What Does the Bible Say About Women In Leadership?

Written By Kong Moua

There’s a lot of (strong) disagreement about the role of women in church leadership. Even our own denomination recently changed is policies around female pastors. What are we to make of all this?

Transcript

INTRO

Series Intro

I’ve done a lot of learning in my life and the one thing that I’m still not a huge fan of is when someone puts me on the spot to see if I have a question after lectures and presentations. I love learning and I love hearing other people’s questions because it furthers my learning, but I struggle asking questions for 2 main reasons.

First, I need time to process all the information, and second, I’m don’t want to be the person who asks a stupid question. But as any good teacher would say, there is no such thing as a stupid question and I’m learning to accept that. We ask questions to clarify and better understand what we don’t understand and that’s why we decided to have an entire series about your questions.

Today, we begin a new series called “Ask – Because Your Questions Matter” where we will answer the questions you are most curious about regarding our faith. We surveyed both campuses and found that the top five questions people were most interested in are:

  1. How should a Christian view LGBTQ issues?

  2. Can you believe in Christianity and Shamanism?

  3. How do you handle Christian families with different values than yours?

  4. What does the Bible say about women in leadership?

  5. What’s up with Jesus and his liberal talking points?

Thank you for asking these questions and I trust that in the following month, we will learn a lot. I also hope that this series will encourage you to further learn for yourself. I don’t have all the answers to these important questions, but it is my goal to share with you what I know and what I am learning so we can be faithful to what God has to say. So, are you ready to kick off our series? We start off with our first question, what does the Bible say about women in church leadership?

What does the Bible say about women in leadership?

Now, I’ve grown up in the church, and almost all the church leaders I’ve had are men. Pastors, elders, deacons, etc. over all tiers except for women’s ministries and nursery. For some of us, this might be your experience, and for others, it might be different. Interestingly, throughout the Bible, we find women in a variety of significant spiritual roles. Here are a few in the Old Testament:

  • Miriam was Moses’ sister and a leader. Micah 6:4 describes her like this:

“I brought you up out of Egypt and redeemed you from the land of slavery. I sent Moses to lead you, also Aaron and Miriam.”

  • In Judges 4 Deborah was a judge and prophetess who led the nation of Israel. She solved the people’s disputes and led an army in battle freeing her people from captivity.

  • Huldah was a prophetess and in 2 King 22 and we learn about how she was able to determine what was and wasn’t the authentic law of God helping the king to point his people back to God. 

In the New Testament, Jesus interacted with women, and some became his followers. Definitely not the cultural norm. In John 4, he meets the woman at the well and reveals to her that he is the savior causing her to share the gospel with her entire town. In Luke 8, we learn about women who traveled with Jesus and financially supported his ministry. When Jesus was resurrected, he first appeared to a group of women. In Romans 16, Paul lists several women and speaks highly of how influential they are in his ministry.

  • Phoebe was a deaconess, one of the two offices in the church leadership, who assisted the elders with practical needs in the church.

  • Priscilla and her husband, Aquila, were instrumental in the church by reaching out to other ethnic communities.

  • Junia was described as someone who is “outstanding among the apostles” which has led some to speculate if she was an apostle.

The title, of apostle, was primarily reserved for Jesus’ original disciples, all men, and a few others who witnessed Jesus’ resurrection and received some sort of authority from the church. In 1 Corinthians 12, spiritual gifts were given to the believers regardless of gender.

Fast forward to today—women in church leadership has become one of the more controversial issues. This year, Saddleback Church, one of the largest churches in the US, made national news because they were kicked out of their denomination for recognizing women pastors. Our denomination, the Alliance, had conversations about women pastors too and I’ll talk some more about that later. For some of us, this might seem very normal, but for others, the issue of women in church leadership might seem odd and outdated. We see women in top-tier leadership opportunities outside the church, but the church remains one place where it’s still very polarizing. And though it’s polarizing, at RiverLife, I want to assure you, especially our women, that we want women in spiritually significant roles.

It is my desire to empower our women to have spiritually significant roles. Now, to better understand why this topic of women in church leadership is so polarizing, we have to understand the two fundamental perspectives that lead people to make a decision. These perspectives are known as complementarianism and egalitarianism.

Two Major Perspectives

Now before we dive any deeper, I want to share some helpful resources to further help you understand these perspectives to help you grow. These were some I used in preparing this week’s sermon:

So let’s break down what each of these means. I’ll define them, provide biblical support, and offer issues surrounding each perspective.

The ideas of complementarianism and egalitarianism have been around for a while, but as a well-formed concept, they are new emerging from the late 80s as a response to the cultural changes from the 60s. Both begin with the same foundation by affirming that humans, both male and female, are created in God’s image. They agree that humans are equally created in quality, importance, and value. There is no difference in worth. This is when things differ.

Complementarianism believes that:

  • Men and women were created to complete each other.

  • Gender roles are purposeful and distinct.

  • Men are created to be the head of the marriage and household.

  • Only men can bear the responsibility to provide spiritual leadership and training in the church, specifically through teaching, preaching, and exercising spiritual authority.

  • And only men can hold spiritual authority over other men. Women cannot hold spiritual authority over men.

Egalitarianism, on the other hand, believes in:

  • The uniqueness of the genders and differs in that there is no distinction among roles.

  • Gender role distinction is a result of the fall.

  • The roles that men and women have are interchangeable in marriage, household, and church leadership.

  • Men and women mutually submit to one another.

  • Men or women can hold spiritual authority over the other.

Though they differ, both perspectives believe that their primary concern is to preserve the biblical truth of God’s purpose for men and women, and a secondary concern that they respond to is this. Complementarians are concerned about secular feminism, that men would not be recognized as important in society and order would be overthrown whereas egalitarians are concerned about misogyny. They fear that complementarians left unchecked will abuse their power.

Biblical Support

The biblical support they use to support their claims are usually the same passages, but the interpretations are different. Take for example the creation narrative in Genesis. A broad understanding of Genesis 2 for complementarianism is that God created man first and then out of man came woman. Man exercised his God-given dominion by naming all the animals so when he names the woman in Genesis 2:23, he exercised his dominion over her. This was also depicted when Adam was held accountable for Eve’s disobedience. Egalitarians on the other hand will interpret creation like this. When God created humanity, He gave them both the command in Genesis 1:28 to be fruitful and increase in numbers; fill the earth and subdue it, and rule over the fish and birds. It was a command unspecific to a gender, but rather they both received equal responsibility to rule to earth. It wasn’t until after sin that there was an imbalance in the relationship. Another point that is debated from Creation is when the woman is described as a helper. Complementarianism understands a helper as someone who is subordinate and supports the person who is primarily responsible, whereas egalitarians how the word, helper, is used in other parts of the Bible to describe God and God isn’t subordinate to anyone.

Now, in the New Testament, a verse that each perspective will often refer to is 1 Timothy 2:11-14. This is what it says,

“11 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.”

Often, scholars will describe this verse as either prescriptive or descriptive. Is this verse telling us what we need to do or is it describing a situation in time? And again, to paint a broad stroke, complementarianism would say that this is prescriptive, that the Bible says what it says in this passage, and that women are not supposed to teach based on their interpretation of this passage. So women can do many things, except teach and preach.

On the other hand, egalitarianism would argue that this is descriptive. This was describing what was happening in this church when this letter was written. 1 Timothy was written to the church in the city of Ephesus. The temple of Artemis was also located in Ephesus and Artemis was a Greek goddess of fertility. The temple of Artemis was full of women priests who falsely preached about a god. Because this was so prominent in the city of Ephesus, women in the church would teach like the priests in the temple, but Paul provides instructions to express his desire for them to first take a posture of quietness and submission to so that they could at point teach.

Again, it’s all based on how it’s interpreted from the original language, which I don’t have significant training in. So, which is it especially when we don’t have all the tool to understand? How do we reconcile the differences and decide if it’s biblical for women to be in leadership or not? Is complementarianism right or is egalitarianism right? 

Reconciling the Differences 

I don’t know if this is a debate that we will ever be solved, but I do know that there are complementarians who love Jesus and believe in the Bible and there are egalitarians who love Jesus and believe in the Bible and I think we have to accept that there’s truth in both perspectives. And regardless of where we stand, we can’t see the other as the enemy. Our world has been stuck categorizing people and belittling them based on their stances and I don’t think believers should follow suite. People who hold a different view are not the enemy. Satan is the enemy. So how do we reconcile differences? 

This year, our denomination, the Alliance, brought this issue to the largest gathering of pastors and church leaders called General Council. The original issue arose surrounding a concern about men and women going through the same process of being vetted as qualified ministry workers, but they would end up with different titles, which sometimes caused an unequal opportunity in the work field. Men who completed the licensing process were considered ordained while women were consecrated. In our denomination, these two words essentially mean the same thing, but it designates qualified male ministry workers from qualified female ministry workers. Outside of the church, ordain is almost recognized by everyone, but not consecrated isn’t and this prevented qualified women from serving in various like being a hospital or military chaplain. This was brought to all of the districts and their conferences and eventually, it was brought to Council this year.

60% of those eligible to vote on this matter decided that it would be best to recognize both men and women being ordained. This also opened another question if the Alliance would also give the title, pastor, to women in the church because ordination is language used for pastors. The Alliance, traditionally complementarian, decided it was biblical to have the lead pastor be male, but each church would have the autonomy to give their female ministry leaders the title pastor if they saw it fit based on their biblical understanding. Here’s a very good description from our Vice President Terry Smith in an interview with Christianity Today.

“The Alliance has never been neatly categorized as ‘complementarian’ or ‘egalitarian.’ Mostly, the churches have been led by men, but there are also many prominent women in the denomination’s history, including missionaries, evangelists, church planters, and solo pastors. They are seen as ‘humble servants of God who were doing what God called them to do.’”

 In the Alliance, there is only one bylaw related to gender in ministry—that Scripture defines elders as male, and therefore the lead pastor, who is also the head elder, must also be male. But, within that, Alliance churches range from strict and moderate complementarians to broadly egalitarians. It’s one of things I appreciate about the Alliance—there is a lot of theological flexibility within the denomination.

What about RiverLife? Like I mentioned earlier, at RiverLife we want women in spiritually significant roles. Our leadership team would describe us as functionally egalitarian, but within the guidelines of complementarianism, the male eldership of the Alliance. Here you will find women preaching, praying, and leading spiritual exercises. Women who prophesy and deliver those who are demonized. Women serve on our new board, they lead ministries, and they teach from the pulpit. We believe that Genesis 2 shows both men and women are coequal participants in God’s design. But in all honesty, we’re not concerned with which perspective we side with.

What has been helpful for me in this process of figuring out what we are working towards and everything we’re doing is to build God’s Kingdom. In Revelation 21:5, Jesus says

“I am making everything new!”

When Jesus came to earth, he welcomed women to minister with him, which was an unimaginable thing to do. And women had significant spiritual roles with Jesus. If Jesus is making everything new, I think it’s worth considering what opportunities we can provide for women to be in church leadership to exercise their God-given gifts and abilities to the fullest. In Matthew 13:33 Jesus describes God’s kingdom like this. He says,

“The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about sixty pounds of flour until it worked all through the dough.”

Jesus compares God’s kingdom to yeast and how yeast, though small, has a gradual, positive, hidden permeation of Jesus’ restoration in this world. If he made a positive change of allowing women to minister with him in small and big ways, I believe that we need to allow women to serve in church leadership in small and big ways too to bring God’s redemption and restoration into our world. Regardless of where we land, may we all find ways to support each other, especially women, in serving the church to bring God’s Kingdom here on earth! Let’s pray.

Kong Moua
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