Women in Ministry
As the church, we are a royal priesthood (1 Pet 2:9). This implies that all believers share in the work of the ministry. The great commission and therefore the mission of the church is for all believers. With that said, however, the roles we play as men and women are different. In Genesis 2:18 God created woman to be a helper to man. Her role was to be a complementary support to man. Wives are then called to submit to their husbands, “For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church” (Eph 5:23). This is not a domineering or oppressive relationship, but one of love and sacrifice (Eph 5:25). This same relationship structure is modeled in the church itself. Women are not permitted to, “teach or to exercise authority over a man” (1 Tim 2:11). Paul goes on to describe the qualifications of an overseer as the, “husband of one wife” (1 Tim 3:2) which again implies that only a man can be an overseer in the church. In 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 Paul also writes, “the women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law also says. If there is anything they desire to learn, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.” The implication here is that men are called to be both the spiritual leaders of their families and teachers of the word. Some have tried to argue that these passages are only dealing problems that arose in specific churches, but Paul emphasizes in verse 33 that this is to be true of all churches.
Paul says that older women do have a role to play in teaching, but it is not over men. He says in Titus 2:3-5 that they, “are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands.” What is clear from all of these passages is that women are not to be placed in positions where they are teaching the scriptures in the gathering of the church or exercising authority over men. But as I mentioned before, all of us are called to service in ministry exercising the gifts that the Holy Spirit has given each of us for the building up of the church. We see the example of Priscilla teaching the way of God more accurately to Apollos in Acts 18, but it is along with her husband and also not in the context of the gathering of the church. In Acts 16 we see the example of Lydia who becomes a hostess offering up her home for the church to gather and pray. All the women who served in the ministry of Christ and the early church were crucial and important. Paul references churches that meet in the homes of Chloe (1 Cor 1:11), Nympha (Col 4:15) and Apphia (Phm 2) but there is no indication that they are the pastor or leader of the church. Rather they are each the hostess of a home where the church was meeting.