She's A Woman...

I have been writing about convictions and persuasions recently. One of the issues that I said had shifted from conviction to persuasion was my perspective on women in ministry. A few friends asked me to share the story of the shift and where I'm at now in my journey. If you haven't yet, please read this article on the difference between convictions and persuasions.


The journey began as the result of a sermon series on 1 Corinthians. As our congregation was going through the text one of the things that became clear was the reality that each believer is called to a ministry of "Word and prayer". I asked my pastor about this and the role of women as that seemed to cause a bit of a hiccup in our practice. He shared that it's a hard topic and one that causes consternation because the principles conflict with the descriptions of the way that ministry is carried out. This started the questioning.

During Seminary I went deeper into the Scriptures than I ever thought imaginable. From learning the original languages to learning about the historical context that the Scriptures were written in, I had greater context than ever by which to wrestle with the Scriptures.  One of the things that I really wrestled through was making decisions about theology and doctrine that determined my understanding of the Scriptures as opposed to the other way around.

Everything I believed was opened up before me. I struggled through every theological position that I held.

Couple this with moving from a very conservative denomination to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church which is very conservative but distinguishes between "essential" and "non-essential" beliefs. There was room to stretch and pray and study and wrestle with the Scriptures and theology.

Most of my doctrine, theology, and practice were not only confirmed but strengthened in this context.

This one thing though really stuck in my brain like a splinter. This issue of women in ministry. There was just something that didn't sit right as I thought about the Scriptures and the roles of women from the very outset. I struggled with the generally held interpretations of the "elder" passages as I understood the broader context to which they were written.

The first domino to fall was the office of Deacon. There were deaconnesses specifically mentioned in Scripture. So, it did not make sense to me for women to excluded from the office. The second domino to fall was the office of Elder. This one was more in depth. But, through the same hermeneutic that, in my persuasion, demands paedobaptism it seemed that it also challenged my assumed view that women were not to be in leadership in the community of faith.

Once the question of office was squared away, then the big question for me became how do I reconcile the issues of husbands and wives with those of leadership in the body fellowship? Is there a sharp distinction between the husband and wife relationship and that of the church? Are they the same? If a married woman is in a leadership position in the community does that cause a problem within the context of roles in her marriage? What are the roles in a marriage? What does it mean for a wife to submit to her husband? How far does the metaphor in Ephesians 5 extend?

All of these questions ran and ran and ran around in my head and heart. The thing that kept coming back to me was the non-essential nature of the issue.

So where did I land? I am good with women as officers in the church, which necessarily means that I'm comfortable as a "teaching elder" in our polity because the Scriptures do not differentiate between ruling elder and teaching elder. In light of Ephesians 5 and the other passages on marriage, I am persuaded, that a married woman probably shouldn't be the senior pastor of the community where her husband worships. There has to be some sort of maintenance of the role of husband and wife in the context of body leadership.

Many are reading this wanting an exegetical argument. I don't think the blog is the proper context for that because it would require more words than anyone will read here. It's the stuff of an academic paper. The purpose of this post was to lay out the journey and to give some sense of my conclusions. These conclusions are persuasions. That means, that I am comfortable with complementarian who reads this and thinks I am a crazy liberal. I am also comfortable with the egalitarian who thinks I'm a sell out unwilling to go all the way. There are competing principles in the Scriptures that need to be balanced against one another and I don't see how any of them take priority over the others.