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Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood
A Response to Evangelical Feminism
Wayne Grudem and John Piper
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Principles to Use in Establishing women in Ministry*
H. Wayne House
A Biblical injunction against women exercising spiritual authority over men can be viewed from either a negative or a positive perspective. The exercise of authoritative teaching over men is but one facet of the overall scope of Christian service. Since the Scriptures confine that ministry to men only, the woman of God may either limit her ministry by her hardened resentment toward the one prohibition or expand her horizons to take in the full spectrum of ministry opportunities that are available to her.
For the woman willing to serve Christ by serving His people and for leaders of Christian ministries who long to see godly women used in His service, a number of principles should prevail in any decision concerning the placement of a woman in ministry. These guidelines are not new, and they are not limited only to women. New Testament principles concerning the suitability of the servant for service are universal. Those offered below are neither exhaustive nor restricted only to women, but they are important.
Spiritual Qualifications
Perhaps it goes without saying, but placing a woman into ministry in order to "make a statement" about one's church, to meet some type of master plan or quota, or to equalize some supposed "power structure" in the church is a terrible mistake---as it is any time a male is given a position of leadership for any reason short of the spiritual qualifications outlined in Scripture. What standard do we use to determine spiritual qualifications, for men and women? A good place to start is 1 Timothy 3:1-13, since the criteria listed there are predicated on a search for spiritual maturity in leadership. Another appropriate passage is 2 Timothy 2:21-26, which outlines characteristics of relational aptitude and the kind of even-temperedness required for anyone who deals daily with other believers.
A. Pure Motives
If a man were to accuse a Christian woman, particularly a feminist, of smiling her way into organizational leadership in order to aid her ultimate feminist goals, the accusations of sexism and paranoia would be deafening. Yet feminist author Patricia Gundry observes within a context of obvious sanction:
One woman told me, "I smiled my way onto several committees in my church so I could be part of the decision-making body." She said she knew that in order to be effective (i.e. for feminism) as a lone individual she had to do something rather than wait for it to happen. She is an attractive and outgoing person. She used her personality to gain access to opportunity to help make decisions. Now she helps other women onto those committees. She also influences many decisions in the direction that will aid her ultimate goal.{1}
Any hidden agenda---whether feminism, moral laxity, legalism, social activism, doctrinal adjustment, or liberalism---can quickly erode and destroy an entire leadership team. The Bible is clear that any leader, male or female, must have pure and transparent motives.
B. A Proven Track Record
Of course, not every woman who desires to serve in some type of ministry will have experience to go along with her desire. Yet time by itself can add a great deal of credibility to a person's potential by confirming spiritual commitment and proving true humility. First Timothy 3:6 stipulates that a leader should not be a "novice, lest being puffed up with pride he fall into the same condemnation as the devil" (NKJV).
Time also allows a believer's basic beliefs and doctrine to solidify and become evident in practice as well as profession. Aberrant theology, while it may make for lively discussions and interesting articles, has no place at the spiritual core of a church's ministry, whether to three-year-olds or to thirty-year-olds.
A proven track record also includes the Christian's reputation in the "real world." This may not be much comfort to the recent Bible college graduate who wants to jump immediately into ministry, but it will safeguard that person's ministry and the reputation of Christ in His church.
C. A Willingness to Serve
It is unfortunate that the Christian church has bought the bill of goods pandered by our culture---one that equates leadership with prestige, power, and respect. This was not Christ's view of spiritual leadership. His approach to service for the kingdom was one of other-centeredness rather than self-centeredness; of availability rather than unapproachability; of respect for others rather than a demand of respect from others; of being prepared to lead but willing to serve, rather than aspiring to leadership because of its supposed "high" position.
D. Right Priorities
This may well be the acid test of one's suitability for ministry in any context. What is important to the person who aspires to leadership? Is it the opportunity to obey God's Word while taking the good news of salvation in Christ to every man, woman, and child possible? Is it the privilege of helping fulfill the Great Commission, whether by administering the Christian education program of a church, teaching a Bible study for two hundred women, or discipling three hungry young believers?
Preoccupations reveal priorities, whether or not we want our priorities revealed. Little can stand in the way of the woman who aspires to spiritual leadership if she is preoccupied first with obedience to the Scriptures and second with fulfillment of Christ's Great Commission.
The Many Opportunities for Women
Throughout Scripture, one message comes through loud and clear when we observe those whom God would use in His work. Whether they are male or female, He is interested in using those who are entirely submitted to His will as expressed in His Word. Opportunities abound for women who desire to serve the church. Our focus needs to center on the many ministries that are Biblically open to all Christians, not on the few restrictions mandated by Scripture.
During Israel's wilderness wanderings, Korah and a following in excess of 250 rebelled against Moses and Aaron because they felt it was unfair that these two should be designated leaders while others weren't. According to Numbers 16, in fact, they accused Moses and Aaron of considering themselves a cut above everyone else because of what God had commanded and permitted them to do: "[F]or all the congregation are holy," they argued, "every one of them, and the Lord is in their midst; so why do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the Lord?" (verse 3, NASB).
Korah and his companions felt that because all believers are equal, their roles should be completely interchangeable, whether or not God had commanded otherwise. Equality, to Korah and his companions, meant complete interchangeability of roles. What they failed to realize, however, is that for reasons of His own, God had limited the role of the priesthood. Though everyone in the redeemed community---each one who had been redeemed from bondage in Egypt---was equal, God had chosen to assign different roles to different segments of that community.
Of course, God's directives did not prevent Korah from rebelling against that principle and bringing on himself and his followers the wrath of God. For our purposes, the punishment in this episode is not the point. The point is that God chose to assign distinctly different roles to co-equal members of the redeemed community.
In 1 Samuel 13:8-14, we find another episode in which someone assigned one role aspired to fill another role assigned to someone else. In this case, Saul had been chosen by God to be king over Israel. It was as high an office as existed in human terms, and in this case there could be no feelings of insecurity---or so one would think.
After a great military victory, however, Saul decided that his time and prestige were more important than the command of God. After waiting seven days for Samuel to show up and make offerings to the Lord, Saul presumed that God did not really care about the distinction of roles and took it upon himself to assume the role of priest. After all, the people were scattering and needed to be reinforced spiritually. The offerings were ready. The people were waiting. And Saul was king, after all. Why shouldn't he take on just one more duty and perform the priestly function?
Why? Because God had assigned specific roles to specific people and groups of people, and He expected His commands to be honored. Once Saul had made his presumptuous move, Samuel showed up and said to him, "You have acted foolishly; you have not kept the commandment of the Lord your God, which He commanded you, for now the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever. But now your kingdom shall not endure" (1 Samuel 13:14).
There are other examples in Scripture that indicate that equality as persons, which the Bible freely attributes to all in the community of faith, does not necessarily imply interchangeability of roles. Within the context of human history, God chose to work His kingdom program through one man, Abraham, and his offspring. Yet that does not exclude anyone---Jew or non-Jew---from participating in His kingdom by faith. Within the nation of Israel, God limited the priesthood to the tribe of Levi, but that did not make any tribe superior or inferior to any other. And even among the Levites, anyone with a physical handicap was excluded from the priesthood---which in no way meant that he was inferior to the able-bodied or that God considered him less than his brethren.
The Scriptures teach clearly that submission to the Lord is going to include some kind of submission on the human plane. The great error of many feminists is their assumption that submission equals inferiority and precludes equality.
The fact that we are all equal in Christ does not exempt us from being obedient to God's Word. Neither does His Word limit us in any way from experiencing complete fulfillment in our relationship with Him. Why not? Because our greatest fulfillment comes in living in submission to Him, expressed in submission to the limits He has established. This is equally true for male and female, Jew and Greek, slave and free.
And how does all this help us better understand the myriad ministry opportunities open to godly, qualified women? More than anything else, it sets us free to look at every opportunity for service first in light of obedience to God's Word, then in light of the unlimited potential of every ministry pursued in a spirit of obedience and submission to Him.
What, then, of the godly woman who aspires to teach? Does the Biblical injunction against her authoritative teaching over men mean she is forever doomed to an unfulfilled Christian life and relegated to second-class citizenship in the kingdom? No.
The gifted female teacher can---and should---take every opportunity to teach women, whether in small groups or large. She can train other women to do the same. I believe she has been divinely equipped to teach children far better than most men can. She can write. She can author Bible study materials. She can do personal evangelism and discipleship among women, as men should do among other men. And a wide variety of administrative functions of ministry are Biblically available to women.
Does the Biblical model preclude a woman from giving her testimony in a church meeting or offering the Scripture reading, or making announcements, or leading songs, or offering a public prayer? These questions can be answered with another question: Are any of these ministries an expression of authoritative, elder-like teaching over men? Probably not, and thus they should not be excluded from the ministry opportunities afforded qualified women of God.
The Holy Spirit has bestowed spiritual gifts on all members of the body of Christ. First Corinthians 12:4-11 indicates that various gifts have been distributed to believers; there is no reason to believe any gift is limited to men. In view of this, local churches must provide ways in which women along with men can exercise their spiritual gifts. Women may be leaders in visitation to the sick, counseling other women and men, and leading Christian education programs, missionary programs, and evangelistic efforts.
Older women have special responsibilities toward younger women. They have a duty to teach the young women in Christian communities to love their husbands and their children, to be submissive to their husbands, and to fulfill their duties at home (Titus 2:4-5). The revered woman of Proverbs 31 acted in similar godly fashion.
It is indeed unfortunate that an overemphasis on trained male leadership fulfilling every aspect of ministry in the local church has excluded such women elders of women from serving Christ in a unique and valuable way by providing exemplary leadership for younger women. We needn't go into detail here about the risks and inadequacies inherent in the presumption that any and every male pastor is better equipped to counsel women in his church than are mature, godly Christian women in the same congregation. Suffice it to say that the pastor who fails to draw on the Biblical resource of qualified older women in the congregation to fulfill the church's ministry to younger women is not only risking the effectiveness of his ministry but also operating in clear contradiction to the instruction of Titus 2:4-5.
This type of ministry needn't be a formalized extension of the duties of a pastoral staff. In a large city in central California, for example, a woman (appropriately named Faith) for years conducted an annual "feminar" for the area's Christian college women. The all-day seminar was actually an outgrowth of a parachurch ministry led by Faith and her husband, a ministry that was usually attended by a mixture of Christian young women from the community. Included in this godly, mature woman's teaching was a combination of material concerning Christian maturity as well as Biblical womanhood. It was a successful ministry that simply could not have been effected by a man.
One church in the southwestern U.S. in recent years has made a transition from male pastoral staff counseling of women to counseling of women by a trained female staff. Since making the change, the success of the church's pastoral counseling has risen dramatically, a change everyone involved attributes to this small but Biblical adjustment.
In one parachurch organization, leadership by male directors over a mixed staff has been modified whenever possible so that both a director and his wife are responsible for the staff, he for the male staff and she for the female. Not only has this helped avoid romantic attachments and sexual pressures on all sides, but also the effectiveness of training and accountability has increased.
These are just a few examples. With so many opportunities available for fulfilling clear Biblical injunctions concerning female leadership, we should have precious little time left to force the application of questionable interpretations of Scripture into an already stressed context.
Conclusion
In short, the question of where women may minister in the church of Jesus Christ is not a question of who is superior and who is inferior, who gets the "good work" and who gets the "leftovers," or who is "sexist" and who is "open-minded."
It is, for its very essence, for both men and women, a question of submission to the Word of God. The would-be leader who is not submissive to the Bible's warnings against self-glorification and pride is not worthy to be a leader. The would-be leader who is not submissive to the Bible's clear teaching against greed is not worthy to be a leader. The aspiring teacher who is not submissive to the Bible's self-validation as inspired and inerrant, and who does not "rightly divide the Word of truth," is not to be a teacher.
And, no matter what it means in comparison to a contemporary social agenda---whether feminism, materialism, pacifism, socialism, imperialism, capitalism, racism, or any other "ism"---the would-be leader who is not entirely submissive to the liberating constraints of God's perfect Word should never be a leader at all.
Endnotes to Chapter Twenty-one
{1}Patricia Gundry, Neither Slave nor Free: Helping Women Answer the Call to Church Leadership (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1987), p. 120.
*Adopted from H Wayne House, The Role of Women in Ministry (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1990), pp. 148-158. Used by permission
Copyright 1997 Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. All rights reserved.
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