Two Persistent Questions

Every few years Christians have a public debate about whether women should serve as pastors. My denomination, The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), often draws attention in our debates on this issue because there are so many of us, but plenty of people regularly get exercised about this. Whenever these debates happen two different questions get asked with equal passion by opposite sides.

The first question is asked by frustrated conservatives who wonder why we can’t just be faithful to do what the Bible says. The second question is asked by exasperated progressives who wonder why we can’t just deploy every gifted person without imposing ancient notions of gender from a text written thousands of years ago.

I want to provide an answer to these serious, important, and recurring questions. More importantly I want to explain what is at stake in this persistent disagreement.

Two Persistent Issues

These two persistent questions exist in the foreground of two persistent issues.

The first issue is the clarity of Scripture. There is no honest way to read Scripture without concluding that the Bible limits the office of pastor to qualified men. The Bible always affirms the role of women but never gives a single example of a woman serving in the office of pastor. Whenever the Bible lists the qualifications for the pastoral office it always limits the role to men (1 Timothy 3:2, 4; Titus 1:6). And when the Bible describes the tasks of the pastoral office, it forbids women from doing those activities (1 Timothy 2:11-12).

This teaching may be unpopular but is not unclear. In fact, of all the teachings of Scripture, many are more important than a male-only pastorate, but none are more clear. Anyone desiring to endorse female pastors must abandon a mindset controlled by Scripture and endorse a mindset controlled by something else.

That gets to the second issue, which is the coercion of society. This is another way of talking about what Christians call worldliness. The world as it exists apart from Christ works as a powerful force for evil pulling Christians away from God and his Word. That evil force appeals to Christians with a sinister logic to think like sinners do in the world instead of the way God does in the Bible.

Christians arguing for the inclusion of women in the pastoral office usually adopt the tone of bold leaders standing up for the excluded or taking a courageous step to avoid giving a lost world groundless reasons to ignore our message. But leaders who oppose faithfulness to God’s Word can never do so from the position of convictional strength, but weakness. Helping no one, they are victims of the temptation to worldliness and are themselves in need of help.

One Core Problem

Regardless of their motivation or style, leaders who advocate for female pastors make a conscious choice to exalt the way of sinners portrayed in the world above the way of God portrayed in the Word. They choose to do this, not on an unclear issue with disputed texts, but on an obvious issue where the Bible speaks with clarity and unity.

Those who do this, regardless of motivation, show that what they really care about is what the world thinks of them, and not God. A person who does this on an issue as clear as women pastors, will do the same thing on other issues. That reality explains why the decision to endorse female pastors is the first in an inevitable drift toward liberalism on the part of churches and denominations who go that route.

The Way Forward

The worldly temptation to install female pastors is downstream from the more serious problem mentioned by the great prophet Isaiah, “This is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Isaiah 66:2).

Any leader, church, or denomination that trades divine approval for that of the world, has already lost the right to speak for God and may realize, too late, that the only thing that matters is what they traded away.