When it comes to women who pastor, some of my
conservative evangelical friends - that is, people like me who believe that the Bible is God's
inspired and
infallible Word - often find themselves struggling with the thought that a woman can pastor God's people.
And many of them can't understand why I don't struggle with it.
To these friends of mine, believing a woman can pastor is akin to believing the devil is the fourth person of the sacred
Trinity Tetrarchy.
"It just can't be," they say. "It's unbiblical, impractical, immoral, and violates centuries of church tradition, not to mention modern confessions like
The 2000 Baptist Faith and Message."
To my conservative evangelical friends who bristle at the mere mention of women pastoring, I offer 5 reasons why women
can pastor God's people by addressing those who say they can’t pastor.
1. Your definition of "pastor" is not biblical.
The moment you believe that the word "pastor" is a
"noun of status" which speaks of a person
"in an office of authority" over God's people, where "the pastor" (or ruling elders) exert(s) spiritual authority or control
over other people, then you have defined pastor contrary to Jesus and the sacred Scriptures.
"But Jesus called His followers aside and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their superiors exercise authority over them. It shall not be this way among you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave." (Matt. 20:25-27)
I've written an entire book on this issue. Its called
Fraudulent Authority: Pastors Who Seek To Rule Over Others.
The basic problem with churches that establish "male elders" who "rule over" their church membership is that they've established a structure contrary to the teachings of Jesus. That church has come under the misguided belief that men only are to
"exercise spiritual authority" over God's church and the Christian family. In this system, nobody - especially females - can disagree with, contradict, or speak out against the male elders because they'd be arguing with "God's anointed authority."
Read Jesus again to His followers.
"It shall not be this way among you." The word "pastor" should be viewed as a "verb of service" and not a "noun of status." Every Christian, male and female, is called to shepherd others to Jesus. If your church's definition of pastor is "
one with spiritual authority or divine power over others" then Christian women cannot be pastors. But neither can Christian men. No Christian rules over anyone else. Pastors are to be servants of all and masters of none.
Jesus is the only authority
over His people.
Some who have grown up on the King James Version of the Bible might object:
"Remember them which have rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith you follow, considering the end of their conversation." (Hebrews 13:17 KJV).
Listen to my message on Hebrews 13:17 from 2008. The
English translation of the Greek for the King James Version of Hebrews 13:17 is very poor. The words "rule" and "over" are not even present in Hebrews 13:17 in the original Greek language.
How then can a church be led? Answer:
By older, spiritually gifted, men and women of humble character who guide, shepherd, and lead others through gentle persuasion and encouragement.
I'll be happy to send you our organizational structure at Emmanuel Enid if you email me at wade@emmanuelenid.org. Prior to 2011 and our constitutional revision, women weren't included in leadership at Emmanuel and we made many mistakes because half the people gifted by God to lead the church were being intentionally excluded.
Not anymore.
2. Your continuity of Old Covenant worship patterns is detrimental.
This is a huge issue. Very few people will talk about this, but you need to understand it.
Anglicans, Presbyterians, historic Episcopalians, and a host of other denominations that style church structure
after Old Testament style Yahweh worship are adamant that females can't be in leadership. They believe in the continuity of the Old Testament into New Covenant days. To them, the church of Jesus Christ has simply replaced the people of Israel, but the manner in which God’s people do worship should be the same today as it was in Old Testament days.
However, Baptists, Methodists, Assemblies of God, and other evangelical organizations see a
discontinuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament worship structures. These evangelicals historically have had no problem with women pastoring God's people, something I'll show you in a moment.
There are some exceptions to this rule. For example,
when Baptists begin to form partnerships with their Reformed cousins (think Al Mohler and Tim Keller), then sometimes church government and leadership styles of reformed denominations begin to make their way into Baptist churches. Though Baptists have been historically congregational in church polity, in these modern days of
New Calvinism, more and more Baptist churches assemble "priests" (elders) around a "high priest" (THE pastor), who are all male. These male "pastors" or "elders"are those that "rule over God's people," just like male priests in ancient Israel.
In the Old Testament, Yahweh worship was led by male priests only. The women were excluded from going beyond the
Court of Women in Temple worship. The High Priest was always a first born son from the family of Aaron. Spiritual worship was led by qualified males.
But that Old Covenant with Israel has disappeared, replaced by a New Covenant.
"By calling this covenant “new,” he has made the first one obsolete; and what is obsolete and outdated will soon disappear." (Hebrews 8:13)
When the Old Covenant began disappearing after the death, burial, resurrection of Jesus Christ, and after it "officially ended"
in AD 70 at the destruction of the Jewish Temple,
a new way of worship dawned!
"But you (both males and females) are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession, that you may declare the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His wonderful light." (I Peter 2:9).
"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)
I once sent a paper explaining New Covenant worship to a church that restricts church leadership to males only. The paper was disconcerting and even troubling to them. To admit that their exaltation of "Christian male authority" and their "exclusion of Christian females" from Kingdom leadership was harmful to their church was impossible for these male elders. In fact, it became necessary for them to attack the messenger (me) rather than review their ministry with humble, genuine biblical reflection.
Any church that attempts to function with solely male leadership will eventually struggle.
The Covenants have changed.
The Old Covenant agreement between God and Israel was a
"come and see" religion. Come and see the Temple. Come and see the rituals. Come and see the festivals.
The New Covenant is a
"go and tell" religion. Go tell sinners of the Savior who has guaranteed the Creator’s goodness to those who trust Him. Christianity is radically spiritual, internal, personal, and trans-cultural (all peoples).
Some of the best worship you can have is with family or a small group of believers around a camp fire at a lake, or at home around the dinner table, or at a backyard barbecue.
Believers are the church. God dwells in us. Where we are, there He is. We don't behave one way 'at church' and another way everywhere else. We ARE the church.
Further, since the lif
e of God is in the individual who trusts Christ, there is no
hierarchical authority in the church.
Every believer is a pastor (priest) who shepherds others to Jesus.
3. Your limitation of spiritual gifts according to sexual genitalia is harmful.
This one will be short. Christ's bestows the gifts of teaching, prophesying, exhortation, shepherding, and other spiritual gifts on His people
regardless of gender.
"So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,to equip the saints for works of ministry, to build up the body of Christ" (Ephesians 4:11).
Gender is never mentioned in the Bible when it comes to spiritual gifts. Never.
When an institutional church overrules the Spirit of God, it will find itself absent the Spirit unless corrected.
This article is one of many that explains that the gifts of the Spirit are granted regardless of gender.
The overwhelming testimony of the New Testament is that gifted, humble men and women of character,
preferably older in years (e.g. "elder") will shepherd, guide, and pastor God's people.
Christian men who exclude Christian women from fulfilling the call of God according to the Spirit's gifts are infatuated with their own alleged "authority" and are
in danger of losing the unction and anointing of the Holy Spirit in their own ministries.
4. Your narrow view of Christian "ministry" is baneful.
Ordination. "The action of ordaining or conferring holy orders on someone."
Ugh.
We don't ordain anybody at Emmanuel Enid.
The state of Oklahoma requires a "ministerial license" to officiate marriage ceremonies, to recognize vocational ministers working at a state recognized 501-C3 non-profit, and to grant ministerial tax credits for those working in non-profit vocational ministry.
We will license
men and women as vocational employees of our non-profit because the state requires it, but we don't ordain anybody.
Every state government in the United States of America considers "licensing" pastors and "ordaining" pastors" as the same thing. Most churches don't consider them the same thing. Emmanuel Enid does. We only "license" because the state requires it.
Denominations that "ordain ministers" typically make a non-biblical separation between "clergy" and "laymen."
Only the "ordained," according to these churches, can fulfill the "ordinances of the church" (baptism and the Lord's Supper). It's amazing how traditions in institutional churches carry on through "ordination" ceremonies. It's almost like a cult.
Before I was "ordained" as a Southern Baptist pastor in 1982, I was told that I would be examined by other "ordained" men. During my "prep" for this ordination, some men who though they were being helpful told me that one of the questions that would be asked was:
"What are the ordinances of the church?"
I was told
how to answer: "Say baptism and the Lord's Supper." Dutifully, I answered such, and was promptly "ordained" by the Southern Baptist Convention.
It was only years later that I learned baptism and the Lord's Supper are ordinances of Jesus, not the church. The word "ordinance" means "law." Jesus gave us both ordinances, not the church:
Jesus came to them and said, "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matthew 28:19).
"The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread,and when he had given thanks, he broke it and he said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” (I Corinthians 11:23-29).
Every believer in Jesus Christ, whether male or female, is called
a minister in the New Testament. We are a royal priesthood.
Therefore, gifted women can "go and make disciples," and can "baptize," and can "serve the bread and the wine," and can lead people to remember Jesus.
That's because Jesus told all of His followers, not just males, to "go and make disciples."
But the church that emphasizes "ordination" will tell people to "come." And when they come, they will only see "males" ordained by the church to "rule over" other people and "do the ordinances."
I recently wrote a post about serving as a trustee for the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.
When I served as an IMB trustee, I got into a heated dispute with trustee leadership (all males).
It seems that we had Christian women missionaries in the Far East who were leading men and women to faith in Jesus Christ and the new Christian converts were ready to be baptized. It was made known to the IMB trustees that there was nobody to baptize the recent Chinese converts.
Not knowing any better, I raised my hand and asked a question of my fellow trustees:
"Why don't the Christian women missionaries who taught these people about Jesus and led them to faith in the Savior baptize them so as to fulfill the command of Jesus in the Great Commission."
Crickets.
Without responding to my question, the chairman of the subgroup determined we would pay $3,000 to fly a male Baptist pastor to a foreign country to baptize the men and women that had been led to faith in Jesus Christ by our female missionaries on the field.
My courteous but firm opposition to the IMB's unbiblical patriarchal policies led to a protracted battle between the world's largest missionary sending organization and
its trustee from Oklahoma.
I still marvel, fifteen years later, IMB trustee leadership had the ludicrous, absurd, and unbiblical notion to fly an "ordained male minister" to the Far East to baptize Christian converts who came to faith in Jesus Christ under the discipleship of Christian women.
Males and females are to minister in the name of Jesus, fulfilling His command to make disciples.
Tens of millions of people are coming to faith in Jesus around the world, led to Jesus by gifted, humble men and women of character who are fulfilling the ordinance of Jesus Christ, whether recognized by the institutional church or not.
Christian ministry is about following the commands of Christ. Our view of ministry needs to be more biblical than institutional.
As an aside, the moment institutional churches advocate women, homosexuals, and others being ordained to "rule over" Christian people through "an office of authority" received by "ordination" of the church, you'll hear the same objections from me that I'm now giving about the ordination of men.
5. Your understanding of historic church confessions is partial.
Oh, sure, the 2000 Baptist Faith and Message states:
"While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture." (Article VI The Church)
Confessions are not inspired. They are often rife with errors. Some of the local association Southern Baptist confessions of the 1850's
advocated slavery as biblical.
The problem of the 2000 BFM is not the exclusion of women from "the office of pastor."
No. It's
"the office of pastor" which
is unbiblical. The word "office," like "office of the President" or "office of the pastor"
is nowhere used in the New Testament.
Reading
this paper, called
The Bible and Authority in the Church, might help you understand how
church tradition has supplanted New Testament teaching.
Christian
leadership is based on giftedness and not gender; character, not control; humility, not hubris; selfless service, not self seeking; and personal piety, not powerful positions.
Baptists from days of old understood these concepts.
The earliest recorded comment on the role of Baptist women was by John Smyth, founder of the first identifiable Baptist church of modern history. In his 1609 work
Parallels, Censures, Observations, Smyth wrote:
“...the Church hath powre to Elect, approve & ordeyne her owne Elders, also: to elect, approve, & ordeine her owne Deacons both men & woemen."
Baptist women did preach in England in the early days of the 17th century. Most English churchmen found the practice as distasteful as believer's baptism.
Nevertheless Baptists had women preaching.
The Anabaptist Waterland Confession of 1580 is the first “Baptist” Confession to refer to the setting aside gifted people for ministry.
In times of need the congregation shall prepare itself before God with fasting and prayer, calling upon Him for help--for He alone can send the right servants into His harvest--that our heavenly Father may prepare the right servants among the congregations to the glory of His name; servants who will proclaim His holy Word truthfully, and in true Christian love, according to His pleasure, to hungry souls, [as well as] administering the sacraments and the ban.
This document does not take gender into consideration when assigning roles.
For their views on the ministry, the English Baptists went directly to the Bible for their authority.
Those women who preached and those men who allowed it thought they found adequate scriptural teaching and precedent.
The next time I hear a person state he or she doesn't believe in "women pastors" and cites the 2000 BFM, I might feel compelled to ask, "Do you even understand the purpose of a confession?"
A confession is not a creed.
And the Scriptures advocate both men and women pastoring people to Jesus.
I'm calling out my conservative evangelical friends for their exclusion of women from Christian leadership, for their energetic attempts to stifle gifted Christian women from fulfilling the commandments of Christ to "go and make disciples," and for their unbiblical approach to Christian ministry.
Conservative evangelicals must stop:
1. Debilitating females with God-given gifts,
2. Denigrating females in their Spirit-led ministries,
3. Downplaying females as New Covenant priests.
If not, the Spirit may well depart.
