The NXR Podcast - June 30, 2022


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


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

186.52

Word count

1,590

Sentence count

89

Harmful content

Misogyny

7

sentences flagged

Hate speech

21

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Is it biblical for a woman to be in a leadership role within the church? Should women be in leadership roles in the church if they are not a deacon or an elder? Should a woman be on staff if she is not an elder, if she s not a leader? Is it biblical to have non-ordained staff in a church?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
00:00:03.440 If you've been blessed by our content and you like this show,
00:00:06.440 would you take just a brief moment and leave us a five-star review?
00:00:09.760 This is quite possibly the most effective thing that you can do
00:00:12.880 to ensure that this content gets out to as many people as possible. Thanks.
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, 0.99
00:01:18.260 I forbid a woman to teach with authority. 1.00
00:01:19.780 No, Paul says, I forbid a woman to teach 1.00
00:01:22.020 or exercise authority. 1.00
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. 0.93
00:01:33.660 So if a woman is not an elder, all right, it sounds like we would agree on that, that 1.00
00:01:38.280 women shouldn't be elders. 1.00
00:01:39.320 That's clear in scripture. 1.00
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 0.62
00:01:51.380 everyone became a feminist, all of a sudden, oh, now we have the right reading of scripture. No, 0.55
00:01:56.360 I think you're just feminist. But male eldership, male diaconate, in terms of officers, ordained 1.00
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. 1.00
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 1.00
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, 1.00
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 0.99
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. 0.99
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 1.00
00:05:41.280 an empty church building with two members of the opposite sex with nobody present. 1.00
00:05:46.940 That's just, you know what I mean? 1.00
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? 0.98
00:05:59.220 Well, she's exercising authority, but the authority that she's exercising is, hey, could 1.00
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, 0.99
00:06:30.920 yeah, it shouldn't be a woman. I think that's dangerous and inappropriate, and we're called 1.00
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 0.97
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
00:08:24.580 the best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content
00:08:28.660 to as many people as possible. Thanks so much.