Reasons for the Reverend Ms.

While reading an online discussion today of whether females should be pastors, I ran into the old familiar argument about Mary Magdalene. It runs something like this: women should be able to be pastors because the first one to tell about the resurrection was a woman, namely, Mary Magdalene. The person added that the Woman at the Well in Samaria was also a bearer of the good news and thus, women can be pastors.

When I thought about that for a few seconds, I suddenly realized just how silly that argument is. Please note, whichever side of this debate you fall on, this argument is invalid and does absolutely no service to the pro point of view.

First of all, one must realize that neither of these two women were pastors in even the remotest sense of that word. They were indeed tellers of good news but that is not the main job of pastors nor does it qualify one to be a pastor. Rather, these two are great examples of women who testify to their spiritual experiences to others in order to bring them to faith in Jesus.

Secondly, we dare not appropriate these two incidents to say that women can be pastors lest we run into some very serious problems. If Mary and Samary can be pastors because they once spoke for God, then Balaam’s Donkey and, by extension, all other donkeys could also pastor. After all, no one is arguing that these two WERE actually pastors but that because they spoke for God, the door is open for females to be pastors. If that argument holds water, then we should also allow people who hate Jesus and want to kill him to pastor because Caiaphas prophesied once (John 11: 49-51).

Like Caiaphas and the Reverend Donkey, the two females cited are merely one-time incidents not examples to be emulated. A better tack might be to use the daughters of Philip who prophesied to bolster the case for a female pastor. Even that case, however, is not analogous because those young women were NOT pastors, they were prophetesses. Clearly, prophets and pastors are not the same thing.

Some bring in Deborah the judge as a support for women pastors. Again, it does not work. She was a judge in Israel—someone raised up to be a deliverer, not a pastor. If this qualifies women for pastoral roles, then we should also allow long-haired, harlot-hopping, Philistine-killing men to be pastors because Samson was a judge. Judges are not analogous to pastors. One might use Deborah to support women in political roles and be fairly safe; but to utilize her as a reason to have a female pastor is clearly not correct.

In spite of history and Scripture if one decides to favor women in the pastoral role, it is advisable to argue from somewhere besides these two women. If one chooses to use them as an argument that women can testify and witness to people, he/she will have my full support. If, on the other hand, one tries to pull them into supporting female pastors, he/she will find logic, reason, history, Scripture, and common sense opposing their conclusions.