How should a church handle disagreement over women in ministry?

Question 9103.

Few subjects can empty a church faster than a badly handled disagreement about women in ministry. I have seen congregations where the question was never raised until a crisis forced it, and by then positions had hardened, personalities had become involved, and what should have been a careful study of Scripture had turned into a contest that somebody had to lose. It does not have to go that way, and part of a pastor’s job is making sure it does not.

This article is not primarily about which position is right. I hold a complementarian view and I have set it out elsewhere without apology. This is about how a congregation containing sincere believers who differ can handle that difference without tearing itself apart or pretending the question does not exist.

Start with the Bible rather than with positions

The first mistake churches make is to begin the conversation with labels. As soon as someone is identified as complementarian or egalitarian, the discussion stops being about texts and starts being about tribes, and people defend a team rather than examine a passage. Labels are useful shorthand for people who have already done the work. They are poison at the start of it.

So begin where the disagreement actually lives. Read 1 Corinthians 11 and 14, 1 Timothy 2, Galatians 3:28, Romans 16, and Acts 18 together, slowly, in a setting where questions are welcome. Let people see that the passages on women in ministry pull in directions that need reconciling, and that anyone who claims the matter is obvious has not read carefully. That honesty buys enormous goodwill later.

It also does something else. It teaches the congregation how to handle a difficult subject biblically, and that skill transfers. A church that has learned to work through this question patiently will handle the next contested issue far better than one that has only ever been told the answer.

What is actually at stake over women in ministry

Not every disagreement is the same size. Whether a woman may serve as a deacon, whether she may lead the singing, whether she may teach a mixed adult Bible class, whether she may preach on a Sunday morning, and whether she may hold the office of elder are five distinct questions, and a great many people who agree on four of them differ on the fifth. Collapsing them into one issue guarantees an argument bigger than it needs to be.

My own position places the eldership and the primary regular teaching ministry of the gathered church with qualified men, on the basis of the pastoral epistles. It affirms women in evangelism, pastoral care, counselling, children’s and youth work, prayer, prophecy, and preaching in appropriate contexts, without reservation. That is a good deal more room for women in ministry than the caricature of complementarianism allows, and stating it plainly removes half the heat from most conversations.

It is also worth naming what is not at stake. Nobody in this discussion, on either side, is questioning whether women are equally made in God’s image, equally redeemed, equally indwelt by the Spirit, or equally gifted. If the conversation drifts towards suggesting otherwise, stop it at once, because it has left the biblical ground entirely.

Decide which kind of issue this is for your church

Some doctrines define whether a congregation is a church at all. Others define whether we can work together in the same congregation. Others are matters on which we agree to differ within one fellowship. Every church has to decide where women in ministry sits on that scale, and the trouble usually comes from never having decided.

In practice, a church has to hold one position on who may serve as an elder, because a decision has to be made when the vacancy arises. It does not follow that every member must agree with that position in order to belong. A congregation can say plainly what its practice is and why, and still welcome members who hold a different view and are willing to live within the church’s settled order.

That distinction between conviction and membership requirement is the single most useful tool I know here. Without it, the only options are enforced uniformity or permanent instability, and neither is a happy way to live.

Maintain charity without abandoning conviction

It is entirely possible to believe someone is mistaken about a serious matter and still regard them as a faithful believer. The basis for genuine fellowship is the gospel, a right view of God, and a high view of Scripture, and a sincere egalitarian can hold all three. Many of them have arrived at their position precisely by trying to take the whole Bible seriously rather than by looking for a way around it.

Charity here means several concrete things. It means representing the other view as its best advocates state it rather than as your side describes it. It means not attributing motives, since neither cultural capitulation nor power-hoarding is a fair default assumption. It means allowing that a person may be persuaded slowly, or not at all, and remaining in fellowship either way.

Conviction means the opposite of drift. A church that has studied and settled its position should teach it, apply it, and not quietly abandon it under pressure from whoever is most vocal. Charity without conviction produces a congregation that believes nothing; conviction without charity produces one that nobody can live in.

Have the conversation before the crisis

The worst time to work out your convictions about women in ministry is the week a gifted woman offers to preach, or the week a member resigns over it. Emotion is high, a specific person is in view, and any decision will look like a judgement on them. The best time is when nothing is at stake and nobody is waiting on the answer.

So teach the passages in an ordinary sermon series. Put the church’s position in writing where members can find it. Explain it to prospective members before they join rather than after. Let the leadership say openly that believers differ here and describe how the church intends to handle that difference. All of that is unglamorous preparation, and it is worth more than any amount of skilful crisis management.

When someone cannot live with the church’s position

Sometimes, despite everything, a member concludes they cannot remain. That is painful and it is not always a failure. A believer who leaves for a congregation whose practice matches their conscience, with the blessing of the church they are leaving, has done something honourable. Send them well, pray for them, and do not treat their departure as betrayal.

What should be resisted is a campaign. A member who agrees to the church’s order and then works quietly to overturn it through private conversation is doing damage that goes well beyond the issue of women in ministry, because they are teaching the congregation that agreements do not hold. That is a matter for pastoral conversation, and eventually for church discipline, on grounds of conduct rather than conviction. Related reading: complementarianism and egalitarianism compared, can women teach and preach, and when it is right to leave a church.

What to do when a decision has to be made

Sometimes the question cannot be deferred. A vacancy arises, a gifted woman offers, or a member asks the leadership directly what the church believes. At that point the congregation needs a process it agreed on beforehand, and this is where most churches discover they never had one.

A workable process looks like this. The elders study and bring a recommendation with their reasoning set out in writing. The congregation is given time to read it and ask questions in an open meeting. The decision is taken by the membership rather than announced by the leadership, and the leadership abides by it. In our church the membership holds the final say, and I regard that accountability as a genuine protection.

What that process assumes is that everyone has already done the biblical work. A vote taken by people who have never read 1 Timothy 2 in context is not a spiritual decision; it is a preference poll. Teaching has to come first, which is why questions about women in ministry should be addressed long before they become urgent.

Guarding the people in the middle

In every congregation there are people who have not made up their minds and are quietly watching how the leadership handles the disagreement. They will learn more from the manner of the discussion than from its conclusion, and what they learn will shape how they handle the next contested question in their own lives.

So watch how you speak about those who differ. Paul tells us to speak the truth in love, and to let our speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt (Colossians 4:6). A leader who wins the argument about women in ministry while modelling contempt has taught the congregation something far more damaging than any error of interpretation.

And keep the actual women of your congregation in view throughout. They are not a topic. They are members who are listening, and the way a church debates this determines whether they feel valued or merchandised.

Reading the passages together

One practical suggestion for any church working through this: read the relevant passages in a single sitting rather than one at a time over several months. Galatians 3:28, 1 Corinthians 11 and 14, 1 Timothy 2, and Romans 16 belong together, and reading them apart makes each one sound more absolute than it is.

Paul greets a remarkable number of women by name and describes them as workers in the Lord (Romans 16:12), which sits alongside his restrictions without embarrassment. Any position that can only be held by looking away from half the evidence is a position worth revisiting.

Keeping the gospel central through the disagreement

Whenever a congregation spends a season on a contested question, there is a risk that the question becomes the identity of the church. People start describing their congregation by where it stands on women in ministry rather than by the gospel it preaches, and visitors pick that up faster than we imagine.

So keep preaching Jesus through the season. Let the Sunday diet remain the whole counsel of God rather than a single controversy, and let the discussion happen in its proper setting rather than colonising every meeting.

And remember what unites you. Believers who differ over women in ministry still share the same Saviour, the same Spirit, the same baptism and the same hope. Paul appeals to exactly those shared realities when he wants a church to hold together (Ephesians 4:4-6), and there is no better ground to stand on.

So, now what?

If you lead a church that has never addressed this, start now, while it is calm. Choose the passages, take your time, and let people ask the awkward questions out loud. If you are a member who differs from your church’s position, go and talk to your elders rather than to everyone else, and go with the assumption that they have thought about it.

And whichever side you find yourself on, hold the people more tightly than the argument. Paul, who wrote the restrictions, also named Priscilla, Phoebe, Junia, Euodia and Syntyche among those who laboured with him in the gospel (Romans 16:1-7). A church that gets women in ministry right on paper and treats actual women poorly has understood nothing at all. Which of those two failures is your congregation nearer to?

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

1 Corinthians 1:10, ESV