Can women preach? Yes.
Now before someone reaches for, ”Let your women keep silence in the churches,” 1 Corinthians 14:34, or ”I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man,” 1 Timothy 2:12. Let’s slow down and do something the spirit of religion often refuses to do, let’s listen to what the Father is saying.
Let’s read the text carefully, the entirety of it. Not what you think, but what you clearly read start to finish. Before we answer the question, we first have to define our terms. No point in discussing something unless we know the full terms of what we’re discussing.
Firstly, teaching and preaching are not the same thing. In 1 Timothy 2:12 Paul does not say, ”I do not permit a woman to preach.” He says, ”I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man.” Those are two different words with two different contexts, agreed? Great!
1)Teaching by definition: The explanation, instruction, and application of the doctrines, principles, and narratives found within the Christian Bible.
2)Preaching by definition: Refers to the public proclamation, declaration, or heralding of good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
I’ve seen both of these terms overlap, but in simple language they are not synonymous, and we shouldn’t force them to mean the same thing simply because it supports our position or our man made denomination. If we’re going to build Jesus’ doctrine, we must let Scripture say what it actually says, not what tradition has taught us to read into it, right?
The Bible interprets the Bible. Scripture will never contradict Scripture. If God repeatedly chose women to proclaim His truth, then perhaps the issue isn’t whether He speaks through women. Perhaps the issue is whether we’ve misunderstood a handful of difficult passages and let denominationalism dictate that.
On the day of Pentecost, Peter stood before the crowd and declared that Joel’s prophecy had been fulfilled. He boldly says, “And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy.” (Acts 2:17)
God pours out His Spirit on both sons and daughters, and He gives gifts to whoever He chooses. (Romans 11:29) Even though Jesus gave the official job of starting the early church to His inner circle of apostles, the actual mission to share the Gospel belongs to all of us. The good news was never meant to be a guys only club. From the very beginning, the Church has always been made up of ordinary men and women working together to talk about an extraordinary Savior.
So you ask…What about the passages where Paul tells women to be silent? Again…Context. What about it?
Paul was writing to specific churches dealing with specific issues concerning order, authority, and disorder within their gatherings, we can agree on that. Those passages deserve careful study, they are not cherry picked texts used to silence every woman whom God has called. There is a difference between biblical order and religious control. Religion often confuses the two. Religious legalism has a funny way of sounding right, using true words to push the wrong message.
If women were never meant to proclaim God’s truth, then somebody needs to explain Deborah, who judged Israel. Miriam, who prophesied. And Huldah, whose counsel was sought by the king’s officials. Anna, who proclaimed the coming Messiah. Mary Magdalene, who was entrusted with announcing the risen Christ. Priscilla, who helped instruct Apollos more accurately in the faith. Phoebe, who faithfully served the church. Philip’s four daughters, who prophesied. I could go on but hopefully you catch my drift.
When you look at the big picture of history, the pattern is undeniable. God has always used women to lead, teach, and change the world without a second thought. The pushback has never come from Him, it comes from people or institutions trying to protect their own rules.
For years, I believed I wasn’t qualified to speak or share the gospel because I was a woman. I could evangelize but I had to tiptoe around how I said it. I believed I should stay in my lane. Keep my head down, don’t quote scripture in front of men, know my place. I could only speak with women and children openly. I wasn’t submitting to Scripture, I was submitting to someone’s interpretation of Scripture, and there is a difference.
Religion has a way of convincing you that silence is humility when, in reality, it’s fear dressed up as obedience. I know because I lived there, it silenced me for years and I struggled with my writing.
Then God began dismantling everything I thought I knew. He introduced me to a woman named Glenda during one of the loneliest seasons of my life. She came to me for a pedicure at a lil cabin spa. God has such a beautiful sense of humour. The woman who would help wash religion out of my thinking first sat in a chair while I washed her feet. We connected immediately. Not long afterward, she invited me to join her women’s Bible study. I was ecstatic.
Just two years earlier I had been sitting in a room with fifteen prostitutes waiting for walk ins. Now I found myself sitting around a table with fifteen women who loved Jesus, most of them old enough to be my mother or grandmother. Only God could orchestrate something like that. Then came the surprise. Our study for that season was on the female influencers of the Bible. Talk about God being on time!
Week after week, God dismantled my religious assumptions and made me confront why I had agreed with this lie in the first place. Every lesson exposed another place where I had accepted tradition without testing it against the whole Scripture.
I realized I had allowed the interpretation of man (denomination, doctrine) to speak louder than the Word of God. I had unknowingly disqualified people whom God had clearly qualified, including myself. I wept when the epiphany came to realization. I wept bitterly because I realized I had put God in a box that He never built. I wept because I kept silent for so long and thought about all the opportunities I missed for sowing into someone’s life by silencing my voice.
Lord Jesus never treated women the way religion did. Religion wanted to stone the adulterous woman, yet Jesus forgave her publicly. Religion avoided the Samaritan woman yet Jesus revealed Himself to her privately. Religion criticized Mary for sitting at His feet yet Jesus admired her. Religion overlooked Mary Magdalene, Jesus entrusted her with the greatest announcement in history, “He is risen.” Do you see the pattern?
Jesus consistently elevated those whom religion tried to silence. Jesus continued to use women for Kingdom assignments and Father God is still doing it today!
Now let’s be clear on some things so my words are not twisted. Do I believe Scripture teaches divine order? Absolutely. Do I believe God established headship within marriage Absolutely. God, husband, wife.
Do I believe a wife should usurp her husband’s authority? No. This is where many people manipulate the context of Scripture. To usurp authority over her husband means to wrongfully dominate, overrule, or attempt to replace the leadership role that Scripture assigns within the marriage. That is an entirely different issue from a woman teaching, speaking, or preaching. The biblical discussion is about the order of authority in marriage, not about silencing women from proclaiming the gospel.
Scripture is clear about God’s design for marriage. But that is an entirely different discussion from whether God can use a woman to proclaim His Word. Let’s stop mixing up the two, because they aren’t the same conversation at all.
The Church was never meant to be confined to four walls either so understand we are the Church. We carry the gospel wherever we go in all the world.
So let me ask you a simple question. If there were only one believer left in an entire village, a woman, and she alone knew the gospel of Jesus Christ, would God tell her to remain silent because she’s female? Or would He command her to proclaim Christ? I think we all know the answer.
The gospel is too important to be buried beneath religious tradition. The spirit of religion has always been more concerned with protecting positions than proclaiming Christ. Jesus didn’t come to create gatekeepers of the law, He came to make disciples of all nations and break the traditions of men.
1)So can women preach? Yes.
2)Can women proclaim Christ? Yes.
3)Can women testify? Yes.
4)Can women evangelize? Yes.
5)Can women prophesy? Yes.
6)Can women make disciples? Absolutely.
As for me, I spent far too many years believing my voice was something to suppress. Not anymore! If Jesus Christ could redeem someone like me, then I will spend the rest of my life proclaiming His goodness in a church on the streets or while I’m washing feet. Wherever the Spirit says to go and what to say, is what I am commanded to do.
You don’t have to agree with me. But you’re not going to convince me that the God who called Deborah, Anna, Priscilla, Phoebe, and Mary Magdalene suddenly stopped speaking through women because religion became louder than what the Father is saying through scripture.
Can women preach? Yes.
Can Karen shut up? Not while Jesus is still saving people yesterday, today and forevermore.