Female Pastors? Are Women Permitted to Teach & Preach in the Church?

Hello, in this video, I'd like to talk about the subject of female pastors. Is this acceptable? Does the Bible forbid this? Does the Bible allow it? You probably noticed that this is a big issue. It's an issue in the Southern Baptist Convention.

It's an issue in many denominations, of course, a lot of denominations have already kind of given in and starting in the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and it's just become more common up until the present where more and more churches are ordaining women.

So what does the Bible say about this? You would go to a pastoral epistle. The apostle Paul wrote to Timothy in first Timothy chapter three, telling him in verse 15, how to behave in the local church.

So the pastoral epistle is where you would look because it's about church order. And Paul tells Timothy that the qualifications for a pastor in first Timothy three, verse one, he says, this is a faithful saying.

If a man desires the position of a bishop, we call them pastors. But if a man desires the position, he desires a good work. So according to first Timothy chapter three, the qualifications for a pastor, he must be a man, obviously he, he must be the husband of one wife.

A woman cannot be the husband of one wife. And if you go back to chapter two, Paul makes it even more clear where he says in verse 12, I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence.

So the office of pastor is an authoritative office where the pastor teaches and preaches the word of God. Now, people will come back and say, well, that's just cultural. You know, back then it wasn't acceptable, but today it is, well, hold on a minute.

What does Paul say? You have to take every verse in context. There's nothing about, well, this is cultural. Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence for Adam was formed first, then Eve.

So this is about the creative order and male headship. Now, people might not like that today, but that's clearly what the scripture teaches. So Paul roots his argument, not in the culture, but in creation.

Then the other passage that people are familiar with is first Corinthians 14, 34 through 37. Pastor John MacArthur did a great sermon on this subject. You can search for that. Paul says to the Corinthians, let your women keep silent in the churches for they are not permitted to speak, but they are to be submissive as the law also says.

So again, this is not cultural. He's referring to the law of God. He says in verse 37, that these things that I'm writing to you are the commandments of God. So it's not cultural. It wasn't just something that's unique to the Corinthians.

These are the commandments of God. This is in God's law. You say, well, where in God's law, where in the books of Moses does it say that women can't be pastors? Well, again, it goes back to male headship that Adam was formed first and then Eve.

It's God's creative order. That's what the scripture teaches. So you could also talk about Jesus. Jesus chose 12 men to be apostles, not women. He chose Peter, James, and John, not Patty, Jamie, and Diane.

So that's very clear that Jesus chose men to represent him. Go back to the Old Testament. Obviously, all of the men, all of the priests were men. So I'm going to link in the description of this article, a video I did about female deacons.

That's another question that comes up. So I'll put the link in the description. So you have the Old Testament where the priests were all men, you have the New Testament, the apostles were all men, all of the bishops were men, and the Bible's very clear on this.

And then on top of that, an added argument is that for 1900 years of church history, there were no female pastors. There were no female pastors until the 20th century. If you look at the statistics, I believe it was in 1960 that something like only 1 of pastors were women.

My friends, this says it all. So it wasn't until the 20th century after the rise of the feminist movement. So clearly the churches that have ordained female pastors, they're siding with the culture. They're being led by the culture.

They're not being obedient to the word of God. They are trying to appeal and accommodate the godless culture and society that they're living in. There's no way around this. So yeah, 1960, 1 of pastors were women.

And today, at least in New England where I am, it's just about 50%. And of course, the mainline denominations, they caved in on this issue. They ordained women starting, again, 1960s, 1970s, and it grew from there.

And once they did that, by the time you reach the 1990s, now they are ordaining homosexuals. Because remember, if the argument is, well, that was just cultural, women pastors, that wouldn't have gone over too well back then.

Then you can make the same argument for homosexual clergy. So the mainline denominations like the United Methodist, the Episcopalians, the UCC, the United Church of Christ, that's the denomination that runs all the congregational churches in my area, they've all gone from ordaining women to ordaining homosexuals.

So if your church, if your denomination says, okay, we're going to start ordaining women, that is the mark of liberalism. That's the mark of liberalism. And once you open that door, you can't shut it.

You can't shut it. So today they might be ordaining women. Five years from now, 10 years from now, they're going to be back saying, well, we should be ordaining LGBT people too. You watch, it will happen because it's already happened in all of the mainline denominations.

So one last comment within evangelicalism, we've had who? Preachers like Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer. Now, Joyce Meyer is a rank heretic. So she's word of faith, taught that Jesus died and burned in hell.

She preaches the prosperity gospel. Joyce Meyer is not even really in the conversation anyways, but Beth Moore, very popular. She was accepted within evangelicalism and only recently have people started to kind of warn about her in the past five years or so because she's gone liberal too.

But Beth Moore was accepted within evangelicalism. Why? Because she ministered to women. See, women can teach. They can teach children. So a Sunday school setting, women can teach. Women can teach other women.

So a ministry like Beth Moore's and then Joyce Meyer and many others, usually it was women preaching to women and that was okay. Now you can make an argument about that too, because at some point, you know, there's obviously some men in these stadiums and settings.

And then it seems to be the game they want to play now is kind of go right up and right up to the line where, okay, she can preach. And now Beth Moore is preaching in churches on Sunday morning, but she's not a pastor, but really she's teaching from the pulpit in church on Sunday morning.

She's doing what a pastor does. So, you know, you just have to watch out for this. Some people will try to go right up to the line and say, well, okay, she can do everything. She can preach and teach men Sunday morning in church, but we're just not giving her the label of pastor.

She's not holding the office of pastor. So that's sort of our compromise there. Yeah. But once the church allows that, once there's a woman preaching on Sunday morning for years and everyone's okay with that, it's just, they're just chipping away at this teaching that is so unpopular in the culture.

So bottom line is, can women be pastors? No, there's no question about it. No question at all. And you have 1900 years of church history to back that up. Can women preach? Well, yes, they can preach on the street.

They can preach to other women. They can preach in a non-church setting. So Philip had four virgin daughters who prophesied. Deborah prophesied. So women can preach and teach out there. They can have their own ministries to women, but they can't do it in the church.

And they certainly can't hold the office of pastor. Someone might come and say, well, that's sexist. And well, if somebody is calling the Bible sexist, then you just have to don't engage with them. When people say that a person who would say that the Bible or the teachings of the apostles is sexist, that person needs to be saved.

Don't argue with them about all this. Preach the gospel to them. Once they're saved and they have the Holy Spirit within them, the Holy Spirit will convict and do that work. But it's just not something that's worth arguing about with people that would say outrageous things like that.

But in your local church, if you're part of, we're independent, so we don't have this issue. Sometimes if you're part of a church that's in a denomination, oftentimes this will come from the top down.

And they'll try to impose this upon a local congregation, upon your denomination. And it's worth fighting for. Not because this one issue is that important. It's important because the Bible teaches it, but that's really the issue.

It's the authority of scripture. So if a church is ordaining women, it's not just that they're ordaining women. It's that they're not recognizing the authority of the word of God. My name is Pastor Michael Grant.

Until next time, may the Lord be with you. Have a great day.