Yet this sermonic moment lacked a challenge to men to consider their mindset while pushing performative modesty onto women in Jesus’s name. It feels like stating the obvious here but if a man doesn’t want to get to know me after seeing the illusion of nudity, the problem is his intention, not my actions. Yet, Todd drops the ball when speaking to women, diminishing our worth to the sum of our body parts. In an attempt at equity, Todd does put the onus on other men in his sermon, asking them to “be a husband that is not trying to impress his college buddies, but be an anchor for your family that may not be as impressive on the ‘gram but you’re impacting the next generation to love and lead their families.” These words see the fullness of men’s humanity and speak to the height of their potential to hold families together and heal generational cycles of brokenness. Todd may be the most recent voice admonishing women to not seek to be impressive with their bodies, but his words echo a generations-long tradition of the church’s repression of women’s bodies and sexuality.

Pastor michael todd sermons