Women in Ministry: One Free Methodist s View Presented by Dr. Mark Adams Superintendent, NCC The first Bishop of and founder of the Free Methodist Church, Benjamin Titus Roberts, says, The feeling against [women] being according equal rights with man is old and deeply rooted. Generally, among mankind, the law of force has been the prevailing law. The stronger have tyrannized over the weaker. It is no wonder that our prejudices against the rights of women, infused into us from early childhood, should be strong. But reason and grace serve to overcome prejudice. B.T. Roberts had keen insight into the nature of Scriptural renewal for our personal lives and our societies. He fought for the abolition of slavery, which we Free Methodists often point to with much pride. What we do not point out as often is that Roberts and many of the early Free Methodists also fought hard for the suffrage rights of women - the right to vote. Roberts also labored for the ordination of women in the new movement called Free Methodism. I hope to articulate the Free Methodist position that leadership in ministry, including ordained leadership, is best biblically understood as flowing from gifting rather than gender. Women and men alike may teach, preach and lead within the Body of Christ. This is controversial. For many, a significant litmus tests for church orthodoxy is the refusal to ordain women to ministry. Many believe that the ordination of women is a capitulation to liberal and feminist pressures. Taking a few key Bible verses which seem to prohibit women from so much as speaking in church, these would argue that female pastor is an oxymoron, regardless of how gifted or fruitful any particular woman may prove to be. On the other extreme are those who buy into an unexamined feminist theology and approach the issue with only casual regard for Scripture. They, too, may focus on the same texts of Scripture used by more conservative counterparts but deny the import of those texts by denying the Bible as the Word of God. There is no reason to ban anyone from the ministry not men, not women, not homosexuals, not those who deny the resurrection of Jesus, as long as there is sense of spiritual morality. Neither extreme is reasonable nor robustly biblical. You will not find a church which has a higher view of Scripture as the Word of God than the Free Methodist Church. It is our only authority for faith and life. We cling to John Wesley s advice that we make no doctrine or requirement of our members that cannot be shown from a whole understanding of Scripture. B.T. Roberts position was entirely Scriptural, not a capitulation to anti-biblical sentiments. Using Scripture the whole counsel of God we can see that it would in fact be unscriptural to deny women leadership roles in the church. First, equality was planted in the Garden of Eden by the finger of God. It took our sin to grow discrimination and inequity. Second, the seed of equality was replanted by the Son of God, Jesus. As the Scripture says, For freedom Christ set us free. But our freedom in Christ is tempered by our lives in a sinful world. Third, the New Testament teachings and examples regarding women in ministry demonstrates that God s garden of equality is growing but still has a lot of weeds. The Bible teaches that male dominance and female submission is a result of the curse of sin. Before sin, equality was the ideal. Equality was planted in the Garden of Eden by the finger of God. In Genesis 1, in the beginning, God created male and female in His image. Neither male nor female are any more or less in the image of God. Gen.1.27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Furthermore, God s commands and promises and resources in the Garden were meant to be equally shared between the male and female. (verses 28,29) God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground." Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. Both Adam and Eve were commanded to rule. Not one subordinate to the other, but interdependent, needing each other, and supporting each other, having co-dominion over the earth and sharing equally in its fruit. Not until Adam and Eve sinned did this change. It is the curse of chapter 3 which ushers in inequality and the struggle between the sexes. Page 1
3.16,17 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you." To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, 'You must not eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Our sin brought with it a twisting of the equality which God planted in the garden of Eden. The extent of the sin can be seen in verse 20: Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living. Up to this point, Adam had named the animals. He was delighted in the garden when God made Eve, and he said now this is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone - the same as me. After sin, he takes it upon himself to name Eve in the same way he had named the donkey and horse-shoe crab. The roles have changed, and not for the better. But is the twisted state of sin that which we are destined to live in all the days of our lives? No! God sent His Son to set things right. First and foremost to set things right between God and humanity but also to set things right between each of us. The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:22: For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. The promise of Christ and the joy we have in the Spirit is that we are, by the grace of God and through faith in Christ, made, according to Scripture, New Creations. Behold, says the Word, the Old has gone, he has made all things new. We are not, in Christ, bound to live under the curse of sin any longer. This has profound implications for human relationships, for racial reconciliation, for equity in our institutions, and for interdependence and equity between the sexes. Nonetheless, while the Scripture says, For freedom Christ set us free, our freedom in Christ is tempered by our real lives in a sinful world. Jesus said that the Kingdom of God, that which makes all things new, is both here and coming soon. Was this double talk? Not at all. God is planting a garden through the seed of the holy spirit in the hearts of believers, but this garden is not alone. Growing along with us are weeds as well. Jesus described this growth process in his parables of the wheat and tares - Matthew 16:24-30: Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. "The owner's servants came to him and said, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?' "'An enemy did this,' he replied. "The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?' "'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.'" Someday the great gardener will collect his harvest and all the weeds will be tossed out and the good crop gathered in, then everything will great - the kingdom of God will have come. In the meantime, we live as a garden producing a crop amidst land full of weeds. The kingdom of God is present with each Christian, but that does not mean that the Kingdom of God is here in its entirety. It is now and not yet. We are living in an in between phase. The story of the Bible from beginning to end seems at times to be one of God trying to steer his weed-infested garden back to wholeness. At times the process of weed destruction would have been too devastating to crop as a whole. Therefore, we see Moses allowing divorce because, Jesus said, of the hardness of our hearts, not because it was what God wanted. We see Hebrew saints taking many wives, though from the beginning one wife for one man was God s plan, according to Moses and to Jesus. The New Testament instructs slaves, and there were many in the Roman empire of the first century, that they should obey their masters to bring glory to God. At the same time they should gain their freedom, after all, it was for freedom that Christ set us free. We see Paul telling slave owners that they should treat slaves well, but he also tells them to release slaves. Was God s word unnecessarily ambiguous? Maybe. Maybe on purpose. Cultural change is a long process. God is not seeking to turn one person to the right, but the whole world. It takes time. Still, the drumbeat of the Holy Spirit pounding with power throughout the early Christian church in terms of how we ought to get along is equality in Christ, unity in Christ. This is found nowhere more clearly than in the Bible s emancipation proclamation: Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. There is to be no racial prejudice in the church, Jew nor Greek. There is to be no class distinctions in the church, hence slave nor free. There is to be no gender distinctions in church, hence male nor female. But Page 2
of course, the weeds haven t been plucked from the garden, and even today and even in church we see racial prejudice, we see that the rich are more equal than the poor, and we see that women are often treated as second class citizens. These are the weeds, but it is not the fruit of God s spiritual garden for which he sent Christ. The water which irrigates our garden can seem muddy, too. Even Jesus said that you can not pour new wine into old wineskins. As the Kingdom of God clashes with the forest of weeds on earth, the effects are felt in both directions. The ideals of Scripture are often tempered by the world in practice, and the world is often changed for the better by the church crashes against the gates of hell in the power of the Holy Spirit. But the transition periods are always messy. This is true in the relationship between men and women as portrayed in Scripture. New Testament teachings and examples regarding women in ministry demonstrates that God s garden of equality is growing but still has a lot of weeds. One of the weeds in the early church, reflected in Scripture, was Roman Law regarding husbands and wives and Greek and Roman thought about the roles of women. In Roman Law, the woman was the property of her husband. She had no rights, she had no say, except as her husband decreed. She could not own property. While not the law of God, Roman Law was nonetheless the law of the land, and one of the key elements in promoting harmony in our societies, according to Scripture, is to obey the laws of the land. So much of what is taught in Scripture is specifically designed to promote social harmony between the church, with it s radical ideals of justice and righteousness, as it grows amidst the often unjust weeds of the world. Also, cultural practices and order and decorum played an important role in promoting the gospel. Even as the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 9:19-23: Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. Simply put, Paul s own practice as led by the Holy Spirit, was to fit in and do what was orderly and right depending upon the culture in which he, as a missionary, found himself. While he knew himself to be free of many of the weedy constraints of the world, he would rather be a slave than free if it meant winning others to Christ. I believe this same principle applies to Paul s statements that are often interpreted as prohibiting women from leadership roles in the church. In many churches it would have been so offensive because of the cultural practices, to have a woman lead the church, as to have been a hindrance to the gospel, but in other cases, women served plainly in leadership roles as the Holy Spirit led them and the church accepted it well. The texts which most often are quoted to prevent women from being ordained or assuming leadership roles are 1 Corinthians 14:33-35, and 1 Timothy 2:8. 1 Corinthians 14:33-35 reads:... God is not a God of disorder but of peace. As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. But everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way. The language surrounding a plain command for women to be silent is that all in church should be done in an orderly way. That is, in a culturally acceptable way, and women remaining silent in the church made the better impact in that culture at that time, hence, the phrase in a fitting - that is socially acceptable and orderly way. Before this passage, in 1 Corinthians 11, Paul says that it was fitting and orderly for women to wear hats in church as well. But to be consistent, he would probably tell those who asked him, that if they went to a community where hats were offensive, they should avoid wearing them so as to win as many as possible to Christ. The beat which continues to be pounded into the minds and heart of those who read this letter is found sandwiched between these two passages regulating women in church. It is in 1 Corinthians 11:11 In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman. But everything comes from God. In other words, the Bible is saying that it s important not to be duly offensive to those around you, and the male and female role definitions of the Roman ethos had much to do with this. But the ultimate value, the Page 3
one to keep foremost in mind, is the basic equality before God of male and female, the interdependent nature we share. Not the dominance of one over the other. Paul takes the same theme as he writes to his protégée Timothy (1Tim.2.9): I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. In this passage, Paul lists his desires for an orderly church, much as he did in 1 Corinthians. Among the desires is that we would be prayerful and not angry or disputing with one another (v8). Another desire is that women would dress modestly, and not make church into a fashion parade. But then, in verses 11 and 12 comes the Scripture to which all who oppose women in leadership roles in the church claim as Biblical prohibition against women leaders. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing-- if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety. Well, there it is. The Bible says it, I believe, that settles it. The Apostle Paul did not permit a woman to teach or have authority over a man, she must be silent. But note the reason Paul gives. He says this state of gender roles is because of the fall of Adam and Eve. Recall that the inequality between men and women is a result of the curse, a result of our sin, not part of God s original plan. That which we reviewed in Genesis 1-3 Paul reviews here again. We grow as God s holy garden producing fruit amidst the weeds and tares that infect our relationships one with the other. In my study of female leadership in the New Testament, I discovered many women described in terms of leadership roles, in terms of even pastoral and teaching ministry, as prophets and even as an apostle. As I studied other scholars and commentators, I found that they, when confronted with these texts, would frequently write something along these lines, the Bible describes this woman as if she were a pastor or leader in the church, but we know that cannot be true because of 1 Timothy 2. In other words, the interpretive grid for women leadership in the church has become 1Timothy 2:8, not Galatians 3:29 or 1Corinthians 11:11, or Genesis 1, or the high value placed on women by Jesus in the gospels, or on the clear role of female leadership in the book of Acts. As the Scripture surely does not contradict itself, I can only conclude that the role of women in Scripture, and in the church since the apostolic era, has been one of now and not yet. For while in some churches it was plain that Paul did not condone women as leaders, in others it was plain that he did. Indeed, he relied upon strong female leadership for the church. There are multiple examples in the Book of Acts, and scattered throughout the pages of the New Testament. However, I will focus on Romans 16, for in just a few verses, the Holy Spirit shines a bright spotlight on the leadership roles of women in the apostolic era. Romans 16 is a laundry list of recognition and thanks for all who have helped Paul in his ministry as a missionary, apostle, and preacher. Many of his co-workers are women. I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Cenchrea. I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been a great help to many people, including me. Phoebe was a servant, says the NIV. The actual word is deacon. There are two other words Paul could have used to describe a person of service or helper, but the one he chose, deacon, had gained the meaning of a church leader, even as today many churches still retain the leadership titles of deacon and elder. The plea Paul enters to give her help as she may need, is a phrase used of requesting support for missionaries in the early church. Further, the phrase, she has been a great help is not nearly as strong as the Greek implies. For the Greek phrase is more like, she is the protector or patron of many people, including me. There can be little doubt that Phoebe, was a church leader in Cenchrea and probably a wealthy overseer of many of the affairs in the church. Phoebe was probably not silent in church. Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus. They risked their lives for me. Not only I but all the churches of the Gentiles are grateful to them. Greet also the church that meets at their house... Priscilla, a woman, along with her husband Aquila, were fellow workers in the ministry of the word. They both, literally in the Greek text, risked their necks to help Paul in the ministry of the Word. These are two believers that have had great influence in the early church. They apparently served as equals in leadership. Indeed, in the 7 texts where this couple are mentioned, 5 of them list the woman, Priscilla before her husband Aquila. This indicates that she had, at least at times, the more important role in church affairs. She ran a house church and it was under her ministry that Apollos, one of the more outstanding early Christians, and according to Martin Luther, author of the Biblical book of Hebrews, was tutored by Priscilla (Acts 18:24-28). Priscilla didn t stay quiet in church. Some scholars make a good case for Hebrews actually having been authored by this Page 4
female teacher of Christian leaders. Greet Mary, who worked very hard for you. There are a lot of Marys in the Bible, and we re not certain which this may be, only that she was a hard working servant of Jesus Christ. Though she s not listed with any titles that indicate she was a pastor or leader in the church, it is noteworthy in and of itself that Paul again lists a woman as being noteworthy. Greet Andronicus and Junias, my relatives who have been in prison with me. They are outstanding among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was. This verse was a revelation to me as I studied it deeply. Andronicus and Junias served prison time with Paul, and they were counted among the Apostles. Many find it surprising that there were apostles other than the 12 who followed Christ, such as Peter, John, Matthew, etc., and the Apostle Paul. But Barnabas is called an Apostle in Acts 14, and in 1 Corinthians 15, Jesus is said to have appeared to the 12, and to the other apostles, and last of all to Paul as one abnormally born. Andronicus and Junias appear to be among these apostles, these missionaries, who were elected by the resurrected Christ even before Paul was called. And they were, in Paul s words, outstanding among the Apostles. Paul esteemed their apostolic leadership above even his own. Therefore, Junius was an apostle. There are 222 uses of this name in the contemporary texts we have to date. In all 222 uses of this name, it refers to a woman. Junius, was a woman, and an apostle whom Paul esteemed above even himself. I bet she spoke out in church. St. John Chrysostom, one of our early church leaders and archbishop of Constantinople in 400 AD, wrote of Junius: Then another praise besides. Who are of note among the Apostles. And indeed to be apostles at all is a great thing. But to be even amongst these of note, just consider what a great [praise] this is! But they were of note owing to their works, to their achievements. Oh! how great is the devotion of this woman, that she should be even counted worthy of the appellation of apostle! But even here he does not stop, but adds another [praise] besides, and says, Who were also in Christ before me. Eusebius writes that she became known as a bishop of the early church. Phoebe, a deacon and coworker with Paul. Priscilla, a co-worker with Paul and a house church leader and teacher of Apollos. Junias, a woman who was an apostle outstanding even to the other apostles. Clearly women in the apostolic era held leadership roles with the emphatic blessing of the same man who said women should be silent in church. How can this be? The constant struggle to redeem people and society is one in which God s garden grows, but weeds grow along side. We must be sensitive to the cultural standards around us, but at all times keeping God s emancipation proclamation running through our hearts and minds, changing our attitudes and our churches. Galatians 3:28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. In short, I can see how confusion may arise over this issue, I can see how sincere Christians who love Jesus may differ over the idea of women in church leadership. But I rejoice in the Scriptural clarity and balance that we enjoy in the Free Methodist Church. It is for freedom that Christ set us free. Let s get away from the curse of sin, and move headlong into the fullness of equality which God held out in paradise and which we can grasp through Christ s redemption and the Power of the Holy Spirit. I conclude with the words of Benjamin Titus Roberts, founder of the Free Methodist Movement (1891): All restrictions to positions in the church based on race have been abolished; it is time then that those based on sex were also abolished. The church has no right to forbid the free exercise of abilities to do good which God has given. To do so is usurpation and tyranny. Men had better busy themselves in building up the temple of God, instead of employing their time in pushing from the scaffold their sisters, who are both able and willing to work with them side by side. Page 5