What is a Woman’s Role in the Church?
I recently made an Instagram post with the same title, and I got lots of follow-up questions and comments. I’m also convinced that this is one of the single most important questions the Church has to get right- women are 55% of our number across Protestant, Evangelical churches.
As the world gets increasingly disinterested in faith, the Church has to shine brighter than ever before. Failing to empower and release more than half of our people means that we’re making less than half the impact we could if we were operating at full strength.
But, of course, the Church is governed by our founding document, our Constitution—the Bible. Adherence to the Bible, not cultural norms and standards, is our mandate. And plenty of men (and women) who love God and care about women convictionally believe that women are not biblically allowed to pastor, preach, or lead in the church. So, let’s talk about that.
Let me say from the outset: I hold a Master’s Degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, but I’m not writing as an academic, nor do I consider myself to be one. This isn’t a scholarly document, nor will it address every single ‘issue’ the Scriptures bring up, nor can it go into the fullness of the depth that is possible on such a broad and contentious topic.
Instead, this post is the heart (and mind) of a pastor, synthesizing the best of what I’ve learned on this subject as well as my own thoughts from studying. This comes from a person who believes that the best days of the Church are still ahead, and also from a man who is fed up and frustrated by seeing my sisters get sidelined in ministry.
But, for a much deeper analysis in the form of a book, read Fashioned to Reign by Kris Vallotton. He also shares many of the ideas in that book in these two sermons, which I recommend for any auditory processor.
Disempowering Verses and Women in the Bible
Let’s start with the hardest part: some of the most well-known verses that have been interpreted to limit women. They are as follows: 1 Corinthians 14:34, 1 Timothy 2:12, Titus 1:5-9, Titus 2:1-5. I’ll present them, explain them, and then provide a relevant female in the Bible that I believe helps paint the picture.
The first in the list is the most restrictive verse towards women in the entire Bible. “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says.”
Here’s the trouble with the book of 1 Corinthians: over the first seven chapters, Paul repeats the question that the Corinthian believers had asked him via a prior letter and then gives his answer as a separate, distinct entity. After the seventh chapter, however, the question being asked by the Corinthian church is no longer repeated. So, as chapter 8 begins, there is no definitive clarity about whether the words we are reading are the apostle Paul answering the Corinthians or their question to him.
You may be interested to know that in the entire Law, there is not a single verse that says that women cannot speak in the church (or the temple). It stands to reason then, that Paul, a Pharisee, who is an expert on the Law and who has the entire Law memorized, cannot be the person saying 1 Corinthians 14:34.
The more logical conclusion is that it is a question being expressed in the form of an idea by a Corinthian former-pagan-now-Christian believer, There's a great deal more context here than I cannot go into fully unless I want this post to be a 45-minute read, but I encourage you to listen to the first of the two above messages for even more clarity.
For the sake of being somewhat concise, I'll jump to the second detail related to this verse. There's a Greek word known as the expletive of disassociation, which appears at the very beginning of 1 Corinthians 14:36. It looks like the English letter n, and is rendered here: η. This word doesn't have a one-for-one direct English equivalent, and is often therefore either not translated, or is translated as the word ‘or,’ as it is in 1 Corinthians 14:36 in the NIV.
However, a more accurate rendering of this word is something like this: ‘rubbish, nonsense, no way!’ So it would read, in response to the Corinthian question about women being silent in the church in verses 34 and 35: Paul responds with the expletive of disassociation “‘rubbish, no way, nonsense.’ Did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only people has reached? If anyone thinks they are a profit or gifted by the spirit, let them acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord's command. But if anyone ignores this, they themselves will be ignored.”
When Paul is asking them to acknowledge what he is writing to them, he is referring to what he already wrote previously in this very letter. Things like eight verses prior, in 1 Corinthians 14:26, when he said that when the people of God come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. And we know that this all is every single person, women included, in the church of Corinth because 1 Corinthians 1:2 says "to the church of God in Corinth...” Or, when Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11:5, that when a woman is in right relation to her husband, she can pray or prophesy in the church gathering.
Again, I point you to Kris’ first sermon on this topic for more depth and detail. But I would propose to you that this verse that has been used to restrict women is actually an idea given by a Corinthian former pagan, and is actually being harshly refuted by Paul.
As an example of the exact opposite of women being silent in the church, Acts 21 tells of an evangelist named Philip, who verse 9 says “had four virgin daughters who were prophetesses.” It would be incredibly difficult to have four prophetess daughters who weren’t allowed to speak in a church…
Not to mention the fact that if it weren’t for women speaking, we’d still be unaware of the Resurrection! The 12 male disciples, who were regularly told by Jesus that He would die and three days later rise again, were nowhere to be found on Sunday morning.
It was a woman, Mary Magdelene, who showed up at the tomb on Sunday, the first day of the Jewish week, and saw that the stone had been rolled away. She went running to Simon Peter, told him that the stone had been moved, and only then did he run to the tomb.
Not by taking Jesus at His word. But because a woman did, and then told him that what Jesus said had actually happened!
On to 1 Timothy 2:12. The letter to Timothy, written by Paul, is written as Timothy builds the church in Ephesus. Ephesus is a Greek city whose patron deity is Artemis, a Greek goddess. In Greek paganism, the highest religious figures were what the Bible calls ‘temple prostitutes,’ and these temple prostitutes’ authority is even more pronounced in cities with female deities as the patron god of the city.
So, in Ephesus, the traditional Greek pagan religion would have had many dominant, domineering female priestesses, whose primary act of spiritual leadership was the act of sex. It's into this context that Paul writes this letter, including, of course, chapter 1 Timothy 2:12.
The Greek word used here by Paul for authority, ‘authentein,’ is only used one time in all of scripture; this time. There are 16 other alternatives that are rendered in English Bibles as ‘authority’, many of which could've been used to express a more traditional or straightforward rendering of the word authority.
However, this particular Greek word happens to specifically allude to and describe ‘domineering, mastering, and even hurting those underneath one’s authority’- which just so happens to be exactly what would've happened underneath female temple prostitutes in a Greek city such as Ephesus.
The most straightforward reading of the text is that Paul is not prohibiting all women in all contexts in all times from leading, but giving relevant, situational counsel to Timothy in the city of Ephesus to address issues he was having with new converts coming out of a religious system that was used to women having absolute power, and abusing it.
In fact, it would be difficult for Paul in 1 Timothy to prohibit all women from leading when Romans 16, another letter written by Paul, mentions a woman who was not only a leader in the church, but an apostle.
In Romans 16:7, Paul says “Greet Andronicus and Junia, my fellow Jews who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was.” Junia was not only an apostle, but she was outstanding among the apostles.
Interestingly, your Bible may say Junias, rather than Junia, a significant change. Junia is an exclusively female name. Junias is a male name.
Theologian Scot McKnight says, “Junia was a woman, and she was an apostle. But since a woman couldn’t be an apostle, Junia became the male Junias … There was no evidence in ancient manuscripts that anyone understood Junia as a male, no evidence in translations she was a male, and there was no ancient evidence that Junias was a man’s name.”
As often happens when the Bible doesn’t fit our doctrine, we alter the Bible (or, more often, our interpretation of it) to avoid having to live in a difficult, mysterious tension; or, worse, to confront the possibility that one of our convictions may not actually be accurate.
But Junia, whom most scholars and all ancient texts would agree was a woman, was not only an apostle, she was a stand-out apostle- and she went all the way to prison for her faith in Jesus!
Next, in Titus 1:5, Paul writes to Titus, a church leader on the island of Crete (a Greek island), and gives him instructions to “appoint elders in every town.” He then lists such qualifications for such elders as being faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe (I find it interesting, as an aside, that many pastors have children who, at least for a season, very much don’t believe, but rarely if ever is this used to bar men from pastoring), and then lists several character traits and qualities that he must possess.
You may find it interesting that the word ‘he’ does not actually appear in the Greek of Titus 1. The reason the word is translated to be he is because the word it’s attached to is a masculine noun. However, scholars generally agree that in the Greek language, “gender should be viewed as a grammatical attribute of a noun and not necessarily as the sex of a person, animal, or thing.”
So, when Paul is saying ‘he’ must, he is literally, in the Greek, saying, ‘that person who is an elder/pastor must___.' Now, onto ‘husband of one wife.’
The literal wording here is a ‘one-woman man.’ At first glance, and in its ‘strictest’ reading, this verse seems to reserve the office of elder or pastor to a man who has only been with one woman (sexually) for all of his life, which would disqualify many. It certainly has some implications for adultery, polygamy, divorce, and beyond, which has been discussed elsewhere. For brevity, I won’t delve into that. But, at minimum, a pastor must be able to say, as Paul does, that those following them should follow them “as they follow Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1).
At its core, this text mandates a person who has exemplified marital fidelity to their spouse, should they have one, or in the way they’re living as a single person in terms of sexual holiness. Many would say, however, since the word ‘man’ or ‘husband,’ which is the same Greek word (anthropos) does appear here, that only men are thus qualified for this office.
Well, suppose I were to say that ‘if anyone wants to be a great basketball player, he must learn to dribble with both hands, move his feet when defending, have a consistent form to his jump shot, and see the whole court rather than just what’s right in front of him.
Are these principles only true of male basketball players, just because I used masculine pronouns? Of course not! A female basketball player can take these principles and become a great player, too!
And so, too, can Paul’s words be faithfully interpreted to indicate the necessity of a person who, if married, is faithful in their marriage to their spouse, can pastor and lead the people of God, rather than inherently excluding women from ministry.
In fact, the Old Testament tells the story of Deborah, a Judge in Israel. In this period of Israel’s history, there was no king, and a Judge led the whole nation of Israel.
Judges 4:4 tells us that Deborah was leading all of the people of Israel at the time, and, later in the chapter, she led the people of God in a mighty victory against their enemy.
As Kris Vallotton asks in one of the above talks: wouldn't it be a strange thing that a woman could lead an entire nation (and not just any nation, but the nation comprised of God’s people!) but can’t lead a church of 50?!
Titus 2 presents a similar issue, with Paul in Titus 2:3-4 instructing older women to teach younger women. This has been interpreted to mean that women are to only instruct women, not men (though even in the most gender-exclusive churches women seem to be considered competent to teach male children, which I find to be an interesting hermeneutic, but I digress).
However, I ask you, the reader, is that the most straightforward reading? Paul tells Titus to instruct the older women to “urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.”
Here’s my question: is that all that younger women need to know from older women? Shouldn’t they also, for example, love their neighbors? Be sacrificial? Regularly attend church?
Of course they should! This isn’t a complete list of everything valuable for younger women to learn. It’s merely a sampling of several very important character traits and practices.
And if that’s not an exhaustive list of all that older women should instruct younger women in, why would we believe that instructing younger women is the exhaustive list of what they’re able to do?
In fact, in the context of all that Paul also said about the whole church, women included, praying, prophecying, and teaching in the church (1 Corinthians 14:26), and in Galatians 3:28, that there is neither male nor female in Christ, I wholeheartedly believe that when it comes to both Titus 1 and 2, the above is indeed the most faithful reading.
These verses are not an exclusion of women from pastoring or a decree older women ought to only teach younger women, but that anyone who is called to pastor who is also maritally faithful can do so, and that older women should, amongst many other things, teach younger women, just as a man should also teach younger men, but not exclusively younger men!
As an example of a woman clearly instructing a man, Acts 18:24-26 tells of a gifted orator and preacher named Apollos, who was being used mightily by God, but who only knew of the baptism of John (water baptism), and not the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. So, Priscilla and Aquila, a married couple, “invited him into their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.”
Priscilla, the wife, is mentioned first. There’s no contextual explanation of even mentioning her, let alone mentioning her first, if she were not the primary or even exclusive person teaching and instructing Apollos.
So, we see that not only can women absolutely teach men, but they can even instruct a gifted preacher.
The Stakes
This is no academic, ivory tower argument. The advancement of the Kingdom of Heaven is on the line!
Until the entire church is activated and deployed in their giftings, we won’t see the totality of the impact that God has called us to!
Women make up the majority of our number. Yet, in many contexts, many well-meaning (and a few not-so-well-meaning) believers have based the calling to Church Leadership on anatomy and a narrow, disputed, sometimes gender-changing reading of just a few passages.
I wonder what impact the Church is not having by failing to release women into the fullness of their divine destinies…
In the face of a secularizing culture and a dark world, devoid of hope, peace, joy, and purpose, we need the whole Church to be the Church! Women too.
And if you’ve finished reading this and you are a woman leading in church ministry, thank you. I believe in you. God believes in you. Be free to impact the world, just as you were created to!