When a woman stands up to preach and the title of her sermon is “Can Women be Leaders in the Church?” you sort of expect that she has already answered the question, at least in her mind. And when the congregation to which she is preaching has called her as their pastor, you sort of assume they have already decided that it’s okay for a woman to be a leader in the church. So as I began thinking about this sermon, I wondered if it was really a topic worth preaching on. Then out of the blue, someone asked me a question about how we justify women in leadership with those sticky passages in the Bible, and I knew that God was leading me to preach on this topic. I think this is a topic worth examining, because not all Christians see it the same way. So rather than simply saying they’re wrong and we’re right, it is a good thing for us to think carefully about our position and to understand what the Bible does and does not say. I grew up in the church, and I never remember thinking about why it was that all pastors were men. Of course, at that time, almost all doctors, lawyers, firemen, policemen, and politicians were also men. I got the message growing up that as a girl, I should aspire to be a teacher, a secretary, or a nurse—or I could get married. Those were my choices. As a Christian, I knew that some women did become missionaries, and I thought about that. But I never even considered the possibility of becoming a pastor. About the time I graduated from college, there were a few brave women going to seminary, but I thought they were probably trying to prove some womens’ liberation point, and I wanted nothing to do with that. After college, I did volunteer work in an inner city church in When our children got older, I went to work part-time in the public schools. I thought about going back to school and getting a teaching certificate, but it never seemed exactly right for me. Then God called me, quite clearly, to go to seminary. At that time, I had not thought about being a pastor. I had always been greatly involved in volunteer church work, and I liked to write, so I thought perhaps God was leading me to do more writing or perhaps do something in the area of women ministries. As I progressed through seminary, I gradually recognized that God was calling me to be a pastor. It took me some time to grasp this and to accept it, because it just did not seem to me that it was something I could do. But the call persisted, and I do believe that I am your pastor today because this is what God called me and prepared me and gifted me to do. Of course, as a good Bible-believing Christian, I want to reconcile my call to preach with those verses in the New Testament that seem to prohibit women from doing any such thing. So today, let’s look at the two passages that are the most difficult. Both are attributed to the apostle Paul. The first is found in I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. The second troublesome passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. I encourage you to read these texts in their context, but for the sake of time, we are just going to focus on the most extreme statements. Many books have been written on this subject, so what I am saying today is only a small part of what could be said on this issue. And to be perfectly honest, scholars do not agree on the meaning of these passages. If you have a strong interest in this, I would be happy to give you more information than I can include in this sermon. But let’s make a stab at understanding what Paul might have meant here. When we come to a difficult passage in the Bible, it is always important to interpret scripture with scripture. That means we ask what does the witness of scripture tell us that sheds light on this particular subject. So when we talk about women in the church, we ask ourselves what else we know about what Paul believed regarding women, and how Jesus treated women. In the New Testament, there are numerous indications that women were accepted as leaders in the church. Paul himself refers to women such as Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junias, who he calls an apostle. Also, in Galatians 3:28, Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The other place we look in the New Testament is to see what Jesus seemed to believe about women. It is true Jesus did not have women in his immediate group of twelve disciples. To have done so would have been scandalous. But if you think of the disciples as his inner circle and then the other followers as the next circle out, it is clear that there were women in that group. There are many stories where Jesus treats women with great respect—much more that would have been typical in his day. For example, there is the way he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and there is the way he invited Mary to sit at his feet and learn, rather than expecting her to serve the meal. After the resurrection, the women were the first to discover the empty tomb. All in all, the New Testament seems to give higher regard to women than we would expect in that time and culture. That is why scholars have scratched their heads trying to understand what Paul meant by these statements. It seems that Paul is somewhat inconsistent in what he says concerning women. One thing to keep in mind is that Paul’s writings were letters written to specific churches. Any time we read someone’s letters, we only hear one side of the story and we never know everything about the situation the letter-writer is addressing. With that in mind, let’s look again at I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
So as I began thinking about this sermon, I wondered if it was really a topic worth preaching on. Then out of the blue, someone asked me a question about how we justify women in leadership with those sticky passages in the Bible, and I knew that God was leading me to preach on this topic. I think this is a topic worth examining, because not all Christians see it the same way. So rather than simply saying they’re wrong and we’re right, it is a good thing for us to think carefully about our position and to understand what the Bible does and does not say. I grew up in the church, and I never remember thinking about why it was that all pastors were men. Of course, at that time, almost all doctors, lawyers, firemen, policemen, and politicians were also men. I got the message growing up that as a girl, I should aspire to be a teacher, a secretary, or a nurse—or I could get married. Those were my choices. As a Christian, I knew that some women did become missionaries, and I thought about that. But I never even considered the possibility of becoming a pastor. About the time I graduated from college, there were a few brave women going to seminary, but I thought they were probably trying to prove some womens’ liberation point, and I wanted nothing to do with that. After college, I did volunteer work in an inner city church in When our children got older, I went to work part-time in the public schools. I thought about going back to school and getting a teaching certificate, but it never seemed exactly right for me. Then God called me, quite clearly, to go to seminary. At that time, I had not thought about being a pastor. I had always been greatly involved in volunteer church work, and I liked to write, so I thought perhaps God was leading me to do more writing or perhaps do something in the area of women ministries. As I progressed through seminary, I gradually recognized that God was calling me to be a pastor. It took me some time to grasp this and to accept it, because it just did not seem to me that it was something I could do. But the call persisted, and I do believe that I am your pastor today because this is what God called me and prepared me and gifted me to do. Of course, as a good Bible-believing Christian, I want to reconcile my call to preach with those verses in the New Testament that seem to prohibit women from doing any such thing. So today, let’s look at the two passages that are the most difficult. Both are attributed to the apostle Paul. The first is found in I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. The second troublesome passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. I encourage you to read these texts in their context, but for the sake of time, we are just going to focus on the most extreme statements. Many books have been written on this subject, so what I am saying today is only a small part of what could be said on this issue. And to be perfectly honest, scholars do not agree on the meaning of these passages. If you have a strong interest in this, I would be happy to give you more information than I can include in this sermon. But let’s make a stab at understanding what Paul might have meant here. When we come to a difficult passage in the Bible, it is always important to interpret scripture with scripture. That means we ask what does the witness of scripture tell us that sheds light on this particular subject. So when we talk about women in the church, we ask ourselves what else we know about what Paul believed regarding women, and how Jesus treated women. In the New Testament, there are numerous indications that women were accepted as leaders in the church. Paul himself refers to women such as Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junias, who he calls an apostle. Also, in Galatians 3:28, Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The other place we look in the New Testament is to see what Jesus seemed to believe about women. It is true Jesus did not have women in his immediate group of twelve disciples. To have done so would have been scandalous. But if you think of the disciples as his inner circle and then the other followers as the next circle out, it is clear that there were women in that group. There are many stories where Jesus treats women with great respect—much more that would have been typical in his day. For example, there is the way he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and there is the way he invited Mary to sit at his feet and learn, rather than expecting her to serve the meal. After the resurrection, the women were the first to discover the empty tomb. All in all, the New Testament seems to give higher regard to women than we would expect in that time and culture. That is why scholars have scratched their heads trying to understand what Paul meant by these statements. It seems that Paul is somewhat inconsistent in what he says concerning women. One thing to keep in mind is that Paul’s writings were letters written to specific churches. Any time we read someone’s letters, we only hear one side of the story and we never know everything about the situation the letter-writer is addressing. With that in mind, let’s look again at I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
I grew up in the church, and I never remember thinking about why it was that all pastors were men. Of course, at that time, almost all doctors, lawyers, firemen, policemen, and politicians were also men. I got the message growing up that as a girl, I should aspire to be a teacher, a secretary, or a nurse—or I could get married. Those were my choices. As a Christian, I knew that some women did become missionaries, and I thought about that. But I never even considered the possibility of becoming a pastor. About the time I graduated from college, there were a few brave women going to seminary, but I thought they were probably trying to prove some womens’ liberation point, and I wanted nothing to do with that. After college, I did volunteer work in an inner city church in When our children got older, I went to work part-time in the public schools. I thought about going back to school and getting a teaching certificate, but it never seemed exactly right for me. Then God called me, quite clearly, to go to seminary. At that time, I had not thought about being a pastor. I had always been greatly involved in volunteer church work, and I liked to write, so I thought perhaps God was leading me to do more writing or perhaps do something in the area of women ministries. As I progressed through seminary, I gradually recognized that God was calling me to be a pastor. It took me some time to grasp this and to accept it, because it just did not seem to me that it was something I could do. But the call persisted, and I do believe that I am your pastor today because this is what God called me and prepared me and gifted me to do. Of course, as a good Bible-believing Christian, I want to reconcile my call to preach with those verses in the New Testament that seem to prohibit women from doing any such thing. So today, let’s look at the two passages that are the most difficult. Both are attributed to the apostle Paul. The first is found in I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. The second troublesome passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. I encourage you to read these texts in their context, but for the sake of time, we are just going to focus on the most extreme statements. Many books have been written on this subject, so what I am saying today is only a small part of what could be said on this issue. And to be perfectly honest, scholars do not agree on the meaning of these passages. If you have a strong interest in this, I would be happy to give you more information than I can include in this sermon. But let’s make a stab at understanding what Paul might have meant here. When we come to a difficult passage in the Bible, it is always important to interpret scripture with scripture. That means we ask what does the witness of scripture tell us that sheds light on this particular subject. So when we talk about women in the church, we ask ourselves what else we know about what Paul believed regarding women, and how Jesus treated women. In the New Testament, there are numerous indications that women were accepted as leaders in the church. Paul himself refers to women such as Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junias, who he calls an apostle. Also, in Galatians 3:28, Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The other place we look in the New Testament is to see what Jesus seemed to believe about women. It is true Jesus did not have women in his immediate group of twelve disciples. To have done so would have been scandalous. But if you think of the disciples as his inner circle and then the other followers as the next circle out, it is clear that there were women in that group. There are many stories where Jesus treats women with great respect—much more that would have been typical in his day. For example, there is the way he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and there is the way he invited Mary to sit at his feet and learn, rather than expecting her to serve the meal. After the resurrection, the women were the first to discover the empty tomb. All in all, the New Testament seems to give higher regard to women than we would expect in that time and culture. That is why scholars have scratched their heads trying to understand what Paul meant by these statements. It seems that Paul is somewhat inconsistent in what he says concerning women. One thing to keep in mind is that Paul’s writings were letters written to specific churches. Any time we read someone’s letters, we only hear one side of the story and we never know everything about the situation the letter-writer is addressing. With that in mind, let’s look again at I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
About the time I graduated from college, there were a few brave women going to seminary, but I thought they were probably trying to prove some womens’ liberation point, and I wanted nothing to do with that. After college, I did volunteer work in an inner city church in When our children got older, I went to work part-time in the public schools. I thought about going back to school and getting a teaching certificate, but it never seemed exactly right for me. Then God called me, quite clearly, to go to seminary. At that time, I had not thought about being a pastor. I had always been greatly involved in volunteer church work, and I liked to write, so I thought perhaps God was leading me to do more writing or perhaps do something in the area of women ministries. As I progressed through seminary, I gradually recognized that God was calling me to be a pastor. It took me some time to grasp this and to accept it, because it just did not seem to me that it was something I could do. But the call persisted, and I do believe that I am your pastor today because this is what God called me and prepared me and gifted me to do. Of course, as a good Bible-believing Christian, I want to reconcile my call to preach with those verses in the New Testament that seem to prohibit women from doing any such thing. So today, let’s look at the two passages that are the most difficult. Both are attributed to the apostle Paul. The first is found in I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. The second troublesome passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. I encourage you to read these texts in their context, but for the sake of time, we are just going to focus on the most extreme statements. Many books have been written on this subject, so what I am saying today is only a small part of what could be said on this issue. And to be perfectly honest, scholars do not agree on the meaning of these passages. If you have a strong interest in this, I would be happy to give you more information than I can include in this sermon. But let’s make a stab at understanding what Paul might have meant here. When we come to a difficult passage in the Bible, it is always important to interpret scripture with scripture. That means we ask what does the witness of scripture tell us that sheds light on this particular subject. So when we talk about women in the church, we ask ourselves what else we know about what Paul believed regarding women, and how Jesus treated women. In the New Testament, there are numerous indications that women were accepted as leaders in the church. Paul himself refers to women such as Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junias, who he calls an apostle. Also, in Galatians 3:28, Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The other place we look in the New Testament is to see what Jesus seemed to believe about women. It is true Jesus did not have women in his immediate group of twelve disciples. To have done so would have been scandalous. But if you think of the disciples as his inner circle and then the other followers as the next circle out, it is clear that there were women in that group. There are many stories where Jesus treats women with great respect—much more that would have been typical in his day. For example, there is the way he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and there is the way he invited Mary to sit at his feet and learn, rather than expecting her to serve the meal. After the resurrection, the women were the first to discover the empty tomb. All in all, the New Testament seems to give higher regard to women than we would expect in that time and culture. That is why scholars have scratched their heads trying to understand what Paul meant by these statements. It seems that Paul is somewhat inconsistent in what he says concerning women. One thing to keep in mind is that Paul’s writings were letters written to specific churches. Any time we read someone’s letters, we only hear one side of the story and we never know everything about the situation the letter-writer is addressing. With that in mind, let’s look again at I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
When our children got older, I went to work part-time in the public schools. I thought about going back to school and getting a teaching certificate, but it never seemed exactly right for me. Then God called me, quite clearly, to go to seminary. At that time, I had not thought about being a pastor. I had always been greatly involved in volunteer church work, and I liked to write, so I thought perhaps God was leading me to do more writing or perhaps do something in the area of women ministries. As I progressed through seminary, I gradually recognized that God was calling me to be a pastor. It took me some time to grasp this and to accept it, because it just did not seem to me that it was something I could do. But the call persisted, and I do believe that I am your pastor today because this is what God called me and prepared me and gifted me to do. Of course, as a good Bible-believing Christian, I want to reconcile my call to preach with those verses in the New Testament that seem to prohibit women from doing any such thing. So today, let’s look at the two passages that are the most difficult. Both are attributed to the apostle Paul. The first is found in I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. The second troublesome passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. I encourage you to read these texts in their context, but for the sake of time, we are just going to focus on the most extreme statements. Many books have been written on this subject, so what I am saying today is only a small part of what could be said on this issue. And to be perfectly honest, scholars do not agree on the meaning of these passages. If you have a strong interest in this, I would be happy to give you more information than I can include in this sermon. But let’s make a stab at understanding what Paul might have meant here. When we come to a difficult passage in the Bible, it is always important to interpret scripture with scripture. That means we ask what does the witness of scripture tell us that sheds light on this particular subject. So when we talk about women in the church, we ask ourselves what else we know about what Paul believed regarding women, and how Jesus treated women. In the New Testament, there are numerous indications that women were accepted as leaders in the church. Paul himself refers to women such as Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junias, who he calls an apostle. Also, in Galatians 3:28, Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The other place we look in the New Testament is to see what Jesus seemed to believe about women. It is true Jesus did not have women in his immediate group of twelve disciples. To have done so would have been scandalous. But if you think of the disciples as his inner circle and then the other followers as the next circle out, it is clear that there were women in that group. There are many stories where Jesus treats women with great respect—much more that would have been typical in his day. For example, there is the way he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and there is the way he invited Mary to sit at his feet and learn, rather than expecting her to serve the meal. After the resurrection, the women were the first to discover the empty tomb. All in all, the New Testament seems to give higher regard to women than we would expect in that time and culture. That is why scholars have scratched their heads trying to understand what Paul meant by these statements. It seems that Paul is somewhat inconsistent in what he says concerning women. One thing to keep in mind is that Paul’s writings were letters written to specific churches. Any time we read someone’s letters, we only hear one side of the story and we never know everything about the situation the letter-writer is addressing. With that in mind, let’s look again at I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
As I progressed through seminary, I gradually recognized that God was calling me to be a pastor. It took me some time to grasp this and to accept it, because it just did not seem to me that it was something I could do. But the call persisted, and I do believe that I am your pastor today because this is what God called me and prepared me and gifted me to do. Of course, as a good Bible-believing Christian, I want to reconcile my call to preach with those verses in the New Testament that seem to prohibit women from doing any such thing. So today, let’s look at the two passages that are the most difficult. Both are attributed to the apostle Paul. The first is found in I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. The second troublesome passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. I encourage you to read these texts in their context, but for the sake of time, we are just going to focus on the most extreme statements. Many books have been written on this subject, so what I am saying today is only a small part of what could be said on this issue. And to be perfectly honest, scholars do not agree on the meaning of these passages. If you have a strong interest in this, I would be happy to give you more information than I can include in this sermon. But let’s make a stab at understanding what Paul might have meant here. When we come to a difficult passage in the Bible, it is always important to interpret scripture with scripture. That means we ask what does the witness of scripture tell us that sheds light on this particular subject. So when we talk about women in the church, we ask ourselves what else we know about what Paul believed regarding women, and how Jesus treated women. In the New Testament, there are numerous indications that women were accepted as leaders in the church. Paul himself refers to women such as Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junias, who he calls an apostle. Also, in Galatians 3:28, Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The other place we look in the New Testament is to see what Jesus seemed to believe about women. It is true Jesus did not have women in his immediate group of twelve disciples. To have done so would have been scandalous. But if you think of the disciples as his inner circle and then the other followers as the next circle out, it is clear that there were women in that group. There are many stories where Jesus treats women with great respect—much more that would have been typical in his day. For example, there is the way he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and there is the way he invited Mary to sit at his feet and learn, rather than expecting her to serve the meal. After the resurrection, the women were the first to discover the empty tomb. All in all, the New Testament seems to give higher regard to women than we would expect in that time and culture. That is why scholars have scratched their heads trying to understand what Paul meant by these statements. It seems that Paul is somewhat inconsistent in what he says concerning women. One thing to keep in mind is that Paul’s writings were letters written to specific churches. Any time we read someone’s letters, we only hear one side of the story and we never know everything about the situation the letter-writer is addressing. With that in mind, let’s look again at I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
So today, let’s look at the two passages that are the most difficult. Both are attributed to the apostle Paul. The first is found in I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. The second troublesome passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. I encourage you to read these texts in their context, but for the sake of time, we are just going to focus on the most extreme statements. Many books have been written on this subject, so what I am saying today is only a small part of what could be said on this issue. And to be perfectly honest, scholars do not agree on the meaning of these passages. If you have a strong interest in this, I would be happy to give you more information than I can include in this sermon. But let’s make a stab at understanding what Paul might have meant here. When we come to a difficult passage in the Bible, it is always important to interpret scripture with scripture. That means we ask what does the witness of scripture tell us that sheds light on this particular subject. So when we talk about women in the church, we ask ourselves what else we know about what Paul believed regarding women, and how Jesus treated women. In the New Testament, there are numerous indications that women were accepted as leaders in the church. Paul himself refers to women such as Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junias, who he calls an apostle. Also, in Galatians 3:28, Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The other place we look in the New Testament is to see what Jesus seemed to believe about women. It is true Jesus did not have women in his immediate group of twelve disciples. To have done so would have been scandalous. But if you think of the disciples as his inner circle and then the other followers as the next circle out, it is clear that there were women in that group. There are many stories where Jesus treats women with great respect—much more that would have been typical in his day. For example, there is the way he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and there is the way he invited Mary to sit at his feet and learn, rather than expecting her to serve the meal. After the resurrection, the women were the first to discover the empty tomb. All in all, the New Testament seems to give higher regard to women than we would expect in that time and culture. That is why scholars have scratched their heads trying to understand what Paul meant by these statements. It seems that Paul is somewhat inconsistent in what he says concerning women. One thing to keep in mind is that Paul’s writings were letters written to specific churches. Any time we read someone’s letters, we only hear one side of the story and we never know everything about the situation the letter-writer is addressing. With that in mind, let’s look again at I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. The second troublesome passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. I encourage you to read these texts in their context, but for the sake of time, we are just going to focus on the most extreme statements. Many books have been written on this subject, so what I am saying today is only a small part of what could be said on this issue. And to be perfectly honest, scholars do not agree on the meaning of these passages. If you have a strong interest in this, I would be happy to give you more information than I can include in this sermon. But let’s make a stab at understanding what Paul might have meant here. When we come to a difficult passage in the Bible, it is always important to interpret scripture with scripture. That means we ask what does the witness of scripture tell us that sheds light on this particular subject. So when we talk about women in the church, we ask ourselves what else we know about what Paul believed regarding women, and how Jesus treated women. In the New Testament, there are numerous indications that women were accepted as leaders in the church. Paul himself refers to women such as Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junias, who he calls an apostle. Also, in Galatians 3:28, Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The other place we look in the New Testament is to see what Jesus seemed to believe about women. It is true Jesus did not have women in his immediate group of twelve disciples. To have done so would have been scandalous. But if you think of the disciples as his inner circle and then the other followers as the next circle out, it is clear that there were women in that group. There are many stories where Jesus treats women with great respect—much more that would have been typical in his day. For example, there is the way he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and there is the way he invited Mary to sit at his feet and learn, rather than expecting her to serve the meal. After the resurrection, the women were the first to discover the empty tomb. All in all, the New Testament seems to give higher regard to women than we would expect in that time and culture. That is why scholars have scratched their heads trying to understand what Paul meant by these statements. It seems that Paul is somewhat inconsistent in what he says concerning women. One thing to keep in mind is that Paul’s writings were letters written to specific churches. Any time we read someone’s letters, we only hear one side of the story and we never know everything about the situation the letter-writer is addressing. With that in mind, let’s look again at I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. I encourage you to read these texts in their context, but for the sake of time, we are just going to focus on the most extreme statements. Many books have been written on this subject, so what I am saying today is only a small part of what could be said on this issue. And to be perfectly honest, scholars do not agree on the meaning of these passages. If you have a strong interest in this, I would be happy to give you more information than I can include in this sermon. But let’s make a stab at understanding what Paul might have meant here. When we come to a difficult passage in the Bible, it is always important to interpret scripture with scripture. That means we ask what does the witness of scripture tell us that sheds light on this particular subject. So when we talk about women in the church, we ask ourselves what else we know about what Paul believed regarding women, and how Jesus treated women. In the New Testament, there are numerous indications that women were accepted as leaders in the church. Paul himself refers to women such as Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junias, who he calls an apostle. Also, in Galatians 3:28, Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The other place we look in the New Testament is to see what Jesus seemed to believe about women. It is true Jesus did not have women in his immediate group of twelve disciples. To have done so would have been scandalous. But if you think of the disciples as his inner circle and then the other followers as the next circle out, it is clear that there were women in that group. There are many stories where Jesus treats women with great respect—much more that would have been typical in his day. For example, there is the way he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and there is the way he invited Mary to sit at his feet and learn, rather than expecting her to serve the meal. After the resurrection, the women were the first to discover the empty tomb. All in all, the New Testament seems to give higher regard to women than we would expect in that time and culture. That is why scholars have scratched their heads trying to understand what Paul meant by these statements. It seems that Paul is somewhat inconsistent in what he says concerning women. One thing to keep in mind is that Paul’s writings were letters written to specific churches. Any time we read someone’s letters, we only hear one side of the story and we never know everything about the situation the letter-writer is addressing. With that in mind, let’s look again at I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
But let’s make a stab at understanding what Paul might have meant here. When we come to a difficult passage in the Bible, it is always important to interpret scripture with scripture. That means we ask what does the witness of scripture tell us that sheds light on this particular subject. So when we talk about women in the church, we ask ourselves what else we know about what Paul believed regarding women, and how Jesus treated women. In the New Testament, there are numerous indications that women were accepted as leaders in the church. Paul himself refers to women such as Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junias, who he calls an apostle. Also, in Galatians 3:28, Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The other place we look in the New Testament is to see what Jesus seemed to believe about women. It is true Jesus did not have women in his immediate group of twelve disciples. To have done so would have been scandalous. But if you think of the disciples as his inner circle and then the other followers as the next circle out, it is clear that there were women in that group. There are many stories where Jesus treats women with great respect—much more that would have been typical in his day. For example, there is the way he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and there is the way he invited Mary to sit at his feet and learn, rather than expecting her to serve the meal. After the resurrection, the women were the first to discover the empty tomb. All in all, the New Testament seems to give higher regard to women than we would expect in that time and culture. That is why scholars have scratched their heads trying to understand what Paul meant by these statements. It seems that Paul is somewhat inconsistent in what he says concerning women. One thing to keep in mind is that Paul’s writings were letters written to specific churches. Any time we read someone’s letters, we only hear one side of the story and we never know everything about the situation the letter-writer is addressing. With that in mind, let’s look again at I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
Paul himself refers to women such as Priscilla, Phoebe, and Junias, who he calls an apostle. Also, in Galatians 3:28, Paul writes, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” The other place we look in the New Testament is to see what Jesus seemed to believe about women. It is true Jesus did not have women in his immediate group of twelve disciples. To have done so would have been scandalous. But if you think of the disciples as his inner circle and then the other followers as the next circle out, it is clear that there were women in that group. There are many stories where Jesus treats women with great respect—much more that would have been typical in his day. For example, there is the way he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and there is the way he invited Mary to sit at his feet and learn, rather than expecting her to serve the meal. After the resurrection, the women were the first to discover the empty tomb. All in all, the New Testament seems to give higher regard to women than we would expect in that time and culture. That is why scholars have scratched their heads trying to understand what Paul meant by these statements. It seems that Paul is somewhat inconsistent in what he says concerning women. One thing to keep in mind is that Paul’s writings were letters written to specific churches. Any time we read someone’s letters, we only hear one side of the story and we never know everything about the situation the letter-writer is addressing. With that in mind, let’s look again at I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
There are many stories where Jesus treats women with great respect—much more that would have been typical in his day. For example, there is the way he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well, and there is the way he invited Mary to sit at his feet and learn, rather than expecting her to serve the meal. After the resurrection, the women were the first to discover the empty tomb. All in all, the New Testament seems to give higher regard to women than we would expect in that time and culture. That is why scholars have scratched their heads trying to understand what Paul meant by these statements. It seems that Paul is somewhat inconsistent in what he says concerning women. One thing to keep in mind is that Paul’s writings were letters written to specific churches. Any time we read someone’s letters, we only hear one side of the story and we never know everything about the situation the letter-writer is addressing. With that in mind, let’s look again at I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
One thing to keep in mind is that Paul’s writings were letters written to specific churches. Any time we read someone’s letters, we only hear one side of the story and we never know everything about the situation the letter-writer is addressing. With that in mind, let’s look again at I Corinthians 14: 34-35. 34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
34women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35If 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. Many scholars believe Paul is referring here to a group of married women who have gotten a bit too excited over their newfound freedom in the Christian church, and they are being disruptive in the church services. When he says they are to remain silent in the churches, he means they need to stop disrupting the services with questions that should be taken care of at home. This seems to make sense, because of the fact that earlier, in I Corinthians 11:5, there is an assumption that women do indeed lead the congregation in praying and prophesying. Paul writes “every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head…” What we know of the early church assures us that these women who were praying or prophesying were doing so in the church. Prophesying would be the closest thing to preaching. So, the argument goes, if Paul wanted the women to prophesy with their heads covered, we can assume that Paul wanted women to prophesy. And that definitely means they were speaking, not being silent. Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
Also, this seems logical because the larger context of this chapter is the subject of orderly worship. So it does not seem to be a permanent rule for women in the church, but rather an adjustment that certain women need to make in their behavior for the good of the order. The second passage is in I Timothy 2:11-12.11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
11A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. The first problem with this text is in translation. The word that is translated “authority” is rare in Greek literature and this verse is the only place in the entire Bible where this word is used. So scholars debate exactly what that word really means. It may mean something more like “dominate” or “domineer” than have authority over. One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
One possibility scholars have suggested is that the situation that Timothy, the young pastor, faces is that there are dangerous heresies being taught. It may be a situation where particular women are causing problems in the church because they are pushing false teachings, and undermining Pastor Timothy’s good teaching. If we understand it in that way, a better translation might be “I permit no woman to teach if her aim is to domineer.” In other words, Paul may be instructing Timothy to take charge in a specific situation that is getting out of hand because of the actions of a specific group of women. We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
We know, of course, that Paul’s writing took place in a certain time and cultural context. Nowhere in the Bible are we taught to live our lives as if we were part of an ancient culture. Rather, we are to appropriate biblical principles to our own cultural context. My own conviction is that God calls and gifts women to serve him in leadership roles, just as he calls and gifts men. Whether I do a good job or not as a leader in the church is not because of my gender. Also, I believe that the issue is that there is a job to be done, and all who are willing and able are called to participate, using their abilities in the best way they can. When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
When God called me to go to seminary, he spoke to me about leadership in the church. God showed me that the church could not function at its full potential with half a head. In other words, if God meant for all the best leaders from among both men and women to be actively serving in the church, limiting positions of leadership to men alone would be the same as trying to function with the leadership of half a head. I believe God calls women as well as men to lead his church. In Christ, we are free to exercise our God-given gifts by responding to God’s call on our lives. The challenges facing the church today are enormous. Perhaps the challenges always have been daunting, but they seem even greater today than ever before. To restrict leadership only to men seems absurd to me. If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
If you were having a heart attack and the medic who responded to your door was a woman, would you tell her to go away and send a man to help you? Of course not! If you were on a sinking ship and the person helping you into the life-boat was a woman, surely you would not refuse to let her help you! In the same way, I believe that women who accept leadership roles in the church are using their God-given abilities to care for God’s people and to reach out into the world with the message of the gospel. I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
I do want to say something about the subject of authority in the church. The nature of the church is that no one should be heavily authoritative in the church. We are all equal in Christ Jesus. It is true that some people take authoritative positions for the good of the order. When no one is in charge of anything, chaos generally is the result. Jesus modeled a beautiful sort of authority that we should try to emulate. His authority came out of his wisdom and his teaching and his love for the people. He had no earthly position. He was the leader of his disciples because they recognized him as their teacher. Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
Earlier in the service, Gwen read that beautiful passage in Philippians, another book written by Paul and Timothy. The passage she read includes this beautiful description of Jesus as our servant leader. Even though Jesus was in his very nature God, he did not grasp for equality, but he took the nature of a servant. Then, he humbled himself even to death on a cross. This is our model of true leadership. It’s not about being important or powerful in human terms. It is about emptying oneself of self importance and being a servant. So whether a leader or a pastor is a man or a woman, he or she ought to pattern their leadership after Jesus. I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
I would like to read that beautiful passage form Philippians 2:1-11 as our closing prayer.
Prayer:
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
1If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, 2then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. 3Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. 4Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.
5Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
6Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
7but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
8And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
9Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
10that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. Amen
top