The Biblical Case for Women in Ministry

Christians have always believed that God calls individuals to particular roles in the church — to teach, to lead, to shepherd, to preach. Which means we have to ask ourselves how many women, across twenty centuries, received that call and were silenced anyway? How many were told the seat wasn't theirs?

What would the church look like if it had simply followed where the Spirit was already leading? How much larger? How much more faithful? How many people went unreached, untaught, or unpastored because someone God had equipped and called was told to sit down?

And how many women have been wounded spiritually, vocationally, in their very sense of calling by men unwilling to share, let alone relinquish an odd notion of power they mistook for their birthright? I know this has happened. I know it is still happening.

I am grateful for every woman who did what Mary did, who sat down anyway, claimed the seat she was told wasn't hers, and trusted that Jesus would receive her there. I am also grateful for the powerful women whose feet I have sat at and who have taught me so much about the faith.

When it comes to women in ministry, there are hundreds of examples across Scripture of women leading, prophesying, teaching, and breaking cultural barriers in the name of God. Yet, again and again, parts of the church bypass all of that and land on the two New Testament passages that seem to restrict women — passages that, conveniently, happen to confirm what our culture already expected. This pattern itself is ancient. Despite our tendencies, the breadth of examples of women's leadership across scripture is striking and cannot be ignored, or explained away.

Deborah was not merely a prophetess, she is the only figure in the Old Testament explicitly identified as holding the office of Judge while also functioning as a prophet. She settled legal disputes, exercised governing authority, and directed the military commander Barak into battle against King Jabin's forces. She led a nation.

Miriam stood alongside Moses and Aaron as one of the three primary leaders of Israel during the Exodus. The Book of Micah names all three together (6:4). After the crossing of the Red Sea, she led the entire community in worship.

Huldah was the prophet King Josiah turned to when the Book of the Law was rediscovered in the Temple. He sent his highest priests and officials to her. Her word authenticated the text and set the course of a national reformation.

Scripture names ten female prophets: Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Noadiah, Isaiah's wife, Anna, and Philip's four daughters. Women like Rachel, Hannah, Abigail, Elizabeth, and Mary are described as speaking prophetically about their children, the fate of nations, and the coming Messiah.

The New Testament provides more examples. The women disciples were the first to see the risen Christ and were sent to tell the 12 what they had seen. At Pentecost, Peter quotes the prophet Joel to explain what the crowd is witnessing: "Your sons and daughters will prophesy… even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy" (Acts 2:17–18). The coming church, Peter says, is in part characterized by women's prophetic voices.

Then we consider Paul who wrote in Galatians: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female — for you are all one in Christ Jesus." In 1 Corinthians 11, he gives instructions for women prophesying in the worship assembly, taking it as a given that women would be prophesying. 

Then Paul, at the end of his letter to the Romans, is greeting the leaders of the Roman church and he names Junia — a woman — and calls her an apostle. In the Greek of his letters, despite what generations of English translations have obscured, Paul plainly assumes that the office of deacon is open to women and men alike. In Acts, Priscilla and Aquila are introduced as a married couple of evangelists, with Scripture explicitly noting that both of them taught Apollos the way of Christ.

Yes, there are passages that seem to say the opposite. The most frequently cited is 1 Timothy 2:11–14: "Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor." (NRSV)

Two things tend to get overlooked here. First, that Paul is insisting that women be allowed to learn Scripture at all — something their culture actively denied them. To sit at a teacher's feet and study as a disciple was, under the rabbinical traditions of the day, a role women were not permitted to occupy. Paul's instruction is, in part, a countercultural demand for women's scriptural education. This fits with Paul’s point about Adam and Eve. Paul is essentially saying look what happened when Eve was deceived. Women need to study and learn as much as men.

Second, the phrase "full submission" has been assumed for centuries to mean submission to men. But the more natural reading is submission to God — which is, of course, what Paul calls men to as well. N.T. Wright's translation in The Kingdom New Testament renders the passage: "They must be allowed to study undisturbed, in full submission to God. I am not saying that women should try to teach men or dictate to them; rather they should be left undisturbed." That reading fits the wider pattern of Paul's writing far better than a blanket prohibition does.

The familiar story of Mary and Martha demonstrates the culture from a different angle. Martha's complaint is actually two complaints at once. The obvious one was that Mary isn't helping serve the meal, which was a women's job in that culture. 

The more subtle one is that Mary is sitting at Jesus's feet. This was the physical posture of a disciple receiving instruction from a rabbi. Under the rules of the day, women simply did not sit there. By claiming that position, Mary wasn't just being unhelpful. She was transgressing a deep-seated social and religious prohibition.

Jesus didn't just allow it. He affirmed her for it. He didn't dismantle the old categories with a theological argument. He simply told Martha, gently, that her sister had chosen the better part.

The primary lesson is about priorities — that spiritual formation matters more than the roles culture assigns us. But the role Jesus affirms here is specifically one that women were told wasn't theirs. That makes his gentle correction something closer to a radical act.

See you in church,

Fr. Tom +