THE BIBLE'S VIEWPOINT/Should Women Be Ministers?

"I HAVE been amazed and angered by the fact that nothing has changed for women in terms of being ordained," wrote a Catholic woman in the newspaper USA Today. Many people share her view. After all, in other religions women serve as ministers, priests, bishops, and rabbis.  

Religions on both sides of the controversy-those forbidding women to be ministers and those allowing them  to preach from the pulpit-claim to adhere to the Scriptures. However, the Bible does not support either view. How can that be?  To answer, we must first consider how the Bible uses the word "minister." 

First-Century Ministers

what does the word "minister" mean to you?  Many would immediately think of a religious leader, male or female, who presides over a congregation for worship.  But the Bible uses the word in a broader sense. Consider the Christian woman Phoebe, whom the apostle Paul introduced as "our sister, who is a minister of the congregation that is in Cenchreae." -Romans 16:1. 

Do you imagine Phoebe standing before the congregation in Cenchreae, presiding over a religious service?  Really, what ministry did Phoebe perform?  In his letter to the Philippians, Paul writes that certain women "worked together with me . . .in spreading the good news." - Italics ours; Philippians 4:2, 3, Contemporary English Version. 

The primary way in which first-century Christians spread the good news was "publicly and from house to house." (Acts 20:20) Those who engaged in that work were ministers. That included women such as Priscilla. She, along with her husband, "expounded the way of God more correctly" to a God-fearing man who had not yet been baptized as a Christian.  (Acts 18:25, 26) Like Phoebe, Priscilla evidently was an effective minister-as were many women.  

Next time: THE BIBLE'S VIEWPOINT/ Should Women Be Ministers? -A Dignified Role

From the Awake! magazine