QUESTIONS - Can Women Be On Church Staff With Men Reporting To Them? examines biblical constraints on female leadership, arguing that 1 Timothy 2:9-15 prohibits women from exercising authority over men in roles like communications director or elder. While non-supervisory positions such as janitorial work remain permissible, the speaker rejects feminist shifts toward ordination, insisting that any role involving staff supervision violates historic church principles. Ultimately, this analysis suggests that maintaining male oversight is essential to preserve biblical order and prevent inappropriate mixed-gender dynamics within church administration. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Women As Office Administrators00:07:22
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Regarding church staff, is it biblical for a woman to be in a lead role such as communications director or other ministry within the church and have men, others, report to her?
Yeah, yeah, got you.
So, no, I would say no.
And this is why, and this is something that guys are trying to do again and again and again.
I'm not saying you're trying to do this coffee with ranch hands.
I wish I knew your actual name.
It feels weird addressing you.
Dear coffee with ranch hands.
But I don't think you're trying to do this, but a lot of people are.
What they try to do is there's two prohibitions, two things that Paul clearly forbids, prohibits in 1 Timothy 2, verse 9 through 15.
And a lot of people are trying to combine them and make it one.
They're trying to truncate Paul's.
Prohibition and say there's only one thing that Paul prohibits.
He prohibits a woman to teach with authority, and that is a clear misreading of the text.
The text doesn't say, I forbid a woman to teach with authority.
No, Paul says, I forbid a woman to teach or exercise authority.
Not one prohibition teaching with authority, but two prohibitions teaching or exercising authority.
Teaching or exercising authority.
So if a woman is not an elder, It sounds like we would agree on that, that women shouldn't be elders.
That's clear in Scripture.
And I would hold to a male diaconate as well.
I don't think that there's any biblical evidence whatsoever.
And that has been the historic position of the church until about 15 minutes ago when everyone became a feminist.
All of a sudden, oh, now we have the right reading of Scripture.
No, I think you're just feminist.
But male eldership, male diaconate, in terms of officers, ordained officers of the church, those are reserved for men.
Teaching.
It sounds like you would agree, like, okay, yeah, and also, if a woman can't be a deacon and she can't be an elder, she also doesn't need to be preaching on the Lord's Day.
And that's not contradicting what I said earlier.
Well, I thought you said, Joel, that within Reformed Baptist polity, you don't have to be an elder to teach.
Yeah, but you have to be biblically qualified.
You may not have the office, the title, the ordination, but you have to be biblically qualified.
And one of the biblical qualifications is maleness.
That is one of the qualifications.
It's not just doctrinally sound, it's not just able to teach, it's also man.
Man of but one wife, right?
So that's part of the qualification.
So you can't be an elder, you can't be a deacon.
You also cannot teach.
So then the question is, but can you be in a leadership role exercising authority over men?
And I would say no, because Paul says, I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority.
I think that these roles, even if it's a non ordained role, right, it's not an elder, it's not a deacon.
So it begs another question Should a church employ on staff people who are not ordained officers of the church?
Someone who is a non deacon or a non elder, but still on staff with the church.
Yes, I think biblically that is permissible.
I'm not saying you should do it.
I'm not saying it's ideal, but yes, it is biblically permissible, right?
Like you could have a janitor, right?
If your church is huge, you know, I think the church is smaller than everybody just pitch in and clean up, right?
But if your church is huge, a thousand people and all those, okay, you can have a janitor on staff with the church, and that could be a full time job with a church that size.
And that person could be a woman.
Or a man, and it would not contain any teaching role or any authority.
And, you know, but a communications director, part of my problem in answering the question is I don't really know what the heck a communications director is.
Nathan, what is a communications director?
Just an office administrator?
Do you think that's what he's getting at?
Or she's getting at?
Yeah, I just, so the example that you gave, and I'm sorry, I'm trying to understand your question.
I'm not saying it's your fault, but the communications director, that just could be so broad, you know?
And even the word director, you know, it seems to invoke a sense of authority.
You know, in the same way that, you know, on our church website, we would use the word pastor for anyone who is an elder.
Well, what I've done in the past is I've also used the word director for anyone who's a deacon.
So if you're a deacon over this ministry or whatever, I say you're the such and such director.
And likewise, if you're an elder with this, you're the such and such pastor.
And so communications director just seems big, it seems broad.
That person could be in charge of curating and also editing and being the gatekeeper for the theological platforms of the church with social media or.
Recorded.
I don't know, all these different things.
But I know your main question is saying, okay, it's a team lead, somebody who has other people either working underneath them or volunteering underneath them.
Yeah, I just think it depends.
It depends on the nature of the work, right?
So, again, back to the thousand person church, you know, let's say a woman is the lead janitor, right?
But let's say it's such a big church that she needs an assistant.
Can she have an assistant who's a man?
Well, I mean, if they're in the church, a guy and a girl together, and the church is nobody else is there, I would just, again, I'd say that's not a good idea.
Just by virtue of, we don't want an empty church building with two members of the opposite sex with nobody present.
That's just, you know what I mean?
That's just a bad idea.
But in a hypothetical situation, blah, blah, blah, would it be okay for a female lead janitor and a male assistant janitor who reports to her?
Well, she's exercising authority, but the authority that she's exercising is hey, could you clean the bathroom and could you use bleach?
It's just different.
That's different than communications director that could be just an office administrator.
You know, helping to schedule the pastor's week, you know, when people ask to meet with him or this or that.
So it just depends what you mean.
Do you mean an office administrator?
Again, same kind of disclaimer that I gave a second ago.
If there's going to be times where the pastor and this office administrator are up at the church alone, nobody else is there, yeah, it shouldn't be a woman.
I think that's dangerous and inappropriate.
And we're called to avoid even the appearance of evil, whether or not something actually inappropriate happens.
But assuming that there's a large staff and all this kind of stuff, and there's Plenty of accountability, and they're not sharing an office, and blah blah blah.
And there's open door policy, and you know, all those kind of things, right?
The Mike Pence model, which I think is a good model, all those things.
If office administrator is just, I'm scheduling things for the pastor, I'm not really exercising authority over anybody, I'm just an office administrator, I'm an administrator, yeah, then I think that that could be permissible.
But it sounds like what you're talking about is people would report to her, be working under her, and communications director sounds broader.
Like it has authority over more things than just an administrator, a secretary.
Men Must Direct People00:01:08
And so, in that case, I would say, Yeah, no, I don't think that's a good idea.
I think you should have a man to direct people, to be a director.
All right.
Because all that being said, 1 Timothy 2, verse 9 through 15, the prohibition that Paul gives is not one, teaching with authority, but two, teaching or exercising authority.
And so, however you apply that, I think at least the principle, I hope you go away with the principle.
The principle is it is inappropriate in the mind of Paul for a woman, even if she's not teaching, publicly teaching men, it is still inappropriate just to be exercising authority over men.
And obviously, there's a spectrum there of cleaning the toilets with bleach versus, I don't know, whatever.
There's a spectrum there, but that's the principle, that's the big idea.
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