Women in Ministry (1)

I see the modern approach to women’s ministry as a problem of false labelling.

We take the label given to a role in the NT church and give it to a role in our modern churches and assume that it makes them the same. That is illogical. I could give my dog the name “prophet”. I could then deduce from the scriptures that my dog is a false prophet, because only false prophets bark. This would be nonsense, because changing the name of my dog has not changed him. He is still just a dog.

The roles in the NT church are very different from the roles in a modern church. Giving them the same names creates the illusion that they are the same, but this is wrong. The NT church was a relational church, led by relational leaders. I have described how this works in my book Being Church. I think that a relational church should be our aspiration today, but that is beside the point here.

The point is that in a relational leadership model, cross-sexual relationships can become a problem. Men should not disciple women and woman should not disciple men. Jesus did choose twelve men, because men because men were superior, but to avoid the problems that would have arisen if he had a mixed team. Paul would not have taken Barbara with him, if Barnabas could not go, because that would be asking for trouble. It seems that some married apostles did take their wives and that was fine.

The modern church uses a managerial model. It is much closer to the model used in most businesses, than to anything in the New Testament. Giving these managment roles labels from the New Testament does not change anything, except it makes the roles seem different from what they really are. The elders of a modern church act more like the board of directors of a public company. Calling them elders does not change that. There is nothing in the NT Testament about how a board of directors should operate so trying to apply principles from there is pointless (apart from general guidance about good behaviour).