Bible Study: Women In Church Leadership • Part 1

Read about my personal journey that led me to this study:
" The Woman Sexist Against Women"

This issue is still a hot topic in much of the church community today even though thorough study of Scriptures clearly reveals God’s heart on the matter. Those whose pride or male ego get in the way, will teach and defend tradition over Scripture time and time again in modern times much like good-hearted white Christians would stand strong on their stance for slavery only 200 years ago in this country, using Scripture to back up their tradition and prejudice way of thinking. The truth of the matter is that God calls who He wills for whatever purpose He wills, regardless of their physical body. If Jesus were to reappear in physical form today in a church meeting today and heard a sermon against women in leadership, He would stand up and protest like He had to about rabbinical laws that the spiritual leaders were teaching that were based on God’s Laws, but without God’s Spirit. It is one thing to limit someone else’s spiritual authority based on sin, it is quite another to limit it based on what gender, race, or position a person is born.

The Bible noticeably teaches that women are used by God in leadership just as men are:
• Deborah in Judges 4 was a prophetess and the judge of Israel. She didn’t place herself there – God raised her up for that position, the highest spiritual authority position among His people at that time. How do we know God put her in that position? Because just a chapter and a half earlier, in 2:16-18, Scripture states that the Lord raised up the judges and was with the judges. So here is God placing a woman in a position of spiritual authority over men even as early as a few hundred years before Christ comes to bring freedom to all in Him.

• Jesus included women in His ministry. Although the twelve disciples were all young men, Jesus had many followers that comprised of mostly women who are referred to in connection with his closest twelve in Luke 8:1-3. Many times in the gospels, it is pointed out that there where a group of women who followed Jesus – they were the ones who stayed with Him while He hung on the cross, and they were with the group of disciples praying in the upper room in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit fell on them on the Day of Pentecost. So when Jesus sent seventy of His disciples out in pairs to do ministry and preach the gospel in Luke 10:1, it is hard to imagine that some of these disciples weren’t women. “The Lord gives the command; the women who proclaim the good news are a great host.” Psalms 68:11

• Paul talks of two women in Romans 16 specifically who are in significant ministry positions. In verses 1 & 2, he praises a woman named Phoebe, who he calls a deaconess, and then describes her as someone who has assisted many in ministry, himself included. The other woman in a significant ministry position was Junia in verse 7. In addition to being described by Paul as a relative of his and as a fellow prisoner, Junia is a woman also described as being an apostle.

• Paul often talked of a married couple, Priscilla and Aquilla who were equal in ministry. Paul spoke of them also in Romans 16 as having a home church as well as being Teachers. Pricilla was un-customly referred to first by Paul several times when her and her husband were mentioned, which tells us that in those cases, she was the primary minister.

• The Scripture passage of Ephesians 4:11-13 educates us that Jesus gives the 5-fold ministers to build up His Church. In the wording, we’re shown that these offices are not strictly male offices within the church body. The Greek words for “some” in the phrase “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers…”, is a word that includes both genders. Greek is a very extensive language. There is a Greek word for “some” that refers only to the masculine, as in “some men”, but the word used here was not this word – it was the word meaning “some men or women”.

• Also, when examining the Scriptures about elders/overseers in I Timothy 3:1-7, the terminology used, “husband of one wife” (v.2), implies that overseers must be men, but further study shows otherwise. In verse 1 where it states, “if any man…”, the word for “man” in the Greek is the word for “human being” or “one” or “person” that includes both genders. Again, there is a Greek word for “man” that means strictly “man” as in a male person, but the word used here is not that word. So in this case, why would Paul use the feminine inclusive word for “person” in one sentence and then state “the husband of one wife” in the next sentence? The answer is simple – even though the Greek language is much more extensive than English, there actually is no Greek word for “spouse” that would go either way. So, just as “he” is a generic default pronoun that is used in English when he/she is obnoxious to use over and over again, Paul defaults his instruction generically to “husband”. This makes perfect sense as, those who were reading Paul’s letter at the time would see the word for “person” beforehand and know immediately that he was referring to “any one” - male or female. Paul’s point in even mentioning marriage to one was that anyone in a church office must not be a polygamist, despite the culture around them.

Dark Church History Concerning Women
So if this is so obvious in Scripture, why do Bible teachers say otherwise? In a word, power. Church history reveals how the “one man ministry” evolved and allowed the Dark Ages to bring in an era of decline and corruption into the Church. When one person takes on a realm of undisputed spiritual authority, decline and corruption are bound to follow, and that’s exactly what happened in the church. The “one man ministry” became a breeding ground for power, control, and manipulation on all fronts. Just before the Dark Ages, around 400AD, the Greek philosophers were beginning to influence the established Church. While this influence was going on, one position of headship rose up that replaced Jesus – the Pope, who took up a “kingship” in Rome, claiming spiritual authority because he was the direct line from Peter, who Jesus built His church on. The position of overseers became Bishops who were under the Pope and over the individual offices of deacons, who became known as Priests in individual churches. Whenever the Pope himself made a change in doctrine, it trickled down the ranks and became law. God’s written Word was collected and translated into Latin and was proclaimed the Cannon – the standard, which could only be interpreted correctly by the Pope. That set the stage for error to infiltrate the body of Christ until it became tradition. What followed was a head first plunge into one of the longest stages of dark times within the history of God’s people. Many things became lost, not just freedom to women, and the light to evangelize the world went out. All it took was one or two Popes consecutively early on who were influenced by the secular philosophies of the time to not only put an end to women in leadership, but also to put an end to their freedom and equality in Christ in general. The Popes converted the philosophies about women into a Christian doctrine - “the Eve” doctrine, which was the belief that all women were Eve, simple-minded beings who bring evil into the world and are a curse to men. They were considered the weakness of man, beautiful to trap men and seduce them, only to lead them down the path of destruction. They believed women to be easily fooled by heresy and prone to fall into witchcraft.

"What is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still Eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman......I fail to see what use woman can be to man, if one excludes the function of bearing children." — St. Augustine of Hippo (354 to 430 AD)

Christ had come to break bondage, but the church listened to the world system and brought it back in. Now the church reflected the will of the enemy of God and not that of God. It only took a short while to lose what Jesus had paid so dearly to gain. This religious “law” against women leaders was a natural result of the enemy taking root in the hearts of men, and only displayed the attitude towards women that was prevalent everywhere in the world at that time – Satan taking back ground that had been lost to him because of Christ. Who could refute the “law”, no one could read God’s Word, and once the Pope had spoken, only a Pope could change the “law” now. Hundreds and hundreds of years go by, and women at best are treated as frail things that need taken care of. If any of these attitudes towards women seem familiar, it is because it is in our very heritage, the pride and superiority demons linger and are passed on from one generation to the next. Education was kept selective to promote the on-going attitude. Women were dependant on men for their spiritual well-being. And this bondage has been so deeply rooted into who the church is, that it will take all of our strength to pull out of it. Once God brought about the Protestant Restoration Movement, His Written Word was translated into the language of the common “man”. Still, more men could read than women. When these men translated the Bible, they did so through their cultural and human lenses. One of the men who originally translated the Bible from Latin to English for King James commented once that what he discovered in Scripture shocked him, he not only learned that women were equal to men, but that they could hold offices of spiritual authority! He thought the notion so absurd that he quickly changed the wording, because “it did not make sense that a woman should hold any authority over anyone except her infant children or her women slaves.” So today, we have Scripture that backs up cultural mindsets, instead of our minds and culture being changed by Scripture. Tradition has tainted the translation of God’s very Word regarding women.

See the next post to continue:
Bible Study: Women In Church Leadership • Part 2