Should Women Be Pastors? My Bottom Line Answer

Added: 2026-05-07

[00:00:00]Kitty writes in and says, "Should Christians attend a church where there is a woman pastor or listen to the teaching of a woman who calls herself a pastor?" Great question, Kitty.

[00:00:11]>> [music] >> Okay, um you can go on my channel. I have an entire playlist related to this topic because it's a big topic. So, I'm just going to narrowly focus my answer on um what you're saying here, but you can explore more of those resources.

[00:00:31]Here's what's confusing about this whole situation is that the word pastor in English is not really the equivalent of what it is in Greek. So, the word is elder or presbyteros.

[00:00:42]This is where we get the word Presbyterian, which is a a a way of designating a church that is elder-led. It's It's led by multiple elders. And when we see in Titus chapter 1, we see that this word is presbyteros or elders. And then we have these qualifications.

[00:01:05]And right in the qualifications, it says they must be blameless and faithful to his wife.

[00:01:13]And a man whose children believe. Okay, well, right right there, like right off the top, like the qualification is that he has to be a man. He has to be married to his wife. Like, okay? So, to me, embedded right in the the New Testament is the necessity of an elder to be a man.

[00:01:41]Um and that that is a a part of it. Now, it also embedded in that language is the assumption that the elder be a married man and a father. And that's going to be hard um for some people to get behind or say, "Well, you're going to exclude single men? That just seems so wrong and and unfair and but >> [gasps and laughter] >> the the normal operating assumption until 5 minutes ago in our culture is that the normal operating assumption is that men would get married and have kids. Like single culture and kind of opting out of marriage is like a fairly recent cultural phenomenon. And I do think that there is a level of maturity that comes in managing your household and Paul says the same. So, the same as in 1 Timothy chapter 3, if you see here, uh the same thing is that he must be faithful to his wife and temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

[00:03:03]In other words, he can't be greedy, managing his own household, his own family. All right? So, teaching his children to obey him.

[00:03:14]Not be a recent convert.

[00:03:17]So, these are the qualifications.

[00:03:20]So, back to Kitty's question, can a pastor be an elder or a Can a pastor be a woman? I would say, "Well, I think what you you're asking is can the leader in a church be a woman?" I would say, "No, the leaders of the church are men.

[00:03:36]They're called They're called elders."

[00:03:39]Now, what is a pastor?

[00:03:41]Well, a pastor is a shepherd. And Ephesians chapter 4 says, "So, Christ gave himself to the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors, poimen.

[00:03:56]And this is the word for shepherd, okay?

[00:04:00]And notice how it's kind of in here with these other offices, pastors, teachers, all right?

[00:04:08]For what purpose? To equip people for works of service.

[00:04:14]Poimen is different than the word presbuteros.

[00:04:17]There's a question as to, you know, how this is used is it a more of a spiritual gift of shepherding or is it an office? I won't get into that debate, but this is where we get the word pastor, okay? And it's connotates the idea of being a shepherd for the people.

[00:04:38]So, I differentiate personally between gifts and offices.

[00:04:45]I think a woman can have the spiritual gift of teaching, but that doesn't make her qualified to hold the office of elder. To me, gifts and offices are two different things. So, I would say I have a strong gift of teaching, but that doesn't mean I'm qualified to be an elder because I'm I don't have the qualifications that are in Titus 1 or 1 Timothy 3.

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