One of the hottest debates in the church today concerns women serving as pastors. Some Christians believe women can serve as pastors while others believe that the Bible forbids women from serving in pastoring roles. In some churches you will probably have seen female pastors, bishops, apostles, etc., while in other churches leadership roles are strictly for men. The debate around women pastors can be associated with the current movement for gender equality or inclusion, chauvinism or discrimination. However, the Bible speaks clearly about it, so it is more a question of biblical interpretation.
We read in 1 Timothy 2:11-12: "A woman is to learn quietly with full submission. I do not allow a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; instead, she is to remain quiet ". God, through the Apostle Paul, explains the restriction of women to serve in the roles of teaching and/or having spiritual authority over men in relation to how mankind was created and how sin entered the world (1 Timothy 2:13–14). This precludes women from serving as pastors over men, since pastoring definitely includes preaching, teaching publicly, and exercising spiritual authority.
We also see that Elders in the church must be men: 1 Timothy 3: 2: "An overseer, therefore, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, self-controlled, sensible, respectable, hospitable, able to teach." and in 1 Timothy 3:12: "Deacons are to be husbands of one wife, managing their children and their own households competently."
The Scriptures make it clear that women are not to have spiritual authority over men. This, however, doesn't mean that women are less intelligent or that men are more talented in teaching than women! Instead, God assigned different roles and designed ways for His church to function. However, there have been arguments by those who interpret the above passages differently and we attempt to examine some of them as follows:
- The first argument puts that Paul was referring to husbands and wives instead of men and women. However, the Greek word for "man" and "woman" used in 1 Timothy 2 is broader than that. We see that Paul used "men" in Verse 8 to instruct only men and "women" in verse 9 to refer to only women: "8 Therefore, I want the men in every place to pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument. 9 Also, the women are to dress themselves in modest clothing, with decency and good sense, not with elaborate hairstyles, gold, pearls, or expensive apparel, ". There is also nothing in the context that would indicate a narrowing to husbands and wives in verses 11–14. However, even by narrowing the topic to the pastor's family, God instructs women to submit to their husband as we read in Ephesians 5:22-24: "22 Wives, submit[a] to your husbands as to the Lord, 23 because the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of the body. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives are to submit to their husbands in everything." A pastoral role is a position of leadership serving different Christian families, including the pastor's family. If a woman becomes a pastor or assumes a leadership role in a church, then her husband is forced to submit to her!
- The second argument holds that in the first century, women were less educated than men, which explains why Paul disallow women to teach. However, 1 Timothy 2:11–14 nowhere mentions educational status. If education were a qualification for ministry, then the majority of Jesus’ disciples would not have been qualified.
- A third argument is based on the fact that 1 Timothy was written to Timothy, the pastor of Ephesus, so Paul only forbade the women of Ephesus to teach men. Those who assert this argument bas their theory on the fact that Ephesus was known for its temple of Artemis where women were the authorities in this branch of paganism - therefore, according to them, Paul was only reacting against the customs run by the women of the idolaters of Ephesus, and the church had to be different. However, the book of 1 Timothy nowhere mentions Artemis, nor does Paul mention the common practice of worshipers of Artemis as the reason for the restrictions in 1 Timothy 2:11-12.
- Further arguments refer to women in the Old Testament, specifically Miriam, Deborah, and Huldah, who were chosen by God to render him a special service. Yes, they were models of faith and leadership. However, the authority of women in the Old Testament is irrelevant to the issue of pastors in the church. The New Testament epistles present a new paradigm for the people of God - the church, the body of Christ - and this paradigm involves an authority structure unique to the church, not the nation of Israel or any other Old Testament entity.
- Likewise, New Testament women, especially Priscilla and Phoebe, are used as examples of faithful female ministers (see Acts 18). It is true that Priscila and her husband, Aquilla, taught or explained the way of God to Apollos (Acts 18:26).However, there is no mention of Priscilla as pastoring a church or leading a congregation. Similarly, in Romans 16:1, we see Paul commending Phoebe as a servant of the church in Cenchreae but there is nothing in Scripture to indicate that Phoebe was a pastor or a teacher of men in in contradiction to 1 Timothy 2:11–14.
In short, God designed the ways in which His Church would function, where men set the example of spiritual leadership, in their lives and through their words. However, women in the church can also exercise their different gifts of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 12), they can publicly pray or prophesy (1 Corinthians 11:5) and serve in different ways. As nowhere does the Bible restricts women from teaching children, it also encourages them to teach other women. (Titus 2:3–5). This does not make women less important, by any means; rather, it gives them a ministry focus more in agreement with God’s design.
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Further Resources
- Discover online ministry opportunities at Open Christian Ministries
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