Women in Ministry Didn’t Start Yesterday
You might assume that women in ministry are a relatively new idea that showed up sometime in the 1960s, alongside bell-bottom jeans, transistor radios, and lava lamps.
Actually, you’re only off by about 200 or 2,000 years.
Hop in the Way Back Machine
From the very beginning, women were an essential part of Jesus’ ministry.
That was a big deal.
In Jesus’ day, respected rabbis generally didn’t teach women. Jesus did. He welcomed them as disciples, trusted them with important responsibilities, and even entrusted the first announcement of his resurrection to a woman.
The Gospels specifically name women who followed and served alongside him, including:
- Mary, the Mother of Jesus
- Mary Magdalene
- Mary of Bethany
- Mary, the wife of Clopas
- Joanna
- Susanna
- Salome
The story doesn’t stop there.
In his letters, Paul also lists at least thirteen female coworkers who were crucial to his ministry.
- Lydia
- Chloe
- Nympha
- Apphia
- Mary
- Persis
- Tryphena
- Tryphosa
- Priscilla
- Euodia
- Syntyche
- Phoebe
- Junia1
From the very beginning of the church, women played key roles in building the Church.
Fast Forward a Couple of Centuries
Here’s another surprise.
Women have been preaching for much longer than most realize.
More than 250 years ago, John Wesley recognized and encouraged the preaching ministry of Sarah Crosby. Wesley wasn’t trying to be trendy. If the Holy Spirit gave the gift of preaching to a woman, who was he to stop it? He witnessed God calling and using women, and he was willing to affirm what he saw.
In 1853, Atoinette Brown Blackwell became the first woman ordained by a mainstream Christian denomination. Many others followed, serving faithfully as evangelists, pastors, missionaries, teachers, and church leaders.
And preachers like Phoebe Palmer, Catherine Booth, and …
What’s the Point?
Whether you agree with every denomination’s approach or not, one thing is hard to deny: women in ministry did not suddenly appear because of the feminist movement of the 1960s.
Women have been answering God’s call since the days of Jesus.
Faithful Christians have wrestled with what the Bible teaches on this for centuries. Some will point to passages like 1 Timothy 2–3, 1 Corinthians 14 and Titus 1 for reasons to limit the authority of women in the church. Others have argued Acts 2, Galatians 3 and Romans 16 show the broader message that both men and women are gifted and called.
Both perspectives have sought to honor God, even while they reached different conclusions.
For husbands like me, that is important.
When your wife senses God’s calling on her life, she is embracing a tradition as ancient as the dawn of the early Church. As Peter said, “If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand in God’s way?”2
It’s something wonderfully old.
And it’s something beautifully new when God calls someone like my wife into ministry.
