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This is a very hot and resourceful interview with a woman of God whom
believes so much in women's empowerment and freedom. She is an author
of Black Women, Blow the Trumpet Blog.
She is Lisa Vazquez,
a nondenominational (and unconventional) clergywoman who lives in the
United States and has been in ministry for eight years. She has
traveled all over the world and has lived in Ibadan, Nigeria. She has
been a ghostwriter for an internationally-known televangelist and has
been the editor and book reviewer for ten books that were published by
an internationally-known televangelist. She has worked in the homeless
community, with addicts and ex-convicts as well as sex trade workers.
She has a ministry to rape survivors as a rape trauma responder in the
emergency room of local hospitals. She plans to move to West Africa in
2009 and start a non-profit organization that focuses on women's
empowerment.
Blogshpere is a wonderful community, that has
afforded me the opportunity to interact with a powerful woman like
Lisa. I have never regreted visiting her blog.
She is passionate about what she writes and I feel blessed to have
discovered that blog! Welcome to Interview Thursday with Lisa!
.......................................................................................................................................
Rev. Lisa is passionate about black women development, how did this come to be?
First,
I want to say "Merry Christmas" to everyone who is reading this
interview on Christmas day and celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.
Prior
to becoming a minister of the Gospel, I led two non-profit
organizations in two states. I was also a teacher in the public school
system in my early twenties. The Lord placed a mantle on me to be a
prophetic voice in the desert places of our society. This mantle
requires me to understand all of the levels of barrenness that people
permit within their lives. God has given me a deep compassion for women
and an unwavering commitment to be instrumental in equipping and
empowering women to embrace everything that God has destined for their
lives. For many, that journey can not take place without making healing
a high priority.
Can you give us an insight into how your blog came to be?
Before
I became a blogger, I had a large email distribution list and for
years, I would send out essays about controversial issues that were
occurring in the church and about issues related to empowerment and
self-actualization. I would receive quite a few responses to my email.
This year, God directed me to expand the distribution of the message to
a larger online audience and that is how I became a blog host. I
started reading blogs a year and a half ago and became a blog host in
March of this year. I write about all of the things that I talk about
to the women in the church. I believe that online activism
is vitally important in empowering women and I can see that it reaches
more people in one day than traditional channels of community activism.
What do you intend to achieve with your blog focus?
I
believe that God would like for me to use the voice He has given me to
reach black women who are enduring painful life situations and to speak
to that pain in a way that enables them to see the unleashed power that
lies within the core of their pain. God would also like for me to be an
encourager to those who are living victoriously and powerfully so that
they will be passionate about sharing their life accomplishments with
other women. I believe that God wants my think tank to place for women to gather and share resources, insight and hope.
(I should mention that I am using the word "He" but some women who are
in the Christian community of faith do not use masculine language to
speak about God because they believe that it negates women and obscures
the feminine nature of God. That is certainly an opinion worth
considering but not one that I support.)
Black women have being at the receiving end for so long, do you think the attainment of MGDs will change things?
I believe that the most significant level of societal change comes from within. I
also believe that radical change cannot be achieved without a change in
mentality, a change in value systems, a change in strategy, and a
change in focus. There is nothing that is external that can produce long-term change without inner transformation.
Feminists,
gender and activists and other human rights activists
