The NXR Podcast - QUESTIONS - Can Women Be On Church Staff With Men Reporting To Them？

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00:00:21.340 Regarding church staff, is it biblical for a woman to be in a lead role such as communications director

00:00:27.500 or other ministry within the church

00:00:30.300 and have men, others report to her.

00:00:32.460 They're not teaching.

00:00:33.320 Yeah, yeah, got you.

00:00:34.420 So no, I would say no.

00:00:36.200 And this is why.

00:00:37.680 And this is something that guys are trying to do

00:00:39.980 again and again and again.

00:00:40.940 I'm not saying you're trying to do this coffee

00:00:42.280 with ranch hands, which I knew your actual name.

00:00:44.560 It feels weird addressing it.

00:00:45.860 Dear coffee with ranch hands.

00:00:47.720 But I don't think you're trying to do this,

00:00:49.760 but a lot of people are.

00:00:50.620 What they try to do is there's two prohibitions,

00:00:52.660 two things that Paul clearly forbids, prohibits.

00:00:55.920 in 1 Timothy chapter two, verse nine through 15.

00:01:00.180 And a lot of people are trying to combine them

00:01:02.080 and make it one.

00:01:03.000 They're trying to truncate Paul's prohibition

00:01:05.780 and say there's only one thing that Paul prohibits.

00:01:09.300 He prohibits a woman to teach with authority.

00:01:12.720 And that is a clear misreading of the text.

00:01:17.080 The text doesn't say,

00:01:18.260 I forbid a woman to teach with authority.

00:01:19.780 No, Paul says, I forbid a woman to teach

00:01:22.020 or exercise authority.

00:01:24.580 Not one prohibition teaching with authority, but two prohibitions teaching or exercising

00:01:29.980 authority, teaching or exercising authority.

00:01:33.660 So if a woman is not an elder, all right, it sounds like we would agree on that, that

00:01:38.280 women shouldn't be elders.

00:01:39.320 That's clear in scripture.

00:01:40.980 And I would hold to a male diaconate as well.

00:01:43.920 I don't think that there's, you know, any biblical evidence whatsoever.

00:01:47.620 And that has been the historic position of the church until about 15 minutes ago when

00:01:51.380 everyone became a feminist, all of a sudden, oh, now we have the right reading of scripture. No,

00:01:56.360 I think you're just feminist. But male eldership, male diaconate, in terms of officers, ordained

00:02:02.700 officers of the church, those are reserved for men. And in terms of teaching, it sounds like

00:02:07.660 you would agree like, okay, yeah. And also, if a woman can't be a deacon and she can't be an elder,

00:02:12.160 she also doesn't need to be preaching on the Lord's day. And that's not contradicting what

00:02:16.320 I said earlier. Well, I thought you said, Joel, that within Reformed Baptist polity, you don't

00:02:19.600 have to be an elder to teach. Yeah, but you have to be biblically qualified. You may not have the

00:02:24.160 office, the title, the ordination, but you have to be biblically qualified. And one of the biblical

00:02:28.840 qualifications is maleness. That is one of the qualifications. It's not just doctrinally sound.

00:02:35.920 It's not just able to teach. It's also man, man, but one wife, right? So that's part of the

00:02:42.220 qualification. So you can't be an elder. You can't be a deacon. You also cannot teach. So then the

00:02:47.060 question is, but can you be in a leadership role exercising authority over men? And I would say no,

00:02:52.340 because Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority. I think that these

00:02:58.000 roles, even if it's a non-ordained role, right, it's not an elder, it's not a deacon. So it begs

00:03:04.480 another question, should a church employ on staff people who are not ordained officers of the church,

00:03:10.740 someone who is a non-deacon or a non-elder, but still on staff with the church? Yes, I think

00:03:17.020 biblically that is permissible. I'm not saying you should do it. I'm not saying it's ideal,

00:03:20.480 but yes, it is biblically permissible, right? Like you could have a janitor, right? If your

00:03:25.340 church is huge, you know, I think the church is smaller than everybody just pitching and clean

00:03:30.520 up, right? But if your church is huge, a thousand people and all those, you know, okay, you can have

00:03:34.340 a janitor on staff with the church, and that could be a full-time job with the church that size.

00:03:39.340 And that person could be a woman or a man, and it would not contain any teaching role or any

00:03:46.460 authority. But a communications director, part of my problem in answering the question is I don't

00:03:54.360 really know what the heck a communications director is. Nathan, what is a communications

00:03:59.500 director? Just an office administrator? Do you think that's what he's getting at or she's getting

00:04:07.060 at? Yeah, so the example that you gave, and I'm sorry, I'm trying to understand your question.

00:04:13.860 I'm not saying it's your fault, but the communications director, that just could be so

00:04:17.680 broad, you know, and even the word director, you know, it seems to invoke a sense of authority,

00:04:24.120 you know, in the same way that, you know, on our church website, we would use the word pastor

00:04:28.600 for anyone who is an elder. Well, what I've done in the past is I've also used the word director

00:04:33.980 for anyone who's a deacon. So, so if you're a deacon over this ministry or whatever, I say,

00:04:40.020 you're the such and such director. And likewise, if you're an elder with this,

00:04:44.820 you're the such and such pastor. And so communications director just seems big. It

00:04:50.560 seems broad. That person could be in charge of curating and also editing and being the gatekeeper

00:04:58.680 for the theological platforms of the church with social media or recorded. I don't know,

00:05:07.600 all these different things. But I know your main question is saying, okay, it's a team lead,

00:05:12.400 somebody who has other people either working underneath them or volunteering underneath them.

00:05:18.640 Yeah, I think it depends. It depends on the nature of the work, right? So again, back to

00:05:23.320 the thousand person church, let's say a woman is the lead janitor, right? But let's say it's

00:05:28.900 such a big church that she needs an assistant. Can she have an assistant who's a man? Well,

00:05:33.480 I mean, if they're in the church, a guy and a girl together in the church, nobody else is there.

00:05:37.440 I would just, again, I'd say that's not a good idea, just by virtue of, we don't want

00:05:41.280 an empty church building with two members of the opposite sex with nobody present.

00:05:46.940 That's just, you know what I mean?

00:05:48.100 That's just a bad idea.

00:05:48.940 But in a hypothetical situation, blah, blah, blah, and, you know, would it be okay for

00:05:53.920 a female lead janitor and a male assistant janitor who reports to her?

00:05:59.220 Well, she's exercising authority, but the authority that she's exercising is, hey, could

00:06:03.440 you clean the bathroom and could you use bleach?

00:06:06.240 It's just different.

00:06:07.440 that's different than communications director that could be just an office administrator,

00:06:12.480 you know, helping to schedule the pastor's, you know, week, you know, when people ask to meet with

00:06:16.900 him or this or that. So, it just depends what you mean. Do you mean an office administrator?

00:06:21.560 Again, same kind of, you know, disclaimer that I gave a second ago, if there's going to be times

00:06:26.520 where the pastor and this office administrator are up at the church alone, nobody else is there,

00:06:30.920 yeah, it shouldn't be a woman. I think that's dangerous and inappropriate, and we're called

00:06:34.920 to avoid even the appearance of evil, whether or not something actually inappropriate happens.

00:06:40.260 But assuming that there's a large staff and all this kind of stuff, there's plenty of

00:06:43.340 accountability and they're not sharing an office and blah, blah, blah, and there's open

00:06:46.360 door policy, you know, all those kinds of things, right?

00:06:49.320 The Mike Pence model, which I think is a good model, all those things.

00:06:52.900 If office administrator is just, I'm scheduling things for the pastor.

00:06:58.060 I'm not really exercising authority over anybody.

00:07:00.600 I'm just, I'm an office administrator.

00:07:02.480 I'm an administrator.

00:07:03.740 Yeah, then I think that that could be permissible.

00:07:06.280 But it sounds like what you're talking about is people would report to her, be working under her, and communications director sounds broader.

00:07:14.900 Like it has authority over more things than just an administrator, a secretary.

00:07:22.340 And so in that case, I would say, yeah, I don't think that's a good idea.

00:07:24.920 I think you should have a man to direct people, to be a director.

00:07:29.560 All right, because all that being said, 1 Timothy 2, verse 9 through 15, the prohibition

00:07:36.820 that Paul gives is not, one, teaching with authority, but two, teaching or exercising

00:07:42.380 authority.

00:07:43.520 And so, however you apply that, I think at least the principle, I hope you go away with

00:07:47.720 the principle, the principle is, it is inappropriate in the mind of Paul for a woman, even if she's

00:07:55.500 not teaching, publicly teaching men, it is still inappropriate just to be exercising authority

00:08:02.600 over men. And obviously, there's a spectrum there of clean the toilets with bleach versus,

00:08:09.480 I don't know, whatever. There's a spectrum there, but that's the principle. That's the big idea.

00:08:14.940 Thanks so much for listening. But real quick, before you go, do us a small favor,

00:08:19.180 take a moment, and leave us a five-star review if you enjoyed the show. This is undoubtedly

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The NXR Podcast - June 30, 2022

QUESTIONS - Can Women Be On Church Staff With Men Reporting To Them？

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