What Is Your Take On Female Pastors Or Elders?
Q: What is your perspective on female pastors or elders, and what should churches do if they feel pressured to ordain women as pastors or teaching pastors?
A: This is a question that comes up often. According to our team, some form of this question comes to us every week or every couple of weeks. I think that women should not be appointed or recognized as pastors, elders, or bishops over congregations. Even if a woman serves as a shepherd in an appropriate realm, such as women's ministry or children's ministry, I think it's confusing and unhelpful to grant the title of pastor to a woman in that situation. Churches that feel pressured to ordain women as pastors or teaching pastors should resist that pressure and stay faithful to what the Bible teaches.
I understand that this is a matter that Christians disagree on. I have brothers and sisters in Christ whom I love deeply and respect who differ on this. It doesn't mean that I agree with them, but it doesn't mean that I stop loving them or respecting them for the other things they do in ministry. I also understand that this is a secondary issue. Those who are wrong on this, from my perspective, are still my brothers and sisters in Christ. I hope that those who see me as wrong would still regard me as a brother to them in Christ.
Believing men and women are equal heirs of God's promises and both receivers of His gifts is important. God gave the command to take dominion over Earth's creation to both the first man and the first woman. In Genesis 1:26-28, God did not give the dominion command just to Adam, but to Adam and Eve. While a church may allow some doctrinal diversity, it can't both have women pastors and not have women pastors or elders. You have to make a choice one way or the other.
The health of the local church and the church at large is affected by this issue. If I'm wrong in denying women the opportunity to pastor and lead congregations, that matters. If those who disagree with me are wrong, it also matters. This is a place where the spirit of our age presses against what most Christians through the centuries have believed the Bible teaches. The Bible does not teach a general subjection of women to men. There is no general command for every woman to submit to every man, except in the broad sense of submitting to one another in the fear of God.
The Bible does teach the principle of a husband's headship in the home and the headship of qualified men in the church. This principle is repeated many times in the Bible, with one of the clearest examples found in 1 Timothy 2:12-14. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. This passage is often claimed to be unclear, but I think it's easy to declare a passage unclear when we are determined not to follow what it says.
God created Adam first and recognized him as the head. God organized Israel along patriarchal lines, calling only men as priests and Levitical servants. Jesus appointed only men among the 12 disciples and the 70 whom He sent out. The qualifications for elders are written for men, not for women. While there are rare exceptions, such as Deborah, those exceptions do not justify creating a standard normative practice.
The case for women pastors, often called egalitarianism, is as shaky and unreliable as the case for Arianism, which teaches that Jesus is not God. They are not equally serious errors, but they are similar in how they understand and explain the Bible. The argument for women pastors has its own proof passages, but it fails to take the whole of the Bible into account. Just as the church has wisely decided with Arianism, it should also decide with the substantially lesser error of egalitarianism.
To say God has ordained the leadership of husbands in the home and qualified men in the church does not deny that women are equal in their standing before God. If a woman is gifted and called, the answer is not to tell her not to use her gifts, but to encourage her to use them in the right way, as God prescribes. There are many ways that women can use their gifts in ministry to other women, in ministry to children, and perhaps on an individual basis that doesn't conflict with what God has ordered for the home and for His church.
I see a significant difference between churches that have long had women pastors and those that have recently moved to accept women pastors. Both are wrong, but the recent ones are much more concerning because they are more likely to have shifted their theology and practice to accommodate the spirit of the age.