LEADERSHIP-MALE
God has not
given us one set of leadership principles for marriage relationships, another
set for biological family relationships, and yet another for relationships in
the larger (church) family. Though each sphere of influence broadens in terms
of function and responsibility, the basic leadership principles are the same. A
husband is to be a servant-leader to his wife, a father is to be a servant-leader
in his family, and elders/overseers are to be servant-leaders in the family of
God.
Elders and Leaders, Moody, 2003, p. 126.
The most
critical need of the church at this moment is men, bold men, free
men. The church must seek, in prayer and much humility, the coming again of men
made of the stuff of which prophets and martyrs are made.
A.W. Tozer
Supreme
authority in both church and home has been divinely vested in the male as the
representative of Christ, who is Head of the church. It is in willing
submission rather than grudging capitulation that the woman in the church
(whether married or single) and the wife in the home find their fulfillment.
Elisabeth Elliot
There is no reference anywhere in the New Testament to a
female elder. You may wish to object by pointing out that this is an argument
from silence... The bottom line is that we simply have no
biblical precedent for female elders nor anything in the text that
describes their nature, function, and qualifications that would lead us to
believe that this could ever be a possibility.
Sam Storms
Men and Women in ministry: Should Women Serve as Elders in the Local Church? November 6, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com.
Used by Permission.
I
will grant a zealous female converts or confirms several souls by her
preaching. But may she not, by this
example, in the future introduce an amount of confusion, intrusion, strife,
error and scandal which will greatly overweigh the first partial good? This question cannot be answered until time
is ended, and it will require an omniscient mind to judge it. Thus it becomes perfectly clear that present
seeming good results cannot ever be a sufficient justification of conduct,
which violates the clear Word of God. This is our only sure guide.
Robert Lewis Dabney
The Public Preaching of Women, October
1879.
The
apostle expressly excludes “new converts” from office. Yet no one dreams that
he would have made the newness of their salvation a ground of discrimination
against their equal privileges in Christ… So every sane man would exclude
children from office in the church, yet no one would disparage their equal
interest in Christ… If, then, the equality of these classes in Christ did not
imply their fitness for public office in the church, neither does the equality
of females with males in Christ imply it.
Robert Lewis Dabney
The Public Preaching of Women, October
1879.
The only
teaching function ever hinted for the women is Titus 2:4 that the older women
should teach these private domestic virtues to their younger sisters. Does not
the apostle here assign the home as the proper sphere of the Christian woman? That
is her kingdom, and not the secular workplace or the church.
Robert Lewis Dabney
The Public Preaching of Women, October
1879.
There
can be no doubt whatever that the Spirit calls no person to do what the Word
dictated by him, forbids. The Spirit cannot contradict himself. No human being
is entitled to advance a specific call of the Spirit for him individually to do
or teach something contrary to or beside the Scriptures previously given to the
church… Hence, when a woman preacher professes to have felt this call that the
Word distinctly precludes from the work…although we may ascribe her mistake to
an amiable zeal, yet we absolutely know she is mistaken; she has confounded a
human impulse with the Spirit’s calling.
Robert Lewis Dabney
The Public Preaching of Women, October
1879.
Who
can believe that God’s Spirit is the agent of such anarchy as this, where the
Church hold in their hands the Word, teaching them that God does not call any
woman, and yet a woman insists against them that God calls her?
Robert Lewis Dabney
The Public Preaching of Women, October
1879.
The
Old Testament, which contained, in seed, all the principles of the New, allowed
no regular church office to any woman.
When a few of that sex were employed as mouthpieces of God, it was in an
office purely extraordinary, and in which they could produce a supernatural attestation
of their commission. No woman ever ministered at the altar, as either priest or
Levite. No female elder was ever seen in
a Hebrew congregation. No woman ever sat on the throne of the theocracy, except
the pagan usurper and murderess, Athaliah. Now…this
Old Testament principle of ministry is carried over to a degree in the New
Testament where we find the Christian congregations with elders, teachers, and
deacons, and its women invariably keeping silence in the assembly.
Robert Lewis Dabney
The Public Preaching of Women, October
1879.
If human
language can make anything plain, it is that the New Testament institutions do
not permit the woman to rule or “to have authority over a man” (See 1 Tim.
2:12; 1 Cor. 11:3, 7-10; Eph. 5:22, 23; 1 Peter 3:1, 5, 6).
Robert Lewis Dabney
The Public Preaching of Women, October
1879.
Paul does not
say that woman must not preach in public because he regards her as less pious,
less zealous, less eloquent, less learned, less brave, or less intellectual,
than man. Those who advocate woman’s
rights have a continual tendency to confuse this issue, claiming that the
apostle, when he says that woman must not do what man does, meant to disparage
her sex. This is a sheer mistake. You will search in vain for any disparagement
of the qualities and virtues of the female sex; and we may at this place
properly disclaim all such intention also. Woman is excluded from this
masculine task of public preaching by Paul, not because she is inferior to man,
but simply because her Maker has ordained for her another work which is
incompatible with the public preaching and teaching of the Word.
Robert Lewis Dabney
The Public Preaching of Women, October
1879.
Now,
a wise God designs no clashing between his domestic and political and his church institutions. He has
ordained that the man shall
be head in the family, thus it would be a confusion
full of mischief to make the woman head in the church. But we have seen that the right of public
teaching must involve the right of spiritual rule. The woman
who has a right to preach, if there be any such, ought
also claim to be a ruling elder. How would it work to have husband and wife,
ruler and subject, change places as often as they passed from the home to the church? We see that
this amount of switching
roles
would result in little short of absolute anarchy.
Robert Lewis Dabney
The Public Preaching of Women, October
1879.
To Paul, the
human race is made up of families, and every several organism, the church
included, is composed of families, united together by this or that bond. The
relation of the sexes in the family follows it therefore into the church. To
the feminist movement the human race is made up of individuals; a woman is just
another individual by the side of the man; and it can see no reason for any
differences in dealing with the two. And, indeed, if we can ignore the great
fundamental natural difference of sex, and destroy the great fundamental
social unit of the family, in the interest of individualism, there does not
seem any reason why we should not wipe out the differences established by Paul
between the sexes in the church.
Paul on Women Speaking in the Church, The Presbyterian,
October 30, 1919.