Several prominent voices within the Southern Baptist Convention are in a bit of an uproar. For example, Al Mohler is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and for him, the line is clear: a woman dared to be on a podcast in which she answered questions about a sermon she did not preach. An elder in her church preached a sermon and some on the podcast asked questions about that sermon and she answered them. Yes, that’s the “problem”. His claim is that to answer questions about a sermon is to function in the role of “pastor” and what he really means is the role of elder.
I’ve talked about this many times before but it’s worth repeating, for if we get the language wrong, there’s almost no way to have a meaningful conversation about any important issue, let alone this one, and the Southern Baptists are using the wrong terms. Let me explain.
Other than Ephesians 4:11 there is no place in the New Testament where the noun “pastor” used of a regular person in the local church. The elders-overseers (these words are interchangeable) in a local church are instructed to pastor, but they are not called pastors. Jesus is called the Chief Shepherd, but he is no regular person. This may sound like a pedantic clarification but it is significant. In Ephesians 4 Paul is writing of gifted people given to the church. Scripture is clear: each and every follower of Christ is gifted by the Holy Spirit according to the Holy Spirit’s sovereign determination of the particular gift and the degree of giftedness. Not all have the same gift, and those who share a gift are not gifted to the same degree. In Ephesians 4 Paul lists four groups of specifically gifted people who have been given to the church.
These groups are apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor-teachers. Some see the latter as two distinct groups while others see them as one group. Where one lands on this distinction is irrelevant to the present discussion. What is relevant, however, is that these are not offices in the church but spiritually gifted people given to the church. When Paul mentions apostles here he does not mean the Twelve plus him. He means apostles in the more general sense that Barnabas and Andronicus and Junia and Apollos and Epaphroditus were apostles. These “apostles” were church planters. They traveled, preaching the gospel and helping to establish new churches. We see this more general use early in church history. The Didache, written in the first century, gives instructions regarding such traveling apostles, including the instruction to limit how long they were to stay in your home. When Paul asked Philemon to prepare a guest room it’s unlikely he intended to stay just three days, as required by the Didache. Instead, the Didache recognizes those who were gifted as apostles while not holding the office of apostle. By the early second century Christians stopped using the term in this general sense and limited it to those thirteen men who held the office of apostle, given the possibility of conflating the two.
Further evidence these are spiritual gifts rather than offices is the lack of qualifications given. In Acts 1 we see the qualifications for the office of apostle, namely, the one who would replace Judas had to have been a disciple from the beginning and had to have been an eyewitness to the resurrection. Paul was called to be an apostle directly by the risen Lord Jesus. We also see qualifications for the office of elder-overseer in the New Testament. If prophet in Ephesians 4:11 were an office, what are the qualifications? If evangelist were an office, what are the qualifications? Rather than a list of offices in the church, these are spiritually gifted people.
Much of the confusion comes from the last group. God has given to his church gifted pastor-teachers. Many often just equate this to the office of elder without further thought. In the New Testament there are several lists of spiritual gifts. These lists do not seem to be exhaustive lists and more importantly never include qualifications for those so gifted. Scripture calls all believers to live lives of holiness but nowhere do we read of qualifications for spiritual gifts. Those who would hold an office must meet certain qualifications while those who have received spiritual gifts (all!) should demonstrate spiritual maturity.
What this means is straightforward: while we may refer to elders as pastors, pastors in the church are not limited to those who serve as elders. An elder must shepherd others. That is, he must pastor the church. This does not mean, however, that every gifted shepherd—pastor—is an elder. To put it simply, all elders are pastors, but not all pastors are elders. Similarly, the elders must teach, but not all teachers are elders. If we cannot agree on this terminology then the problems facing the SBC and all other groups with regard to the ministries of women in the church will remain a largely fruitless discussion.
If shepherding is a spiritual gift and since spiritual gifts are given without qualification and are given to both men and women without distinction, then women may well serve according to the the spiritual gifts given by the Spirit of God. A woman with the gift of administration is rightly called an administrator and a woman with the gift of teaching is rightly called a teacher. So a woman with the gift of shepherding is rightly called a pastor. By maintaining the distinction between gift and office, in this particular case between the gift of pastor and the office of elder, we can recognize such gifted women given to the church. If we cannot agree on the terminology then we will fail to do justice to the use of language in the New Testament.
The role listed in Ephesians 4:11 is that of pastor-teacher. Again, without arguing whether these are two distinct roles or one, what is the proper understanding? When a seminary president has a problem with a woman answering questions about a sermon her male elder preached, we clearly have an issue. This issue stems from Paul’s instruction in 1 Timothy 2:12.
I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.
1 Timothy 2:12 ESV
Many have tried to argue that Paul’s instruction is situational, that women in Ephesus were teaching falsely and so were not to be allowed to teach. Does this mean men were allowed to engage in false teaching? If false teaching were the presenting problem, surely all false teaching would be prohibited. Paul doesn’t say a woman cannot teach falsely. Rather, he does not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man. It is quite striking that Paul does not tell Timothy to stop specific women in the church but makes a more general statement. He doesn’t say, “Timothy, don’t allow women to teach”. Instead he says he, Paul, does not allow women to teach or exercise authority over a man. That is, it is Paul’s apostolic practice that prohibits women from teaching. In other words, this prohibition is not situational but general. This is how Paul establishes his churches. He says a similar thing in 1 Corinthians:
As in all the churches of the saints, the women should keep silent in the churches.
1 Corinthians 14:33b-34a ESV
As in all the churches! Why does he repeat “in the churches”? He’s saying the practice of all local churches is women should keep silent in the gathered assemblies. This presents a significant problem, of course, for in that same chapter he writes of women prophesying in the churches, and prophesying requires speaking. Further, one of his ministry partners was Priscilla, who is unusually listed before her husband Aquila, likely indicating she was the more vocal and influential one. In Acts 18 Luke writes about Apollos, saying he was competent in the Scriptures but was lacking some theological knowledge. Then he writes this:
He began to speak boldly in the synagogue, but when Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.
Acts 18:26 ESV
Priscilla provided Apollos with a seminary education! Surely Aquila was involved, but Priscilla is listed first, indicating her prominence in Apollos’ education. When she and her husband later joined Paul’s apostolic team, did Paul tell her to zip it, given his personal prohibition against women teaching or exercising authority over a man? No! He did not, for his instructions in 1 Timothy 2:12 are similar to those 1 Corinthians 14. That is, the prohibition against a woman teaching men is a prohibition in the gathered assembly when the church is being the church. Paul provides the context for his instructions to Timothy:
I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these things to you so that, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth.
1 Timothy 3:14–15
In the context of 1 Timothy “the household of God” is the gathered assembly. His instructions in chapter 2 were focused on the gathered assembly. So, too, his prohibition against women teaching or exercising authority over a man is a prohibition in the gathered assembly. Teaching the word of God in the assembly is a different form of proclamation, one that is divinely reserved to the elders of the church. It is this particular form of teaching that is prohibited.
This means a woman may well teach a Bible study or even a seminary class. To argue against this is to say that Scripture’s failure to rebuke Priscilla teaching Apollos is problematic. Luke did not err by refusing to judge her for it and Paul was not being inconsistent to say that while Priscilla may teach Apollos outside the gathered assembly, she could not teach him—or anyone else—in the gathered assembly.
The reason Priscilla could teach Apollos is simple: she was given the gift of pastor-teacher by the Holy Spirit of God and was called to shore up Apollos’ shortcomings by providing him a more focused education in the areas he lacked. Priscilla, then, is one of the gifted pastor-teachers Paul mentions in Ephesians 4:11! To say this in a more succinct way, Priscilla was a gifted pastor-teacher and not an elder. She could not, therefore, teach in the assembly though she could teach a Bible study and if she were alive today, she could answer questions about her church’s sermon from this past Sunday.
In his marvelous paper in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society called “Can a Woman be a Pastor-Teacher?” New Testament scholar Harold Hoehner concludes,
A woman, then, may have the gift of pastor-teacher, apostle, evangelist, and prophetess (as Philip’s four daughters—Acts 21:9), while, scripturally speaking, she cannot hold the office of an elder or bishop. The aforementioned gifts are sovereignly bestowed on her, and it is her duty and privilege to exercise them. This is completely different from appointment to the office of elder, which the Scriptures specify only for men who meet the qualifications for that office.
Harold W. Hoehner, “Can a Woman Be a Pastor-Teacher?” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 50, no. 4 (2007): 761–71.
By maintaining the distinction between gift and office we can recognize the value of men and women regardless of their particular spiritual gifts given by the Spirit of God. We can recognize them—the gifted men and women—as the gifts given to the church without regard for whether any of them serve, will serve, or even could serve in a particular office in the church. A woman is not valued less in the church because she cannot serve as an elder, any more than a man who will never serve as an elder is valued less. Some are called to serve in unique ways, even as all are called to serve the church as the gifts given to the church.
A significant reason for the historically recent push to appoint women to the episcopate—the office of elder-overseer—is the failure to value women in the church. When seminary presidents imply—at least implicitly—that women are better seen than heard, it’s not hard to see why women as a whole may not feel valued. Several years ago John MacArthur was being interviewed at a large conference and was asked to respond to the name “Beth Moore”. Without missing a beat MacArthur said simply, “Go home”. After the laughter died down he went on to say there is no way to argue biblically for a “woman preacher”. (Notice the confusing, imprecise language! Shouldn’t we all preach the gospel? Aren’t we all called to preach?)
Beth Moore has never tried to be an elder. While she has the popularity to plant a church that would likely be a megachurch on the first Sunday, she has never made an attempt to do so. She has never desired to do so. Instead, she has sought to serve the church as a pastor-teacher, focusing on women in the church. If John MacArthur had simply paid closer attention to the actual words Scripture uses, he would have recognized the profound gift that Beth Moore—and countless other women—have been to the church. Not many are as highly gifted as she, yet all are gifted and all must serve the Lord, and all are God’s gifts to us.
What is clear in the New Testament is this: every follower of Jesus is gifted by the Spirit of God and each person is then given to the church as God’s profound gift. Some will serve the church in particular ways, whether as elders or as deacons. This does not make them more valuable, even if it may make them more influential. In the body of Christ we are brothers and sisters, siblings together with Christ. By maintaining the distinction between gift and office, we can allow our brothers and sisters to serve according to the gifts given by the Spirit and we can remain faithful to the biblical requirements for elders and deacons.