Leaving Beyond – Grounded In Scripture

 “True religion is the sense of the heart’s dependence on God, and the vigorous exercise of holy affections in the pursuit of His glory.”  ~ Jonathan Edwards

Ladies, while we are not called by God to the pulpit, we are called to study our Bibles and to be discerning.

Sadly, many women have been deceived by their own hearts and led into disobedience to God by cowardly and Biblically ignorant men who have encouraged them to be pastors. In response to that error, another extreme has emerged. Some men—while seeking to “take back the pulpit”—behave like Pharisees. They would rather their wives get together to drink wine than to study God’s Word. They forbid them from gathering with other women to study God’s Word, pre-approve their reading material, and instruct them that they may only hear Scripture taught to them from their husband or pastor.

Like the very error they seek to oppose, they imitate it. They do not faithfully exposit God’s Word but read into the text their ideas and answers to real problems in the church. They become like what they hate. They use Biblical language but they pervert the meaning. They seek to answer real problems but they do not get their answers from a proper exegesis of the text. They study other materials that offer them power and give a pragmatic answer.

These men, on each extreme, are disobeying God, and misleading many women, their households, their churches and bringing reproach on the name of Christ.

Scripture makes it plain that women are NOT called to preach, no matter how strongly she feels “led” to do so. However, Scripture in no way forbids women to study our Bibles, to gather with other women to study together or only be allowed to read pre-approved material from one’s husband.

We are living among extremes. One seems to be a response to another and both are unbiblical and dangerous.

While no woman is ever Biblically qualified or called to be a pastor, we are not forbidden from faithful study of God’s Word or gathering with other women to study God’s Word. No passage of Scripture—rightly exposited—teaches or instructs this.

Men who love and care about the women in their churches and in their home and in their lives do not impose on them rules foreign to Scripture. Likewise, they do not abandon their responsibilities or encourage women to disobey God by doing what men should be.

And ladies, even if men abandon their responsibility in the pulpit this still does not give us the freedom to disobey God and step into the pulpit. We are not preachers! And that does not diminish the beauty of who God created us to be or our God-given roles that glorify Him.

The church needs men who will go into the Word of God and submit to what it says and means, leading the church and their households accordingly. The church has long been led by weak and cowardly men, who have abandoned their roles and responsibilities, encouraged women to disobey God and have so feminized the church that we now have a new problem. We have men who are taking back the pulpit but are doing so as goes beyond Scripture.

The church needs women who once again see the beauty in who God has created us to be for His glory and to honor Him in it. We do not need to be men or to assume the God-given role of men to be of value. We need to be women. And we need to submit to the Word of God according to its proper exegesis. We need other women who know their Bible, so that we may encourage one another in the truth of what it means to be a woman who loves God and honors Him.

The church must be careful of extremes. Only God’s Word—rightly exposited—will keep us from extremes and walking in the truth.

Grace and Peace, y’all
Soli Deo Gloria

April J. Buchanan