Beth Moore In The Spotlight

Breaking Free

How Beth Moore Became America's Most Exciting
Bible Teacher By Corrie Cutrer

Beth Moore is petite, but her body language is larger than life. She paces the stage dramatically, gesturing wildly with her hands and arms. Her attractive eyes bulge with intensity as she speaks. Her voice, with its mild Texas accent, rises and falls like a dazzling violin solo. Moore's charisma is contagious. Give her five minutes and she can have an arena full of women bursting at the seams with laughter and feeling like they've known the spirited Bible teacher for their entire life.

"She just has to teach it," says Carolyn O'Neal, director of women's ministries at Moore's home congregation of First Baptist-Houston, and a longtime friend of Moore's. "She says it's just got to come out."

What comes out is Moore's passion that other women get to know Jesus in an intimate way. "You know that she knows her [heavenly] Father and that it's not fake," Holder adds. "She shares some of her hurts and some of the things she's been through and how God still chose to use her. There's such freedom at her conferences. She says that God has a plan and purpose for each one of us, and that no matter who we are or where we have been, God wants us to live in total freedom."

Moore's conferences begin on a Friday evening and conclude on Saturday. Her girl-next-door persona… draws as many as 10,000 women to the weekend venues. What keeps them coming back, though, is Moore's compelling message that abundant life awaits those who will hungrily devour Scripture… Her mission is to promote biblical literacy. Her approach is clearly working.

"People are wanting to know that the Word of God is not just a book of doctrinal dos and don'ts—that it's a book of relationship," Moore says. "I think people struggle to believe in the absolute unfailing love of God; to know the romance of Christ. To let him get much further than skin deep…"

As a speaker, Moore is also in high demand, with engagements that now extend around the globe. This past summer, she traveled to South Africa for a week to speak to a group of Southern Baptist women missionaries.

"It's amazing to think about it all at times," Moore says, with genuine wonder and humility.

Years ago, the work she did at her local church began on a much smaller scale. Friends now say that it was Moore's faithfulness in the small things that laid the foundation for the huge ministry she heads today.


In the early 1980s, while she was still trying to discern how God wanted to use her in full-time ministry, Moore helped take care of kids at her church during the week so that other moms could take a midday break. She led an aerobics class that often ended with a short devotion. She invited groups of women into her home for Bible study and led a monthly prayer breakfast.

These activities don't sound nearly as exciting as the life Moore leads today—dashing around the U. S. and across the world as one of the most respected and sought-after Bible teachers.

But in Moore's eyes, every step she has taken along the way since committing her life to vocational ministry at age 18 has been a step of service to God. And that might just be the key to her success.

"All I knew was to just walk through the door, whatever it was," Moore says. "Even when I was a young married and I taught Mother's Day Out, if someone had said, 'I thought you surrendered to ministry,' I would have said, 'This is ministry.' I knew whatever it was, I was to do it for the glory of God. And that was my calling…"

Expanding Her Reach

John Bisagno, the former pastor of First Baptist Houston, mentored Moore, He agrees that Moore's balanced approach has made her a stellar teacher.

"She's had private Greek lessons," Bisagno says of Moore's devotion to biblical scholarship. "But Beth's secret is not that. It's in her commitment to the Word and applying it. She just sparkles. Beth's got the whole package."

Bisagno gave Moore opportunities to grow as a teacher by allowing her to speak regularly during the church's Sunday-evening services. Bisagno, who retired three years ago after pastoring in Houston for 30 years, says he can remember Moore frequently coming to him with questions about Scripture. "She would always come to me and ask if this or that was right," he recalls.

Moore wanted to make sure she knew her stuff, and Bisagno played a big role in her development. Their relationship stands out as unique in a denomination where leaders assert that women should not be pastors or hold prominent positions of leadership over men in a church.

Bisagno, however, said Moore never went against Southern Baptist beliefs. "Beth would be strong to tell you that she doesn't think a woman should be a preacher," he says.

Moore admits she steers clear of denominational issues. "My thing is discipleship," she says. "That's what I love and feel most called to. My part is very undenominational. I'm not really into the [Southern Baptist] political scene."

Overcoming A Painful Past

While Bisagno and others respect Moore as a prominent spiritual leader, her rise to celebrity status hasn't made life perfect for Moore. Along the way, she's faced deep pain.

Abused by someone outside of her immediate family as a child, Moore's scars ran deep and followed her into adulthood. In the preface to her Breaking Free workbook, she shares how she felt so violated and ashamed that she didn't even want to wear white on her wedding day. "I did not feel pure," she writes. "[There were] scars from being a childhood victim of someone else's problem."

It's a feeling that unfortunately many women can relate to, Moore says. But that doesn't mean she's felt compelled to share all the details of the horrible ordeal.

"I never share the details of my childhood victimization for two reasons," Moore says in Breaking Free. "First, I want the Healer glorified, not the hurt; and second, a greater number of people can relate to more general terms.

"I believe ultimately Satan is the chief abuser," she continues. "Satan accused me every day of my life from that time on until I said 'Enough!' and agreed to let God bring healing and forgiveness…"

"She keeps reminding us that God's love endures forever," Holder adds. "God's got his hand on that woman. His love flows through her words."

The Book of Daniel

This excerpt has been quoted from “Breaking Free” by Corrie Cutrer and published in Today’s Christian magazine. The rest of this article is well-worth your time. Beth Moore’s weblog which she shares with her daughter Amanda, is here. Beth’s website, Living Proof Ministries is here.

Not sold on Beth Moore? A few others are in agreement. For an interesting counterpoint, check out this brief thought-provoking critique.

I’m currently involved in Beth’s latest study on the Book of Daniel with my daughter—our first Moore book. This study comes with lively downloadable teaching sessions that are very affordable. And we’re halfway through the twelve teaching sessions. So what do we think? The jury’s still out!

Edit: The second half of this study is chock full of valuable information about the end times (eschatology).
Don't miss it!

So what do you think of Beth Moore? Go ahead, be honest.

Photo Credits: imb.org, Living Proof Ministries, emircaner, Lifeway