Female clergy: Debate rages over women's ordination and role in church leadership
A woman pastor preaching to a church congregation. The decision by Saddleback Chuch, the California-based megachurch to allow a woman to fill the position of Teaching Pastor has raised debate on whether women should be allowed to be pastors.
America’s world renowned Saddleback Church founded by Pastor Rick Warren recently ran into trouble with the Southern Baptists Convention (SBC) which kicked them out of their fellowship.
This was after Saddleback Church, the California-based megachurch founded by Pastor Warren in 1980, allowed a woman to fill the office of Teaching Pastor.
The controversy that followed has reignited debate across the world on the ordination of women as priests, and their role in church leadership.
The church plans to appeal the decision later this year. Since Warren's retirement last year, the church has been led by Andy and Stacie Wood. For the many years he headed Saddleback, Pastor Warren held to the common belief in the SBC — America’s largest protestant denomination — that women cannot be pastors.
Many have often referred to verses like 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 to bolster their arguments: “As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says.”
However, early this year, Pastor Warren changed his view and said that he had been wrong all along, probably the reason his successors named a woman as pastor.
In a podcast interview with former SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission President Russell Moore, Pastor Warren first cited Matthew 28:19-20.
Known as the Great Commission, the passage involves Jesus telling His disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.”
“We claim that we believe that the Great Commission is for everybody, both men and women are to fulfill the Great Commission,” Warren said.
Barred from preaching
As the storm raged, respected Baptist bible teacher John Piper waded into the muddied waters, stating that women should not only be barred from preaching, but that they should also be stopped in their tracks if they made an effort to lead parachurch organisations — which are faith-based groups usually involved in social work and evangelism.
Answering a question from a reader of his globally popular Desiring God blog, Pastor Piper explained that church or parachurch, the difference was the same.
The reader had stated that the parachurch organisation he works with had recently opened leadership positions to women. Before that such positions were reserved for men.
Pastor Rick Warren, founder of the Saddleback Church.
“With regard to men and women in parachurch organisations, I think Paul would say, ‘I have taught, Moses has taught, nature teaches that it goes against man’s and woman’s truest, God-given nature to place a woman in a role of regular, direct, personal leadership over men,” Pastor Piper said.
Back to Pastor Warren who, in June, tweeted that he had a change of views — about supporting women as pastors — after taking another look at the Bible and its New Testament passages in the original Greek language. Not doing so earlier is his “biggest regret in 53 years of ministry,” he said in the lengthy Twitter statement.
One would be easily misled to dismiss this debate on women leading church and parachurch organisations as rich people’s problems since the talk is bigger in the United States. However, talking to local church leaders and believers, it becomes clear that the issue is as passionate in Kenya just as it is in America.
Pastor Michael Maura of the Bethesda Baptist Church in Embakasi, Nairobi, is a man with a powerful, booming voice. This becomes even clearer when he articulates issues close to his heart. And clearly, ordination of women as pastors is something he is very vocal about.
Maura says that he is cognisant of the biblical teaching that man and women are equal before God. He however states that when Paul wrote to Timothy and told him not to let women preach or have authority over men, the former was just underpinning a Biblical truth.
“Women are just as gifted as men because God freely gives us all gifts. However, the Bible is clear that the gift of women can only be effective in teaching fellow women and children. In fact Paul wants them to encourage and mentor young women in the church,” he says.
Osborne Osanjo is a staunch member of an SDA congregation in Birmingham, UK. He says: “In terms of biblical history there were no female priests in the era before Christ. In choosing the 12 apostles there was no woman among them not because there were no suitable women available but because this is the order that God intended for the home, that is, the man being the head and priest of the family.”
He adds: “Why do churches ordain women then ? They do it in order to respond to cultural pressures and women equality pressures. Does God recognise such ordinations? No he doesn’t because the bible gives us exactly what God requires of his people.”
Apostles
The same position is supported by Joan Wairimu Kinja, a Catholic. She says that Jesus had a special place in his heart for women to a point that he appeared to a woman first after resurrection. The woman, Mary Magdalene, had such a difficult past yet she returned to the apostles and proclaimed of the resurrection of Jesus.
“But the sacraments can only be performed by Christ. The priesthood, as an icon of Christ, is reserved for males because Christ himself is a man. The church is bound to follow the example of Jesus who chose only men,” she says.
Both Osborne's and Joan's views stem from their respective churches — the Catholic Church and SDA— both of which do not ordain women ministers. However, the other mainstream churches like the Anglican Church of Kenya, Methodists and Presbyterian Church of East Africa, among others, ordain women
Rev Eve Lwembe Mungai is the Executive Pastor at the International Christian Centre (ICC) Nairobi, a Kenya Assemblies of God church. She has researched extensively on this topic and she says that the Holy Spirit was poured equally on every believer so as to prepare them for the works of the Lord.
She says that the work of preaching the gospel can get to a point where only women ministers can go to certain places.
“I was recently speaking to a group of people about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and I stated that the gift of speaking in tongues can fall on you anywhere, whether while nursing a baby or washing dishes, and a gentleman came up to me later and said only a woman minister could have seen the matter from that angle.”
She names people like Deborah in the Old Testatment who was a leader and a prophet as well as a Jael who was a feted fighter. About the background to Paul’s caution that women should keep quiet in church, Pastor Mungai says that traditionally, it was boys and men who received education and that it was therefore possible that the women, having little understanding of the Word, would seek clarification from their men across the aisles, leading to some disorder, which Paul sought to correct.
“Secure male pastors, especially my husband Rev Philip Mungai, have been my greatest encouragers,” she says.
Women preachers
Pastor Sam Oluoch of Grace Baptist Church in Lang’ata puts the blame on what he calls ‘egalitarian’ view, which he says wants to usurp God’s stand on women preachers. He says the ordination of women came much later in the church’s history and that it had everything to do with the women’s rights movement.
“You can see that those pushing this agenda are taking the popularity route. However, God is not a populist or a democrat. At all times, He wants His will to prevail. The Anglican church was the first one to ordain women ministers. Right now they are battling with the issue of ordaining LBGTQ people as ministers, yet we all know that doing so is wrong,” he says.
To Rev Edward Ondachi, who is associated with the Nairobi Chapel, ordaining women priest is very much on order. He says that Paul’s teachings must be looked at contextually.
“Women have made advances, and shutting them out of church leadership does not make sense at all,” he says.
Rev Ondachi draws comparison of women not being allowed to preach with the call by Paul for slaves to obey their masters.
“Can you stand at the pulpit, especially in America and preach that gospel in this time and age? You will be chased out of that church,” he says.
