What does Biblical ministry to women look like in the church? The modern church has accumulated various unbiblical offices such as student pastor, children’s pastor, youth pastor, worship pastor, senior pastor, sports pastor, pastor of counseling, and women’s pastor. In the same way, we have also created unbiblical ministries in the church. One of those is what we call women’s ministries. These commonly focus on the emotional life of the women in the church. A new office in the church is created: women’s ministry leader. What should we think of these ministries? What does the Bible say?

More Resources on Women’s Ministry from Jeff Pollard:

Scripture is Sufficient for Women’s Ministry Part 1 Teachers of Good Things - https://churchandfamilylife.com/resources/60ca7fea23fa965169a3cd46

Scripture is Sufficient for Women’s Ministry Part 2 Keepers at Home - https://churchandfamilylife.com/resources/60ca7fed23fa965169a3cd47

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast. Church and Family Life exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture, And today our focus is on ministry to women. What does the scripture say about that? The modern church has in general accumulated various unbiblical offices in the church. You find offices like student pastor, children's pastor, youth pastor, counseling pastor, sports pastor, senior pastor.

These things aren't connected really to biblical categories because of course the Bible gives two offices in the church, elder or pastor and deacons. But in the same way we've created unbiblical offices in the church, we've also created unbiblical ministries in the church. And one of those is what people called women's ministries. Modern women's ministries focus on gathering women together to share their stories, to deal with their emotional problems, to counsel them, to connect them. And there's the idea that women can do anything that men do.

So you have teachers who are instructing women from pulpits and things like that. So the subject is what does women's ministry or ministry to women in the Bible look like. So Jason, so let's talk about that. Hi, Scott. Yeah, hey.

So, what does come to your mind when we bring this subject up? We're going to get to the Scriptures in a minute. I think what I'd like to talk about first is some of the things that we're concerned about. Yeah. I mean, I think we want to affirm that our sisters in the Lord are precious and worthy of lavish amounts of ministry.

The question is, is the common practice which institutionalizes it around solely women's leadership where you sort of create a parallel universe, where there's a man's universe and a woman's universe, only men are ministering to the men, only women are ministering to the women. Is that something that even resembles in any way what you see in the New Testament? We want to assert women ought to be the recipients of lavish amounts of ministry, but what I just described is not in the New Testament. Yeah, What you find is that men and women are generally ministered to in the same way, broadly, through the preaching ministry of the church and through the one-anothers that are exercised in the church and the ministry of the older women teaching the younger women. So these, what you have are informal methodologies, not formal structural ecclesiologies, and you don't see the creation of kind of a separate priesthood, like you talked about parallel universes, the women's track and the men's track.

One of the things that I've observed in women's ministries from the past is that they focus on personal healing, they focus on grievances, they sometimes devolve into complaining about their husbands and sharing those kinds of things, dealing with needs. On the contrary, though, you know, a long time ago, I can even remember women's ministries in the church were really about serving other people, serving missionaries in the field, helping people who were needy in the church. You know, they were serving. They weren't entering into a psychological treatment. They were entering into actually a service.

The model has shifted. Yeah, the model has shifted more to a therapeutic model. Of course, the Bible addresses it directly in Titus chapter 2. So if you want a pattern from God, we've been given a pattern by God. You don't have to deduce it, you don't have to connect dots.

God tells us exactly how it ought to work in local churches. Yeah, so let's do that. I think, you know, our perspective is that the way that women are ministered to is through the normal means of grace, the ordinary means of grace in the church, and also particular, carefully defined duties of older women teaching the younger women. These are informal kind of relationships. And so that's what you have in Titus 2.

I'll read the text in Titus 2, beginning with the addressing of older men, be sober, reverent, temperate, sound in faith, in love, in patience. The older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanders or given too much wine, teachers of good things. These are the older women, teachers of good things, that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed." And then the discussion shifts to younger men. So that's this informal relational methodology that the Bible has. And I think you start at a general level.

Here's what I mean by that. How has God directed for people in a local church to be taught, encouraged, exhorted. Well, believers are given elders to do that, men of mature Christian character who are good household managers and who are doctrinally sound and able to teach. And they're that to every believer in the church, and really the unbelievers too, they're proclamers of the gospel, the unbelievers, regardless of gender. Elders are pastors or shepherds of The men in the church, the young men in the church, the little boys in the church, the little girls in the church, the young women in the church, the more mature women in the church.

All of the believers received the ministry from the elders. And of course, that doesn't mean gender is irrelevant. It informs the way that elders go about ministry to different demographics in the church, if that's the right word to use. And then there is this gender-specific way in which the older women are to instruct the younger women. And it's about the things that they've become accustomed to doing as women in the way that they play their function in the world.

Yeah, and they're exhorted to be teachers of good things. They function more like a mentor rather than a platform speaker. Those are two very different ways of approaching it. You know, our view is that the list in Titus 2 is the list of things that older women should be teaching the younger women. And There's a very distinctive domestic focus of that teaching.

The elders are qualified by their sound doctrine and by their manner of life, and they teach the congregation from Genesis to Revelation. On the other hand, you have a different way that women are mentored, and it's primarily in domestic matters, matters of their lifestyle in the home and relating to the world. But Scott, I mean, that's so different than what you find in the quote unquote normal church today, where essentially Beth Moore is the pastor of the women in the church. And I think the underpinning philosophy of that is that only women can minister to women. But that's not right.

I mean, men receive certain kinds of ministry from women, certain kinds of teaching from women in different parts of their life. And God has intended for there to be all sorts of cross-pollination within the church. This is a wrong thinking to think that women should only be learning from women. Right. I mean, in many places in the Bible, you have this picture of men gathering, women gathering, children and strangers gathering altogether for the instruction.

In other words, there's not a separate instruction for women. There's not a separate instruction for women. There's not a separate instruction for men or children. They're all being instructed at the same time. But what the modern church has wanted to do is to create an alternative priesthood, an alternative authority in the church, not relying on the God-given, God-ordained authority of the teaching of the elders.

So let's walk through this list that Titus gives. Our wives attempt to stay tight to this list when they instruct women. And the first is they are to teach the younger women to love their husbands, and next to love their children. Can we just pause there for a moment? These are massive categories.

Anyone who thinks that this list is a small list and hardly a challenge and is ready to move on to a woman's study of Romans does not understand this list. A wife loving her husband is an incredibly important thing on planet Earth and a difficult thing on planet Earth with a lot of subcategories and nuance to it. Same with children, maybe even more so with the bringing up of children, particularly as their primary teachers throughout the day. There's so much to know and master there. To have a gray-headed woman or a white-headed woman is such a treasure, to help them know how to navigate these things.

But these are... I just wanna stop and recognize how deep and wide these categories are and how important they are to life. The health of the home rises and falls on the ability of husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and for a wife to know how to love her husband in a biblical, good, healthy way. She's creating a healthy home with her husband and her children. And I mean, this is a lifetime project.

Yeah. And so when women get together with our wives, our wives' agenda is, how are you loving your husband? Here's how you can love your husband. How are you loving your children? Here's how you can love your children." This massive category of life that really is all-consuming.

And you don't set aside an hour from that and then say, okay, well, wow, we've mastered this and now we move on to it. It's bigger than that. It's organic and it's ongoing. And then you have discrete. The word that the apostle uses has to do with controlling oneself, being prudent and sensible.

And the idea is that sometimes young women lack good sense, and they need a sensible woman to come alongside, filled with the Holy Spirit, to help them think and act sensibly. You know, the pressures on women are significant. Their emotional vulnerability is significant. And so, How do you minister to women in the church? You give a woman, an older woman, who can help her to learn how to be discreet, to be sensible and self-controlled in her life.

With all that life will end up throwing at her, The older woman knows some of those things, many of those things. The younger woman doesn't yet know, and she should consider herself to be in a preparation phase. It can really benefit from an older woman in the church who is mature. The fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and so forth. The older women in the church have more of that fruit and know how the Spirit has developed it in their life.

And there's a sense in which they can accelerate the curve in the life of the younger women of the church. I really think that's what we have before us in this. They can help these younger women go further faster. Yeah, and they've been there. They've been there, they've done that.

They've gone through that phase. And then the next is chaste, which has to do with purity. And I think that has to do with helping younger women not to get sucked into the sensuality of the culture, the immodesty of the culture, to help that woman to maintain her purity. Yeah. I'm not in love with chaste as a translation on this Greek word.

Maybe reverent purity might be a better one. If you're watching the podcast, go look up that word on blueletterbible.com and drill down on it. Chaste isn't an irresponsible translation at all, but there's more than we would normally think when we hear that word. Reverent purity is the kind of thing that this Greek word's getting at. And then keepers at home.

This is a controversial term. It has to do with the center of a woman's life. It doesn't mean that she can never leave her home. It means that the center of her life is her home, and she's focusing on that. You know, there are other words that describe this life of the keeper at home, the home despot.

Right. Right, that's actually the term that you find in 1 Timothy chapter 5, 1 Timothy 5, when you look at that Greek word home despot. So these are words that are broad, expansive, and authoritative. We're talking about a sphere of authority for a woman. She is sort of the vice regent, for lack of a better term, of the man when he's away from the home or not engaged in managing the home.

She's the one who has authority there. Yeah, and God has the older women to teach the younger women to really power up and take dominion over their household and to focus their energies on home life. That's not really very popular, but here the Word of God here says that if they don't do that, the Word of God will be blasphemed. In other words, if a woman isn't focused on her home, there are things that will happen that will cause the Word of God to be blasphemed. If her feet are wandering outside of the home, she's not caring for her children, there are things that will happen to her children that will cause the Word of God to be blasphemed.

They'll go astray, They'll get caught up in all kinds of worldly things. It'll hurt them. So it's so important because by being a keeper at home, by being a home despot, you're keeping the Word of God from being blasphemed through your house and your life. Yeah. I preached on this a couple of years ago.

My favorite phrase from that message was, not the maid. When you see the phrase, keeper at home, If you think of the maid, then you're a thousand miles off track. This is a person who is building a culture, who is building a healthy respite for an entire family. And that home life is going to shape the life of everyone who lives in that home. This is not a maid, this is not a domestic servant, this is the one who manages the domestic servants.

Yeah, this is a woman who, I love the way you say that, you know, this woman is creating a world, she's creating a culture. And then the next word is good. Has to do with moral excellence, I believe, But it has to do with doing good things, devoting herself to good things. There's so many distractions, particularly with the social media world that we have going on, and with the music and the movies, there's a lot of not good. The older women are supposed to teach the younger women how to focus on good, what's really and truly good because there's so many things that you could do with your time, focus it on what's good.

Sure. And then obedient to their own husbands, the older women are to teach the younger women to be obedient to their husbands and to find themselves properly ordered in creation. The husband is the head of the wife, as also Christ is the head of the church. So how do you be obedient to a husband who's disobedient to the Lord? That's a massive question that my wife gets.

Yeah. But yeah. 1 Timothy, 1 Peter 3 answers that question. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

So, the force of the instruction in ministering to women is really toward two things, home life, husbands and children, and personal purity and personal affections on what is good. I think those are the two main categories of ministry to women that you find in the Bible. But you don't find women's ministries focusing in on the therapeutic. You find them focused on really critical matters of their lives. Yeah.

Could I give two exhortations to men about women's ministry. The first one is to elders. Just as we've been talking about this, and this happens periodically with me, just the thought that half of the congregation is female, half of the people that I'm given to serve by God and to minister to are female. And So really, half of my work is about that, and so this is an exhortation to myself and to other pastors out there to power up. We need to have good, appropriate, healthy relationships with the women and the young ladies and the girls in our congregation, all that needs to be with safeguards and propriety and a level of guardedness.

All that could go without saying, but maybe can't in our day and age. But there is an over rotation where because of the potential pitfalls and hazards there, you give nothing to it. You cannot give nothing to half the congregation. It cannot be that that would please the Lord. So the first exhortation is just to elders, power up and figure out how to have good, healthy, appropriate relationships with the women in the church.

And the second would be to fathers in the church, husbands in the church, brothers in the church to help the women in the church cultivate a rigorous, healthy sisterhood. Sisters in the church need each other. Our women meet once a month. Sometimes there is a teaching around the Titus II topic or a book around the Titus II topic that they're studying, but sometimes they just get together to have dinner and have an evening together. And when we send out the notices on that, we really strongly encourage the men, make it easy for the sister, for our sisters in the Lord to enjoy a relaxed night of fellowship, to encourage one another because they need it and they get precious little of it unless we create the pathway for it.

Amen. Amen. One more thing before we close. It's the responsibility of the church to produce Titus II women. And one of the great sorrows of younger women in the church today is that it's hard for them to find a woman like this, an older woman.

So you have to start when the girls are young, to train them up in understanding these kinds of things, to create a home life. They need to have mothers who have a home life where they're loving their husbands, loving their children, where they're chaste, where they're teaching good things. You know, the young girls need to grow up in homes like that so that they can become women like that for the next generation. I pray that churches would have an eye on how to train up Titus II women. The payoff is going to be 20, 30, 40 years, 50 years in the future, but it's really worth it.

We don't want to end up with another generation of young women who can hardly find a Titus 2 woman. True. So, there you have it. Okay, well, ministry to women in the church. Pray that God would give all of us a sense of the authority, the beauty, and the applicability of Scripture, particularly when it has to do with ministering to women in the church according to the Word of God, not the culture.

Thanks for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast and we hope to see you next Monday. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up. Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com.

See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast. Cast.