Who May Preach?

Begin where the anchor begins: 'each of you should use whatever gift he has received to serve one another' (1 Peter 4:10). Peter is writing to whole congregations scattered across Asia Minor, and he assumes that every believer has been given something. He divides the gifts roughly into two kinds, speaking and serving, and he sets a standard for the first that should make every preacher pause: 'If anyone speaks, he should speak as one conveying the words of God' (4:11). The word is logia, oracles, the word used of what Moses received at Sinai and of the scriptures entrusted to Israel. Whoever speaks in the church is to speak as one carrying God's words rather than his own.

Peter had already said that the whole church is 'a royal priesthood' whose calling is 'to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light' (1 Peter 2:9). Martin Luther made this the hinge of his 1520 appeal To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation: all baptised Christians belong to the spiritual estate, and there is no difference between clergy and laity except that of office. That idea, usually called the priesthood of all believers, is one of the Reformation's lasting gifts. But Luther did not conclude that anyone may preach in the assembly. The Augsburg Confession of 1530, in its fourteenth article, says that no one should publicly teach in the church or administer the sacraments unless he is rite vocatus, properly called. Every Christian speaks the word; the church still asks who will stand up and preach it to the gathered body.

Most traditions answer with two tests, usually called the inward call and the outward call. The inward call is the believer's own conviction, tested over time, that God wants him to do this work. Paul says that 'If anyone aspires to be an overseer, he desires a noble task' (1 Timothy 3:1), which treats the desire itself as a legitimate starting point. The outward call is the church's recognition that the gift is really there. Charles Spurgeon, in the lecture on the call to the ministry in his Lectures to My Students, gave a set of tests that has been widely used: an intense and lasting desire for the work, a real aptness to teach, some evidence that God has used the person's speaking for the good of others, and the acceptance of God's people. Notice how the last two depend on other people. A man who is certain he is called but whom no congregation can bear to hear has, at best, only half a call.

The New Testament supports both a broad ministry of the word and a recognised office for it, and a student should not let either half crowd out the other. When persecution broke out in Jerusalem, 'all except the apostles were scattered', and 'Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went' (Acts 8:1, 8:4). Every believer is to 'teach and admonish one another' (Colossians 3:16). And yet the same letters set apart 'Elders who lead effectively', who are 'worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching' (1 Timothy 5:17), and Paul tells Timothy to entrust the teaching 'to faithful men who will be qualified to teach others as well' (2 Timothy 2:2). James warns that 'Not many of you should become teachers' (3:1). The question is never whether God's people speak his word. It is how a church recognises those who will do it on its behalf, week by week, in the assembly.

Churches have built different structures on these texts, and you will serve alongside people from all of them. In the episcopal traditions, Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican, along with some Lutheran churches, a bishop ordains, and ordination is understood as the church's act in continuity with the apostles. Catholic and Orthodox teaching hold that ordination is a sacrament, and Catholic teaching adds that it confers a lasting character that cannot be repeated or removed. The Catholic Code of Canon Law of 1983 reserves the homily at Mass to a priest or deacon (canon 767), while allowing that lay people may in certain circumstances be admitted to preach in a church (canon 766). Anglicans have long licensed lay Readers to preach and lead services. In the presbyterian traditions, ordination is by a presbytery, a body of elders, following the pattern of 1 Timothy 4:14 and 'the laying on of the hands of the elders'. The Westminster Larger Catechism (1647), at question 158, puts the Reformed conviction plainly: 'The word of God is to be preached only by such as are sufficiently gifted, and also duly approved and called to that office.'

In the congregational and Baptist traditions, it is the local church that recognises and calls its preachers, and ordination, where it is practised, is a public acknowledgement of a gift rather than the conferring of anything new. Spurgeon, the most famous Baptist preacher of the nineteenth century, was never formally ordained and declined the title Reverend; his congregation's call was enough. Methodism was built on lay preaching. In the early 1740s John Wesley, an ordained Anglican priest, began to accept laymen such as Thomas Maxfield as preachers, and the story is told in Methodist tradition that his mother Susanna urged him to listen to Maxfield before he silenced him. Methodist local preachers, unordained and often unpaid, have carried the gospel across much of the world since. In Pentecostal churches, recognition has usually followed evident gifting and fruit, with credentials given by a denomination after the gift has been shown in practice.

In much of the world these questions are not theoretical. A single ordained pastor may be responsible for ten or twenty congregations spread over a district, and on most Sundays most of them are led by a catechist, an elder, an evangelist or a lay preacher. Anglican and Catholic churches across Africa have depended on catechists for generations. If you are one of those preachers, you are not doing a lesser thing than the ordained pastor; you are doing the same work under a different form of recognition, and you are answerable to the same standard of 1 Peter 4:11. Take the trust seriously, stay under the oversight your church has given you, and never treat the absence of a title as permission to preach without preparing.

What is settled across these traditions is that the ministry of the word in the assembly should be exercised by people the church has tested and recognised, and that every believer has a part in speaking God's word in the wider life of the church. What is not settled is what ordination is: a sacrament conferring a character, a commissioning to an office, or the recognition of a gift already given. You will need to know what your own church holds and why, and you will need to respect the order of the church you serve in, even where you would have arranged things differently. The pulpit is not the place to campaign against the church that lent it to you.

The sharpest form of the question today is whether women may preach. It divides denominations, congregations and families. It is not a quarrel between people who take the Bible seriously and people who do not. On both sides are scholars of the first rank, pastors of long faithfulness, and ordinary believers who have read the texts on their knees. This lesson will give both readings at full strength. It will not tell you which is right. The Hermeneutics track, in the third lesson of its fifth module, works through the exegesis of 1 Timothy 2 and 1 Corinthians 14 in detail, including the Greek of authenteo and the manuscript question at 1 Corinthians 14:34-35. If you have not read it, read it alongside this lesson. Here the question is narrower: what do these texts mean for who may preach in the gathered church?

The texts most often cited for a restriction are two. 'I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, and then Eve' (1 Timothy 2:12-13). And 'Women are to be silent in the churches. They are not permitted to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they wish to inquire about something, they are to ask their own husbands at home; for it is dishonorable for a woman to speak in the church' (1 Corinthians 14:34-35). To these are often added the qualifications for an overseer in 1 Timothy 3:2, 'the husband of but one wife', and the pattern of headship in 1 Corinthians 11:3 and Ephesians 5:23. Complementarians also point to Paul's insistence, straight after 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, that 'what I am writing you is the Lord's command' (14:37), and to the fact that the twelve apostles Jesus chose were all men.

The texts most often cited for openness range across both Testaments. At Pentecost Peter quotes Joel: 'Your sons and daughters will prophesy' and 'Even on My menservants and maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy' (Acts 2:17-18). Philip 'had four unmarried daughters who prophesied' (Acts 21:9). Paul assumes that women pray and prophesy in the gathering, regulating only their head covering (1 Corinthians 11:5). In Romans 16 he commends 'our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church in Cenchrea' (16:1), greets Prisca and Aquila as 'my fellow workers in Christ Jesus' (16:3), and greets Andronicus and Junia, who are 'outstanding among the apostles' (16:7). Euodia and Syntyche 'contended at my side for the gospel' (Philippians 4:2-3). Behind these stand Miriam the prophetess, Deborah who 'was judging Israel' (Judges 4:4), and Huldah, consulted by the high priest about the newly found Book of the Law (2 Kings 22:14), as well as Anna, who 'spoke about the Child to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem' (Luke 2:38), and Mary Magdalene, sent by the risen Christ with the message to the disciples (John 20:17-18). And Galatians 3:28: 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.'

Christians on this question are not divided into two simple camps. Some hold that women may not preach or teach men in any setting. Many complementarians hold that the office of elder or pastor is reserved to men, and differ among themselves over whether a woman may preach on a Sunday under the authority of the elders, some holding that the restriction is to the office and others that preaching to the gathered church is itself the authoritative teaching in view. Egalitarians hold that all ministries, including the pastoral office and the pulpit, are open to women and men alike on the basis of gifting and calling. The Catholic and Orthodox churches reserve the priesthood to men on grounds that are partly distinct from the Protestant exegetical debate, centred on the priest acting in the person of Christ and on the church's unbroken practice; John Paul II's apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994) declared that the church has no authority to confer priestly ordination on women.

The history runs in more than one direction. For most of church history women did not preach in the regular assembly in most churches, and that practice was argued, not merely assumed. Tertullian, writing around 200, objected to women teaching and baptising (On Baptism 17), and Chrysostom, Luther and Calvin all read 1 Timothy 2:12 as reserving public teaching in the church to men. Today the Catholic and Orthodox churches, which together hold most of the world's Christians, ordain only men as priests. In 1994, the year the Church of England ordained its first women priests, John Paul II's letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis declared that the Catholic Church has no authority to ordain women. In the other direction, Margaret Fell, one of the founders of the Quakers, published Women's Speaking Justified in 1666. Jarena Lee received Richard Allen's endorsement to preach in the African Methodist Episcopal Church around 1819 and published her account of her life in 1836. In 1859 both Phoebe Palmer in America (The Promise of the Father) and Catherine Booth in England (Female Teaching, later revised as Female Ministry) published defences of women's preaching from Acts 2. Many Pentecostal and holiness churches licensed women preachers from their beginnings. Among evangelicals, the Danvers Statement of 1987 set out the complementarian position for evangelicals, and the Southern Baptist Convention's Baptist Faith and Message of 2000 states that 'the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture', while Christians for Biblical Equality's statement Men, Women and Biblical Equality (1989) set out the egalitarian position. Neither side is simply the old view or the new one in every church you will meet.

The complementarian reading. Paul's prohibition in 1 Timothy 2:12 is given a reason in verse 13, and the reason is the order of creation, before the fall: 'For Adam was formed first, and then Eve.' An argument from creation is not an argument from local custom, and Paul uses the same kind of argument in 1 Corinthians 11:8-9 and in his teaching on marriage. The two things forbidden are teaching and exercising authority over a man, and the preaching of the word to the gathered church is the clearest case of both: it is the activity Paul charges Timothy with in 'Preach the word' and 'reprove, rebuke, and encourage' (2 Timothy 4:2), and the one he links to the elders who 'work hard at preaching and teaching' (1 Timothy 5:17), whose qualifications follow immediately in chapter 3 and include 'able to teach' and 'the husband of but one wife' (3:2). The texts about women prophesying are real and must be honoured, but the New Testament distinguishes prophecy from teaching. It lists 'prophets' and 'teachers' as separate gifts (1 Corinthians 12:28; Acts 13:1; Ephesians 4:11). Wayne Grudem has argued that congregational prophecy was a report of something God had brought to mind, always subject to being weighed by others (1 Corinthians 14:29), while teaching was the authoritative handing on of the apostolic deposit; so women prophesying in Corinth and in Acts sits alongside the restriction in Ephesus without contradiction, and 1 Corinthians 11:5 itself shows women prophesying under a sign that honoured headship. Phoebe, Prisca, Junia and Euodia were real co-workers whom Paul honoured, and the position honours them too, but none is said to have been an elder or to have taught the assembly; Priscilla and Aquila 'took him aside' to instruct Apollos (Acts 18:26). Huldah and Deborah were prophets in Israel, where the priesthood was nonetheless male. The position does not rest on any claim that women are less gifted, less intelligent or less spiritual; Galatians 3:28 is affirmed without reservation as a statement of equal standing in Christ. It rests on the conviction that God has ordered the church, like marriage, to reflect the relation of Christ and the church, and that this order is good. Its defenders include John Piper and Wayne Grudem, editors of Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (1991), Thomas Schreiner, and women writers such as Claire Smith in God's Good Design (2012) and Kathy Keller in Jesus, Justice, and Gender Roles (2012). It notes, finally, that it has been the practice of nearly the whole church through nearly all of its history.

The egalitarian reading. The age of the church begins with a sermon that announces, from Joel, that the Spirit is now poured out on sons and daughters, menservants and maidservants alike, 'and they will prophesy' (Acts 2:17-18). That is the defining mark of the new age, and it is spoken at the moment the church's preaching begins. In 1 Corinthians 14 prophecy does most of what a sermon is meant to do: it 'speaks to men for their edification, encouragement, and comfort' (14:3), it convicts the unbeliever so that 'the secrets of his heart will be made known' (14:24-25), and through it 'everyone may be instructed and encouraged' (14:31). So the line between prophecy and teaching is too thin to carry the weight the restriction places on it, and women are seen doing that work in the assembly in 1 Corinthians 11:5. Throughout scripture God raises up women to speak his word with authority to men: Deborah judged Israel; Huldah was the one the high priest and the king's officials consulted to interpret the Book of the Law, and she answered 'This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says' (2 Kings 22:15); Mary Magdalene was the first sent with the news of the resurrection. Paul calls Phoebe diakonos, the word he uses of himself, names Junia among the apostles, and calls Prisca a fellow worker. Against that background, 1 Timothy 2:12 is written into a specific crisis of false teaching at Ephesus (1:3-7), in which some were forbidding marriage (4:3) and false teachers were working their way into households and captivating women (2 Timothy 3:6-7). Paul's first command is that women must learn (2:11), and his restriction applies to people not yet taught, using a rare verb, authenteo, rather than his ordinary word for authority. Verses 13-14 explain the danger by analogy with Eve, who was deceived, not as a timeless bar. 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 cannot be an absolute silence, since Paul has just assumed women pray and prophesy aloud, and its subject is asking questions. Galatians 3:28 states the principle on which the gospel's own trajectory runs. Finally, the anchor of this lesson says 'each of you' and 'If anyone speaks', and the evident fruit of women's preaching across two centuries of missions and revival is hard to explain if God has forbidden it. Its defenders include Gordon Fee in his commentary on 1 Corinthians (1987), Craig Keener in Paul, Women and Wives (1992), Philip Payne in Man and Woman, One in Christ (2009), and Cynthia Long Westfall in Paul and Gender (2016).

Each reading has an answer to the other's strongest texts. Egalitarians answer the complementarian appeal to creation by noting that 1 Corinthians 11:8-9 also appeals to creation to support head coverings, which almost no complementarian church requires, so an appeal to creation does not by itself prove that a practice is permanent; they read the separate listing of prophets and teachers as a distinction of gift rather than a ranking that leaves prophecy without authority; and they note that Huldah's answer to the king's officials was an authoritative word to men about a written text, which is close to what a sermon is. Complementarians answer the appeal to Acts 2 by noting that the Joel prophecy is about prophecy, which the same New Testament distinguishes from the teaching restricted in 1 Timothy; they answer the reading of Ephesus as a local crisis by noting that Paul, when he gives his reason, names Adam and Eve rather than the crisis, at exactly the point where naming the crisis would have settled the matter; and they answer the argument from fruit by saying that God's blessing on a ministry, which they gladly acknowledge, shows his kindness, not his approval of every arrangement under which it happened, since God has blessed preaching in churches whose order on many other matters was mistaken.

And each reading has a hardest question it must keep answering. The complementarian must explain, from the texts and not only from practice, why the creation appeal in 1 Timothy 2:13 fixes the restriction for all time while the creation appeal in 1 Corinthians 11:8-9 is satisfied by a changeable sign, and must say where exactly the line falls between the prophesying women may do and the preaching they may not. The egalitarian must explain why, if the problem in Ephesus was untaught women and false teaching, Paul's stated reason in verse 13 is the order in which Adam and Eve were made, and must show that the restriction lapses once women are taught when the text gives no such condition. Both sides have worked on these questions for decades and have answers. You should be able to state the other side's answer to its own hardest question, not only yours.

Here is what is settled. Both passages are in the text, and every reading has to account for them. Women in scripture prophesy, pray aloud in the assembly, host churches, are commended by Paul to other churches, instruct others, and are named as his co-workers. Every believer, man or woman, has a gift and is to use it 'as one conveying the words of God'. Nobody serious holds either that the New Testament silences women entirely or that it makes no distinctions anywhere in the life of the church. What is not settled is what a sermon is in the categories of the New Testament: whether it is closest to prophecy, which women did, or to the authoritative teaching that 1 Timothy 2:12 addresses, and whether that restriction belongs to the order of creation or to the circumstances at Ephesus. Competent, faithful scholars have worked on those questions for half a century and have not reached one mind.

How should a preacher live with that? First, know your own church's position and the reasons it gives, and preach within the order of the church that has called you. If your convictions change so far that you cannot, the honest course is to speak to those over you and, if necessary, to serve somewhere else, not to use the pulpit to campaign. The previous lesson's warning about using pulpit authority for your own cause applies here with special force. Second, when you preach the passages themselves, whichever side your church takes, state the other reading in a form its defenders would recognise. A congregation that only ever hears a caricature of the other side has not been taught; it has been recruited.

Third, whatever your church's practice about the Sunday pulpit, make sure the gifts of the women in your congregation are honoured and used. On every reading set out above, women are to teach, to pray, to prophesy or exhort in some form, to instruct other women and children, to labour in the gospel and to be named as fellow workers. Titus 2:3-4 commands older women to be 'teachers of good'. Timothy's faith, Paul says, 'first dwelt in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice' (2 Timothy 1:5). A church that restricts the pulpit and then gives women no ministry of the word anywhere has not followed the complementarian reading; it has gone beyond it. And a church that opens the pulpit and then treats the question as closed, refusing to let anyone read 1 Timothy 2 aloud, has not followed the egalitarian reading either. Both readings are attempts to obey scripture, and both are honoured by churches that keep the texts open on the table.

Take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left, write your own church's position on who may preach, with the three texts it relies on most, in sentences someone who holds that position would sign. On the right, write the other position, with its three texts, in sentences someone who holds it would sign. Then read the right-hand column aloud. If you would be embarrassed to have someone who holds that view hear you read it, it is not yet fair; rewrite it until it is.

Then list, without writing anyone's name, every way the word of God is spoken in your church outside the Sunday sermon: children's teaching, home groups, prayer meetings, hospital and home visits, women's and men's meetings, funerals, the family table. Beside each, write who usually does it, by role only, such as an elder, a mother of young children, a youth leader. You will probably find that far more people are speaking God's word in your church than the pulpit alone suggests, and that some gifts are not being used at all.

Finally, write the third paragraph on your page, under Before I preach. Title it: Who sent me. Write honestly what your inward call is, the desire and the sense of being drawn to this work, and then what your outward call is: which body or which leaders, by role and not by name, have recognised your gift and given you a place to use it, and what your church's order says about where and when you may preach. If you have no outward call yet, write down what step you will take to ask for one, and whom you will ask, by role.