The iSlay Story: An Oldie But A Real Goodie!

In early 2016, Beyonce’ dropped her “Formation” video the day before her reappearance at the Super Bowl halftime show. And like always the world went crazy analyzing every lyric and image contained therein. Something she said resonated with women, especially black women, differently this time. More deeply. “I slay. I slay. I slay. I slay.” It was a chant that reached our hearts, encouraged our souls, and enlivened our spirits. It was both an affirmation and a challenge. It was reassurance and a reminder that no matter what barriers, assaults, glass ceilings, hatred, discrimination we face, we are still amazing, powerful, and a glorious force of God to be reckoned with. The preacher in me found in these two simple words, “iSlay”, a contemporary translation of God’s sacred word that proclaims that we are fearfully and wonderfully made. 

iSlay was an affirmation and a challenge.

Arionne Yvette

Before I knew it I was chatting with women on my Facebook page about whether or not they felt like they “slayed” as women of faith. Then we started naming women of the Bible who we thought slayed. And then, iSlay Bible Study was born. It was a 5-week study that was both online (pre-Zoom) and in person, and reached more than 350 women of faith who wanted to figure out how they could slay like the women of the Bible (Esther, Vashti, Jael, The Shulamite, and Mary). Each week we dug deeply into their stories, connected them to our own, and prayed over women and girl entrepreneurs from our community. iSlay returned for a college edition with my students at UIndy in Spring 2019.  Check out all the lessons from the original iSlay sessions in the videos here on Facebook!