'

Wednesday was a day of midweek celebrations!

The annual tradition of Christmas bunch at Shashi Kapoor's house was carried forward by his son Kunal.

Varun and Nora treated their fans to a live performance of the new song as well. Garmi is written, composed and sung by Badshah, along with Neha Kakkar, and features in Remo D'Souza's film, Street Dancer 3D.

'Sridevi was known as this elusive movie star, but there was a ticking brain there that I don't think she got enough credit for.'

Javed Akhtar's 75th birthday celebrations started early with the unveiling of an exhibition of photographs from his life. His family also threw a retro-themed party for him at their home, and invited his friends over.

These videos are like butterflies in a case, says Sreehari Nair. They have neither aged badly nor grown over-familiar.

When you experience hurt from those who serve beside you

When I was twenty-three, I left the United States for a scary, exciting job as an international campus minister. I was all nerves with my year of seminary, husband of a year, and life packed into five large suitcases. It was an adventure into the unknown, following God’s call to places I’d only visited briefly. I’d speak a different language, learn new customs, and celebrate new government holidays—all in a bid to be a little-Christ to students at a university in Europe.

I returned at twenty-six, an older, wiser, and more broken woman. The years had not been easy or kind to me. My exterior circumstances in Europe had been easy. I was a campus minister on a cosmopolitan campus with students from 130 different countries. I had running water, plenty of delicious restaurants nearby, friends I liked, and a city I’d fallen in love with. But…

And this is a big but…

I hadn’t been emotionally or spiritually supported during our ministry years. I’d been told I was a liar, that I wasn’t trustworthy, that I was needy and demanding, and that I was trouble. The word had been given to me as an identity marker. I wasn’t making trouble; I was the trouble. And for a woman already uncertain about my welcome and position in ministry, that was devastating. It became a toxic environment that sapped me to nothing. I lost weight. I grew gray hair overnight. I withdrew from friends. I developed an unhealthy relationship with chocolate and books.

In short, I showed some of the signs of an abusive relationship.

And it wasn’t the students. No, they were wonderful. It wasn’t my husband either. He was my lifeline. Unfortunately, it was a fellow team member. We’d been friends ...

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Ministering to children as the fully spiritually aware, intuitive thinkers they are.

Much can happen when we learn to equip and empower the children among us. For one woman in ministry, it’s not so much about children learning from grown-ups, but it’s about grown-ups learning from children. Samantha Trimble, Director of Children’s Ministry at The Creek Covenant Church in Walnut Creek, California is a denominational coach for the Evangelical Covenant Church and ambassador for Faith@Home Ministries International. She has experienced firsthand the benefit of approaching each member of the body of Christ as valuable and vital.

“Children are fresh eyes and hearts,” she states in an interview. “They are born fully capable and spiritually aware, but unsullied by our own ideas of how things ‘should’ or ‘must’ be done. They are intuitive thinkers that can make connections that we linearly-thinking grown-ups would not.”

Trimble equates the capability of children to having “lantern-like focus,” a concept coined by U.C. Berkeley developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik. Soaking in everything of the world around them (seemingly all at once), young minds learn to experiment with how things connect. This is in direct opposition to adults who, with their tendency to exhibit “flashlight focus,” oftentimes miss what kids naturally see because they fixate on a single spot.

I am one of those guilty of fixating on a single spot, but it’s something Trimble never seems to have succumbed to—which made me all the more eager to hear the rest of her story. After all, who doesn’t want to glean a little bit of a childlike, lantern-like focus?

Trimble met Jesus when she was seven years old. Working out her faith in playground friendships ...

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Equipping for the challenges and blessings of being called.

For many women leaders, we must be more highly educated than our male counterparts to receive the same acknowledgment of our calling and equipping. That has certainly been true in my experience.

I grew up in a liminal time in my home church. The conversation around women leaders was becoming more and more visible. Capable women were asking hard questions. Traditional pat answers were no longer sufficient. I was lucky to be born in that era because I grew up encouraged to be a leader and pastor by a man who had formerly said women couldn’t be called to preach. But a slow evolution in his beliefs started when I was born.

A granddaughter can change a lot.

I grew up thinking I could do anything until I reached young adulthood. Then the cuteness of having a thirteen-year-old girl read scripture or pray in church hit the asphalt of what do we really believe about women and their callings? It was a tumultuous time. My parents and grandfather shielded me so I only heard rumors of elders fighting or heated disagreements. Slowly, opportunity changed and grew scarcer.

My journey to seminary was perhaps not an extraordinary one for many female leaders. It isn’t surprising that most women pursue seminary for the same reasons men do—the education itself and increased opportunities. I craved education. Increasingly, I’d found the recommended women’s ministry books were light on the theology I found so fascinating.

I read on my own, making my own informal study plan, yet it wasn’t enough. For all that my informal reading was helpful to me, I found it often didn’t count as a female leader. Too often, it was labeled as experience, not knowledge (a difference I still haven’t parsed as being unequal), ...

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