God Has Always Called All His People

Introducing a Series on Women in Scripture, and Why It Matters Now

“In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy... Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.” Acts 2:17-18 (NIV); see also Joel 2:28-29; Galatians 3:28

The Question on My Desk

I am a first-year divinity student at Shaw University, and I spend a lot of time with questions that do not have easy answers. That is, honestly, most of what seminary is. But this past year one question kept coming back every time I opened a commentary, sat in a classroom, or heard somebody in my congregation talk about what the Bible says women can and cannot do.

The question is this. When God calls someone to carry His word, does the gender of that person change the answer?

I have been sitting with that question long enough now that I want to open it up and work through it publicly. That is what this series is for. And I want to be honest with you from the first sentence: I am not neutral on it. I have landed somewhere. You are going to know exactly where I stand before you get to the end of this post.

The Ruling That Started the Conversation

In June 2023, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to remove Saddleback Church, one of the largest and most influential Baptist congregations in the country, from its fellowship. The reason was direct. Saddleback had ordained women as pastors, and the SBC's statement of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, holds that the office of pastor is limited to men.

The vote was not close.

That ruling did not happen in a vacuum. It followed years of debate, years of churches quietly doing what they believed God called them to do, and years of the convention deciding what kind of line it wanted to hold. The SBC is not a fringe organization. It is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. When it acts, it sends a signal across a wide range of churches and families.

I am not going to dismiss that ruling as ignorant or mean-spirited. The people who voted for it believe they are honoring Scripture. I take that seriously. But I also believe they are wrong, and I want to tell you why, from the Bible itself.

The Argument I Keep Hearing

The case for restricting women from the pastorate runs through a handful of verses. First Corinthians 14 says women should be silent in the churches. First Timothy 2 says Paul does not permit a woman to teach or assume authority over a man. And in that same passage Paul reaches back to creation: Adam was formed first, then Eve. That is not a cultural footnote. That is Genesis.

I understand why serious people read those verses and feel they have found the answer. I am going to give that argument its full due in this series, because a position you cannot state fairly is a position you do not really understand.

But here is the thing I keep running into. The same interpretive logic that would permanently silence women has to reckon with other things the church does freely. Scripture does not address microphones, online church, women teaching men in Sunday school classes, women writing Bible studies that men read, or women missionaries who evangelize and disciple men in other nations. We handle those with wisdom, with context, with careful reading of the whole counsel of God. We do not say silence means silence everywhere forever. We ask what the text was doing in its moment and what faithfulness looks like in ours.

I am not saying the hard verses do not matter. I am saying they deserve the same careful reading we give everything else. Read them in the room where they were written. Read them alongside the whole sweep of what God did with women in Scripture. Then decide.

The question was never whether God uses women. The pages are full of women He used. The question is whether we have been reading the whole Bible, or only the parts we were handed.

What the Whole Bible Actually Shows

Deborah was a judge and a prophet who led the entire nation of Israel. The army would not go to war without her. Miriam is called a prophet, named by God Himself as one of the three leaders He sent to bring Israel out of Egypt. When the king of Judah found a lost scroll of God's law and needed someone to authenticate it, he walked past the male prophets Jeremiah and Zephaniah and sent for a woman named Huldah. She spoke, and a nation turned back to God.

In the New Testament, Mary Magdalene was the first person to see the risen Jesus. He did not appear to Peter first. He appeared to a woman, and then He commissioned her to go and tell. She became the first proclaimer of the Resurrection. The church calls Easter the central event of the Christian faith, and the first person sent to proclaim it was a woman.

Paul called Phoebe a deacon, the same word he uses for male ministers, and trusted her to carry the letter of Romans to the church in Rome. He greeted a woman named Junia and called her outstanding among the apostles. He describes Priscilla, a woman, teaching the preacher Apollos a more accurate understanding of God's word.

Let me name an objection directly, because the most careful readers of this post will grant every example above and still hold the line. They will say: we do not deny that God used these women. What we are protecting is the formal church office, the office of elder and pastor, which First Timothy 3 and Titus 1 describe in terms that point to male leadership. That is a real argument and I am not going to step around it. Here is what I notice when I sit with it, though. When Paul writes about Phoebe in Romans 16:1, he uses the Greek word diakonos, the same word he uses everywhere else for the male deacon or minister. He did not reach for a softer word. He gave her the title. And when he greets Junia in Romans 16:7, he calls her outstanding among the apostles, using the language of apostolic commission for a woman he knew personally. The formal ministry vocabulary in Paul's own letters was not limited to men when Paul was describing the actual people doing the work.

This is not a thin thread. This is a pattern that runs from the front of the Old Testament to the back of the New Testament. God has always called all His people.

What This Series Is Going to Do

Over the coming weeks, this series will walk through all of this, post by post. We start with the honest question and the two hard verses that get quoted most. We sit with Deborah, who led a whole nation. We meet Miriam, Huldah, and Anna, three prophets nobody preaches. We walk through what Jesus did with women in His own ministry. We look at Paul's coworkers, the women he named with real titles doing real work. And we land together and talk about where this all leaves us.

I said at the top that I am not neutral. Let me say it plainly. I believe God calls women to preach, teach, lead, and carry His word. I believe the evidence from Scripture is stronger on that side than many of us were taught. I believe the SBC ruling reflects a reading of the text shaped more by the ancient Mediterranean world's view of women than by the God who said He would pour out His Spirit on sons and daughters alike.

I am also telling you this is not a series designed to make you fall in line behind me. I am a first-year student. I do not have all the answers, and I am going to show my work every step of the way. The people who hold the line on the pastorate for men are not villains. They are trying to be faithful. I am trying to be faithful too, and I think the fullest reading of the whole Bible leads somewhere different from where the SBC has landed.

Come look at the whole text with me, the hard verses and the women God used both. A faith that only quotes the verses that keep certain people quiet is not the whole faith.

An Invitation

If you have ever wondered about this, follow the series. If someone in your life has been hurt by this question, share it with them. If you disagree with me, good. Bring your best argument and let us wrestle with it together. That is what this space is for.

Every post will go deep on one or two figures. Every post will take the opposing view seriously. And every post will end with questions designed not to tell you what to think but to push you back to the text yourself.

God has always called all His people. Let us go find out what that looks like.

REFLECT & RESPOND

What did you grow up believing about women in leadership in the church? Did you come by that belief from the Bible itself, from your tradition, or from something else entirely?

The SBC removed a church for ordaining women. Where do you think the line is between conviction and control?

If God poured out His Spirit on sons and daughters alike on the day the church was born (Acts 2:17), what does it mean to restrict what a daughter can do with that Spirit?

Before you read the rest of this series, where do you honestly land, and what would it take to move you?

SOURCES AND FOR FURTHER READING

[1] Southern Baptist Convention. "The Baptist Faith and Message 2000." Article VI. https://bfm.sbc.net/bfm2000/.

[2] Bob Smietana, "Saddleback Church Removed from SBC," Christianity Today, June 13, 2023. https://www.christianitytoday.com/.

[3] Beck, James R., ed. Two Views on Women in Ministry. Rev. ed. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005.

[4] Christians for Biblical Equality International. "Men, Women, and Biblical Equality." 1989. https://www.cbeinternational.org/resource/men-women-and-biblical-equality/.

[5] Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. "The Danvers Statement." 1988. https://cbmw.org/about/danvers-statement/.

[6] New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011.