JBMW Forum: Q & A on Women Teaching Mixed-Gender Sunday School

JBMW: Address head-on the ques­tion of women teaching mixed-gender Sunday school classes, Bible studies, conferences, etc.?

Wayne Grudem: What the Bible says is, "I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man" (1 Tim 2:12). As we analyze the context, I am quite certain Paul is talking about the context of the assembled church where believers come together to worship and pray and hear instruction from God's Word. In that kind of context, Paul says that women should not do the "teach­ing," which would mean Bible teaching to the assembled group of both men and women.

It seems to me that women teach­ing a mixed-gender Sunday School class looks exactly like what Paul said not to do. And women doing the Bible teach­ing at large conferences, where both men and women are present, is contrary to what Paul says, at least in my under­standing. I know that people can point out some differences in these situations as well as similarities, but the similari­ties to me seem so overwhelming that I simply could not approve of women teaching the Bible in a mixed-gender Sunday School class or teaching the Bible to men at a conference.

On the other hand, as I have said often in my writing, I think that Scrip­ture encourages women as well as men to learn Scripture thoroughly, and I would certainly support women doing Bible teaching to groups of other wom­en (or children up through high school age, who are under the authority of both their parents). These things do not seem to me to be what Paul is prohibiting, but would be excellent uses of women's gifts.

I am concerned about a "slip­pery slope" on this issue in evangeli­cal churches. If churches allow women to teach an adult Bible class, or even preach a sermon "under the authority of the pastor and elders," then I think it will soon be very difficult to say in what way that is different from preaching fairly often on a Sunday morning to the whole church. There is hardly any dif­ference at all in what it looks like and what actually happens. So I think that evangelical churches that go that route will have a very difficult time stopping themselves from moving in a more egal­itarian direction in the coming years.

David W. Jones: For the sake of space, I'll assume that most readers of this journal accept 1 Tim 2:12 as the correct answer to the question of women teach­ing mixed-gender Sunday school classes, Bible studies, conferences, etc. Indeed, the problem in otherwise complemen­tarian affirming churches and organiza­tions that allow for this practice is usu­ally not that the leadership consists of closet theological egalitarians, but rather that the leadership contains open prac­tical egalitarians. In other words, when women teach in mixed-gender settings it is usually because something other than the Word of God has become the source of authority for the decision maker(s) in the church or organization-even if they are not consciously aware of it. Options for such alternate sources of author­ity include: pragmatism (i.e., "But she's a good Bible teacher"), traditionalism (i.e., "It's the way it was when I became pastor here"), self-preservation (i.e., "If I lovingly confront this situation, I may get fired"), and financial greed (i.e., "But the men will pay the conference reg­istration fee, too"), among many other options. Of course, there are often­times thinly-veiled attempts to disguise the abandonment of Scripture as one's source of authority. Common practices include having a class co-taught by a male and a female-as if it were possi­ble to sanctify error by mixing truth and error-and claims that pastoral con­sent of such an arrangement results in a woman teaching under a male's author­ity-as if pastors have the right to sublet the authority that the Lord has vested in them. Should women be allowed to teach in mixed-gender settings? Given a complementarian understanding of Scripture, if the Word of God is one's source of authority, the simple answer is "No."

Dorothy Patterson: When looking for guidelines for women in the church, the question is often framed in a confus­ing way to suggest that the issue is what women can do in the church. Women are not only gifted in every venue of service to Christ, but many are very well pre­pared academically and theologically to tackle any assignment in the kingdom. With a graduate degree and two post-graduate degrees in theology, I probably have more theological training than a high percentage of pastors. I have heard many women teach whose giftedness in pedagogical method and charisma in communication surpasses overwhelm­ingly many-perhaps even a majority of pastors (trained or untrained). Op­portunity for service is also part of the equation, and never have the needs for laborers in the vineyard been any greater than they are today. Unfortunately, there is a great vacuum of masculine leader­ship in the kingdom-whether on the denominational level or in the local church or on the mission field.

The biblical guidelines that speak to what women are permitted by Scrip­ture to do in the church are not framed according to "office" or position. Nor is the idea of giftedness or academic prep­aration in the equation. Nor is there a catch-all category of "whatever a man is unavailable to do." Perhaps these omissions are considered to be lack of forethought by the Creator since the vacuum of leadership seems easy to solve were it not for what would seem to be unfortunate prohibitions from the first century text. On the other hand, who among us-man or woman-can think God's thoughts and understand His ways! He is working from a much bigger picture. The amazing consistency found in harmonizing the creation or­der of Genesis with the discussions on family relationships and then with the workings of church order give pause to all who feel equipped to rework the Creator's plan to fit the present culture.

For me, the clear prohibitions in 1 Timothy 2 are twofold: women do not teach men; women do not rule over men. The setting is a passage on church order, but common sense would dictate to me that what applies to the local church would not be carelessly abandoned in other manifestations of kingdom min­istry. In other words, I feel bound by the spirit of the passage as well as by its words. Also, I see no need to go be­yond Scripture, which does not prohibit (permits but does not mandate) prayer or testimony by a woman in the con­gregation nor forbid her interaction on biblical truths in a private conversation with a man (as Pricilla and Aquila with Apollos in Acts 18:26). To look for the exceptions to what is clearly written in Scripture seems foolish. How much wiser to allow for the brief and intermit­tent experiences that fall on the edges to be evaluated as needed according to the spirit of the passage.