Today we’d like to introduce you to Gale Carter.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Gale. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
After becoming a Christian at 15-years of age, I found myself hungry for fellowship with other believers. I quickly joined several different excellent Christian ministries that were available on my campuses, but when I linked up with one in college that consisted of all females, everything changed. Suddenly, the depth and maturity of my faith skyrocketed! I had to admit to myself that while the other ministries were fantastic, I had a hidden motivation for being there; I wanted to find my good, Christian husband. Now, without the distraction of cute boys, I was focused and resolute on learning more about Jesus Christ alone.
It was that new-found hunger for spiritual growth that inspired me to want to recreate this same environment for other girls in the generations that would come after me. I didn’t want them to waste a minute of their life on superficial things like I had, so the idea was to expose them to this format of discipleship as early in their life as possible. I needed to reach them before they got to college.
The vision quickly became to start a Christian ministry that was intentional about sharing the Gospel and discipling young women at the middle and high school level. I knew religious clubs on public school campuses had to be student-initiated and student-led, so I had to figure out a way to get on the inside of the schools. By God’s grace, I was able to change some elements of my degree path in order to add a teaching certification. I would become a teacher and “infiltrate” the system that way.
I got my first teaching job at a middle school in North Dallas teaching Theatre Arts. It was only just a couple of months into the school year as I was enjoying a lunch with several female students who had taken a special liking to me that my vision became a reality. As we sat there discussing spiritual matters over our meal, one of the young ladies looked at me and said, “Mrs. Carter, you know what we should do? We should start a Christian club just for girls at school.” Student-Initiated? Check.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
We were off and running with the ministry right away after that lunch conversation, but the school district was definitely resistant towards about letting us launch. They pushed back on almost everything we attempted to initiate. A public school district has a duty to remain “fair and neutral” towards extra-curricular groups. We endured a lot of unlawful pushback towards our idea in those early days, to the point that it wasn’t until the last month of that school year that we finally were granted the freedom to hold our first meeting.
In hindsight, I can see how the Lord used that pushback to teach me the intricacies of the law and the scope of student religious liberties. I learned so much I’ve now become a bit of an armchair expert on the matter to the point that I often get invited to churches to speak on the issue or get calls from school district administrators with questions about boundaries and rights.
Our current struggle is having an idea bigger than what one person can alone carry. We’ve now been actively doing ministry for 12 years and find ourselves working with highly motivated, ambitious young women who take their roles as missionaries and leaders on their campus very seriously. In 2012, I was able to step away from my job teaching to begin volunteering for the ministry full-time as its Executive Director. I have half a dozen faithful women who volunteer part-time alongside me, but as our ministry is growing and flourishing, we see a very real lid in our future as a leadership team with regard to our abilities to support these incredible students using only a volunteer, part-time staff.
We are prayerful that doors will open for women to come to join us a paid employees in the very near future. In order to support the ambitious efforts of our teens on their campuses, we need women who can dedicate their entire workday to that end alone. These teen leaders need mentors, coaches, and confidants that are able to give their full attention to them. If we can overcome this obstacle, we will be unstoppable as a ministry.
Daughters of Our Living Lord & Savior (dba: DOLLS) – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
DOLLS is a nonprofit that partners with spiritually mature young women in the public school system who desire to share their faith in Jesus Christ with their peers. Public school students have significant rights that permit them to share their faith on campus. Our ministry comes alongside these young leaders to equip and empower them to go into their schools as missionaries to share the Gospel with boldness, urgency, and accuracy.
They do this by hosting weekly meetings after school where they teach each other out of God’s Word, worship together, and spur one another on towards maturity in Christ. Our young women are motivated by the goal of bringing other teenage girls to a reconciled relationship with their creator and to see those girls then flourish in whatever gifts and talents they have been given to bring Glory back to God.
Each chapter also devotes themselves to various community service projects throughout the year in an effort to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this world. Each chapter has autonomy to dedicate themselves to whatever community outreach is most important to them as a chapter. Some of the projects our girls have participated in annually has included collecting socks for orphans, sewing stuffed animals for children, collecting food for local food pantries, and visiting the elderly in nursing homes.
There are several really great ministries that minister to middle and high school age students in our area, but what really sets DOLLS apart from other organizations is our tireless commitment to seeing the students being the one to take charge of their ministries. Our organization was formed by several public educators who knew the importance of building a platform that was safely within the boundaries of religious liberty laws which meant we needed to produce a ministry that middle and high school-aged students could confidently take command of with or without adult intervention.
What has resulted is an organization that has become a leadership factory, cranking out confident and capable young women who are anxious for opportunities to be in the driver’s seat. While each campus has a teacher on-site sponsoring their club, the girls are truly the ones running the show. They decide what lessons to teach. They decide what events to host. They decide how to manage member engagement. These young women are learning life lessons that many adults don’t ever get to traffic in.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
I am most proud that we have reached a place as a ministry where it is no longer me and my executive ministry team who is doing the work of spreading the word about our mission; Rather, these days it’s these young women who do all the promoting. They are proud of the way God is using them and are anxious to see other girls from new schools join the movement. It is the girls who are making new connections for us with new campuses.
They are going to their churches and talking about speaking at their DOLLS meeting or planning outreach events and their peers are inspired. Next thing I know I am getting a call from a new girl who says, “Hey, I saw my friend is doing this and I feel like I could handle it too. What do I do to bring DOLLS to my campus?”
For example, one of our chapters took it entirely on themselves to plan a sample DOLLS meeting at one of the feeder schools to their campus. They wanted the girls at this feeder school to see what they could be doing by bringing DOLLS to their school. Without an ounce of intervention from me or my corporate team, this team of young leaders arranged a date on the campus calendar to come in for the takeover. They coordinated all the advertising, got a few on-site teachers involved, developed a schedule for the event, and produced promotional materials to leave behind. They hosted a complete DOLLS meeting as a preview for the young women on that campus and left them energized and anxious to make DOLLS a permanent part of their campus culture.
It is a proud moment when, as a leader, you no longer have to cast vision because the vision now resonates so clearly in the hearts and minds of those you lead that they effectively become your mouthpiece themselves.
Contact Info:
- Address: 305 S. Jupiter Road, Suite 110, Allen, TX 75002
- Website: https://www.DOLLSHeadquarters.org
- Phone: 469-795-1047
- Email: dolls@dollsheadquarters.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dollsheadquarters/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DOLLSHeadquarters
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DOLLSchat
Image Credit:
Santos Hazan-Cohen
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