04/06/2026
The Practice of Using Women “Ministers” is a
Mark of “Mainstream Churches of Christ”
Daniel Denham
In an article from Sept. 17, 2019, Steve Gardner reported that the Highland Church of Christ in Abilene, Texas, “announced this month that both women and men will preach in its worship services. Previously, it prohibited women from preaching.” (One of the Largest Churches of Christ Opens Preaching Role to Women—And Some Questions, Authentic Theology). He noted later that other congregations have also introduced the same, e.g., the Refuge Church of Christ and the Minter Lane Church of Christ. Without doubt, others are doing the same. In fact, for over 40 years the Quail Valley and Bering Drive congregations in Houston, Texas, have been using women (as well as denominational preachers—both men and women) in their worship services. Several other churches have as well, especially those which have embraced rank liberalism and postmodernism across the board.
Gardner also observed that many of the colleges and universities associated with the Church of Christ allow women to preach in their chapel services. He stated that Faulkner and Freed-Hardeman forbid the practice, as well as forbid women from “leading singing, reading scripture, and leading prayer in their chapel services when men are present.”
In an earlier article from March 26, 2019, Gardner documents nine other congregations, along with the Highland Church in Abilene, practicing the use of women preachers in the public assemblies with men present. The churches he lists are as follows: the Sycamore View Church of Christ in Memphis, TN; Southern Hills Church of Christ in Abilene, TX; Providence Road Church of Christ in Charlotte, NC; Meadowbrook Church of Christ in Jackson, MS; Glenwood Church of Christ in Tyler, TX; Manhattan Church of Christ in New York City, NY; the Oak Hills Church (formerly Church of Christ) in San Antonio, TX; Fourth Avenue Church of Christ in Franklin, TN; and Springfield Church of Christ in Springfield, VA.
Gardner himself appears very happy with this turn of events, even reveling in them. Of course, he categorizes the Lord’s Church as simply another “evangelical denomination,” which shows his true stripes on the whole issue of Bible authority among other issues. Birds of a feather do indeed tend to flock together.
Surprising and Yet Not
This movement toward women preachers has been in development for some time. In the use of women speaking publicly to other women on a ladies’ day program, some women have jumped to the conclusion that such easily justifies them doing so even with a few men present in the assembly, as though having a small number in attendance sanctifies the latter scenario. Also, the use of the children’s church practice with women preaching to the children, often with men also present for safety and security purposes, helps give rise to such ideas. The proponents of this approach assume their case, however, for the scriptural authority for the children’s church practice itself, much less the appropriate use of women to do the preaching. In such a congregation utilizing this practice, a woman is often advertised as “the children’s minister.”
The heresy known as “multiplying ministries” has given rise to many such new innovations using both women and men as “ministers” in every segment of life the congregation seeks to control or govern in some fashion. “Body-life ministers” for men and women (people we called “coaches” in high school, brethren) adorn the staffs of larger congregations, most often working in tandem in organizing and executing their specific programs for all ages and both genders.
Also “family-life” or simply “family ministers,” “mission-work ministers,” “fellowship ministers,” and even “financial ministers” (again both male and female), providing in the latter group financial advice and budget guidance for families and individuals, are cropping up in various places. As Foy E. Wallace Jr. once lamented in the mid-Seventies, “Brethren, we have ministered the Church to death!” Guy N. Woods fittingly called it a “dangerous staff infection” (pun intended). When we adopt the unscriptural practices of denominational groups, we cease being the Lord’s Church. That may please some folks on the left, but we ought to be more concerned with pleasing God (Gal. 1:6-11).
Another aspect of things contributing to this move toward women “ministers,” especially in the pulpit, is the intrusion of federal influence upon the schools. With accreditation becoming paramount in their operation for prestige and monetary support, the leadership of the schools is placing them at risk of federal take-over and manipulation. The appeal for federal funding in various areas, including but not limited to Veterans’ Assistance in education, liberal arts grants, and the student loan program, has fueled interest in the bureaucratic elites to gain more control over higher education, including religious institutions. Couple that with the individual donors who lean politically to the left and view their donations as a tool to restructure education and thereby the Church itself. We have seen this coming for some time. Brethren from an older generation warned against accreditation and federal assistance when the country was far more conservative in its mores and values than in recent years. The thought was that “our” schools ought to be known first and foremost for the quality of their faculty and student body in life, work, and academics, not necessarily because of secular approval. Spirituality, Biblical knowledge, and moral conduct were the standards in education among the founders and early trustees and administrators of the schools, not the financial wealth it might generate.
Additionally, under federal law graduation from a religious school granting the appropriate certifications or degrees is now tantamount to ordination for said graduate to serve as an officer or minister of the Church or any other religious entity. More and more of the colleges and universities associated historically with churches of Christ are granting such documentation to women, practicing homosexuals, transgender persons, etc. A hard political shift to the left may inevitably bring legal wranglings and conflicts in the future over hiring policies of local congregations as well as the schools utilizing federal funds.
The Scriptural Perspective on the Issue
Clearly, the Scriptures preclude women from the role of preaching in the presence of men. The apostle Paul in 1 Timothy 2:12 quite expressly states, “I suffer not a woman to teach or to usurp authority over a man, but to be in silence.” This injunction, contrary to the postmodern twisting of the Bible being done even by some brethren, was not and is not culturally based but premised on universal truths going back to creation and the fall of mankind.
By inspiration, Paul ties the injunction to (1) the fact that the first man (Adam) was created before the first woman (Eve) and (2) the fact that Eve was the first in the transgression by being deceived. Paul is also delineating between the male as opposed to the female by his use of aneer, rather than the generic anthropos, which more often refers to man in the sense of mankind or human beings. The idea of women preachers is at odds with Biblical teaching.
The Syntactical Support in the Greek Text
The syntax of the text supports the preceding conclusions. It is also obvious that the text does not concern the marital relationship, as some try to so limit it in scope, wherein the term gunee, translated “woman,” is used only in the sense of “wife” and aneer, which is translated “man,” refers to her “husband.” Such is certainly not the force of these terms in the immediate context (cf. 1 Tim. 2:8-11). The context in view of verse 8 certainly concerns a public venue as well. “The men” (tous andras) are charged with the responsibility of audibly leading public prayer. The construction is emphatic. The term andras (the plural masuline accusative of aneer) refers primarily to the males as opposed to the females (i.e., gunaikas). This same contrast is involved in 1 Timothy 2:12, though the dative feminine singular is used for the woman, and the genitive masculine singular is used for the man.
The construction of 1 Timothy 2:12 relative to the prohibition reads in the original, “didaskein de gunaiki ouk epitrepo, oude authentein andros…” It entails an oude construction combining two thoughts concerning actions that are both prohibited relative to the modification provided. The force of it is succinctly described by William Mounce, who notes that didaskein (“to teach”) just as authentein (“to exercise authority”) is modified in scope by the term andros, “over the male” (The Pastoral Epistles, p. 123). Thus, the term rendered “teach” concerns here the forbidding of the publicly teaching being done by a woman “over a male,” just as much as the authority exercised by the woman over the male is also forbidden. Roy C. Deaver frequently quoted the prohibition in this way relative especially to the role of women in worship: “I do not permit a woman to teach or in any other way exercise authority over the male.” He considered it an emphatic prohibition.
George W. Knight III, in his own commentary on the Greek text, adds, “aneer is used here, as in v.8, to refer to ‘man’ in distinction from woman, not in its more restricted sense of ‘husband.’ The singular refers to men in general, just as gunee refers here and in v.11 to women in general. The genitive case of andros agrees with the nearest infinitive, which like other verbs of ruling and governing takes the genitive (BDF Sect. 177; Robertson, Grammar, 510), though the noun qualifies not only the second infinitive, authentein, but also the first, didaskein, in accordance with normal Greek usage (cf. Acts 8:21, whereas here oude is used; see also Smyth, Grammar, Sect. 1634, which gives an example of two infinitives joined by oude with a common object written only once)” (The Pastoral Epistles, p. 142).
To these scholarly assessments on the force of the Greek and English texts on the divine prohibition against women preachers are the voices of such Greek scholars as A.T. Robertson, J.H. Bernard, Guy N. Woods, Patrick Fairbairn, William Henriksen, J.N.D. Kelly, H.P. Liddon, Eugene Stock, E.K. Simpson, R. St. John Parry, H.H. Harvey, J.E. Huther, R.C. H. Lenski, James Robinson Boise, and a myriad of others. Even the modernist Robert G. Bratcher admits the self-evident force of the apostolic prohibition against women teaching over men (Translator’s Guide to Paul’s Letters to Timothy and to Titus, p. 25).
Conclusion
We must get back to the Scriptures for our authority in religion and morality. To please God, one must act out of faith in Him (Heb. 11:6). For that to occur, one must conform his beliefs and actions to the Word of God, which is the source of faith (Rom. 10:17). Where there is no evidence provided by God’s Word, there can be no action borne of faith, and there, thus, can be no pleasing God. We must do all in word and in deed by the authority of Christ (Col. 3:17). To act in any other way is to invite damnation for our souls (John 12:48; Matt. 7:21-27).
May God help us to recognize the dangers we face in straying from the straight and narrow way (Matt. 7:13-14) in the current mania to open the doors to the apostates pushing the feminist agenda in our great Brotherhood. It is not loving, neither in word nor truth, to encourage women to forfeit their souls for a few days of power and authority that God never gave them as “ministers” in the Church of our Lord. Such an egalitarianism is not Biblical. It is not a matter of innate inferiority, but a matter of Divine authority and the role God Himself has given for the two sexes in the context of the work and worship of the Church.
