Speaking

As a writer and speaker, Lori helps women make sense of God and His unconditional love for you and me. Her blog provides tools to grow in faith and in relationship with the Lord. She is a regular contributor to several online publications and books, and author of award-winning Surrendered Hearts: An Adoption Story of Love, Loss, and Learning to Trust.

Lori is a wife and an adoptive, biological, and special needs Mom to three children who finds herself calling on Jesus daily amidst her gift of beautiful chaos. She loves to witness the freedom women experience when they begin to see themselves as a reflection of the One who created them. Because she herself once lived beneath the labels of fear, shame, and insecurity, she understands the effects of a broken identity. Things like untapped potential, unhealthy relationships, and situational depression and anxiety.

Armed with a Master’s Degree in education, a Christian life coaching certificate, years of ministry experience, and most importantly the Word of God, her greatest desire is to encourage all women to hold onto Jesus and His hope as they face both the gentle and the hard seasons of life.

Lori can be found online in both writing and speaking capacities. She regularly blogs at LoriSchumaker.com, stays up to date on most social media platforms, and writes in several online publications such as iBelieve, Crosswalk, Empowered Women Faith Club, and Devotable. You can also find her speaking in several online and in-person conferences.

She resides in Chandler, Arizona.

Speaking Topics

Through storytelling, personal experience, educational training, and the Word of God, Lori adapts each of her speaking topics to the felt needs of the audience. The below titles are her most popular, however can be adapted as needed.

Walking in Your True Identity: Loving Yourself God’s Way

We often hear the term “identity in Christ”. But what does that really mean? How does it impact us and how do we embrace what God says about us versus what the world says about us? Each of these messages is unique, yet uniquely target topics such as negative self-talk, comparison, social media, and shame.

Living for More than the World’s Reflection
As social media has quickly become a way of life for women of all ages, now more than ever women are tricked into seeing their value in the eyes of an ever-changing, broken, and often angry world. This talk will help women break free of living in the reflection of the world and instead begin to see themselves in the reflection of the God who loves them beyond measure, created them in His image, and calls them wonderful. This talk will address topics of the comparison effect and transforming negative self-talk to positive truth.

Escaping the Shackles of Shame and Living As a Child of God
The sins of our past – both those we have committed and those committed against us – have the power to leave us shackled in shame. This talk will help women recognize where and how they are being held back and inspire them to let God break those chains so they can freely follow the path toward their unique life purpose. Lori will examine labels and how women allow these labels to define who they are. Then she will equip and inspire them to seek their worth in the steady love of Christ.

What is Your Self-Talk Doing to You?
The things we say to ourselves sadly, are often uglier than anything we would ever say to anyone else. Self-talk is critical. How we respect ourselves is critical. In this talk women will learn to recognize negative self-talk and implement strategies for replacing it with life-giving truth straight from the Word of God.

Thriving Parenthood: Raising Families God’s Way

Parenting isn’t an easy task, yet it is the most privileged gift we are given by the Father. The world has theory after theory and opinion after opinion about how to raise children. But what does God say about raising our families?

How to Parent Without Losing Our True Identity
Parenting is an all-consuming privilege. But one that can leave us with a broken identity. This talk will help Mothers feeling lost and lacking purpose. It will equip them to live out Motherhood with purpose, joy, and hope. It will also equip them to avoid the pitfalls of using their children as affirmations of worth, living out unrealized dreams, and helicopter parenting.

The Hurt Child and the Weary Mom
Coming from the perspective of an adoptive Mother who faces daily challenges created by her child’s painful past, this talk will encourage and equip Mothers learning to parent a child who has come to them with a difficult past. It will give them a peek into why our children do the things they do and how, as parents, we can go to our Heavenly Father to fill our gaps and encourage our often-aching hearts.

When You are Called to Adopt
Adoption is a beautiful example of how God brings us into His family and loves us without reserve. Once we have felt the call and made the decision to adopt, our lives are forever changed. This talk will walk women through what loving well looks like in adoption and the effects it may have on our marriages and biological children.

Parenting the Special Needs Child
When women dream of being a Mother, typically parenting a child with special needs isn’t a part of that dream. While inspiring parents to find the beautiful and unique joy of parenting their child, this talk will answer questions like:

  • Is it okay to grieve?
  • How do I let go of my dream and embrace what is?
  • How do I share my story with grace and allow people into this challenging place of my world?

Raising Our Children to Love Jesus in a World That Doesn't Understand Him
Today our children a pulled away from faith in the Lord by a world that simply doesn’t understand who He is. Activities, sports, school, friends, and social media make our jobs of raising up our children in faith more difficult than ever before. This talk will inspire parents and give them strategies to not only surviving the job, but thriving as we raise children to love the Lord.

Unveiled Hope:

How do we face the challenges of life with an unveiled and everlasting hope? How do we keep our hope alive in all seasons? It all comes down to Christ and using the powerful weapons He has given us in the fight. In each of these messages, Lori will encourage and equip us to tackle the subject of hope with both inspiration and tangible strategies.

When God Seems Far Away
Sometimes amidst the most difficult times in our lives, we experience what feels like the absence of God. But feelings are not always truth. This talk provides encouragement and tangible strategies to utilize during those times.

Using Joy and Gratitude In the Fight for Everlasting Hope
Life is not easy. Bumps and bruises are inevitable along the way. God didn’t promise us that, as believers, we would have a pain-free life, but He promised He would walk us through each trial. From her own personal and family experience, Lori shares with women how to wield both joy and gratitude as weapons against hard life circumstances.

The Power of Praying
Why do we pray? What are the promises of God? How do we pray Scripture and why is it important? Lori will answer these questions and more while encouraging and equipping women to flourish in their prayer life. This talk is uniquely designed for the audience in mind. Whether it is praying for our children (biological and/or adopted), our spouses, or identity and purpose, Lori will equip and encourage women to understand the power of prayer.

7 Truths That Will Enable You to Overcome Rejection, Hurt, and Betrayal
In this talk we will explore truths that enable us to get over betrayal and rejection. When we commit to living out these truths, we keep moving. We stop the enemy from holding us back and keeping us stuck.

Living a Surrendered Life:

What does it look like to live a life of surrender? To let go of our dreams, our plans, our hopes, the thing we’re holding onto so tightly? To trust that God has a different—and better—plan, even when sometimes things seem so dark that you can hardly see? Each of these messages directly correlates with Lori’s book, Surrendered Hearts, and consists of the following.

These messages can be grouped for retreat or multi-message events or presented as one message. Lori is happy to work with you to develop a Surrendered Hearts series tailored to your event.

The Fight for Control Versus the Freedom of Surrender
With living comes events and situations that are beyond our control. However, our response is often to clench tightly to what is not ours to have. Control gives us a false sense of security and it leaves us stuck with hearts and lives closed to God’s next “yes”. In this message, we will reflect on our need for control and we will claim the Surrendered Hearts Manifesto as a new way to live a surrendered life to Christ.

Fear Has No Power in a Surrendered Heart
We have all experienced fear at different levels and in different areas of our lives. It has the power to take us out of the game plan of our lives. To stop us from experiencing life to the fullest. But there is hope. It starts in the arms of Christ. In this talk, we will dig into the Bible, claim Scripture, and tap into three steps to walking through fear and onto the best God has for us.

Waiting Well: Why We Can't Hurry God
We live in a society of immediate gratification which conditions us for impatience. However, God’s timing isn’t based on society’s speed. It is based on His perfect timing. This talk will give women insight into waiting well and using the time as their training ground for the next chapter God has planned for them!

Knowing Whose We Are Makes All the Difference
When we know we belong to Christ and are one of His treasured children, it changes how we face life. It changes our relationships, our confidence, and our ability to navigate the difficult events of life. Sometimes, though, accepting the magnificent grace-filled truth of whose we are is the hardest part. This message will open our eyes to ways in which we are putting gaps in between God’s love and our lives. We will look at negative self-talk, comparison, and the effects social media can have on us.

A one-page description of Lori's speaking ministry

Sample Speaking Videos

Lori would love to partner with you to encourage and equip others to embrace the love of Christ and live in His steady reflection. If you are interested in booking Lori for your next church or ministry event, she would love to connect with you.