Gender Roles in the Church

...In a few years, one of the two congregations I served (it was a yoked parish) no longer had any women on its board of elders and this led to our coming under the rebuke of our denomination since we were violating the constitutional requirement that women and men hold office in equal numbers in each local congregation.

After about a year and a half of deliberation within our board of elders, we decided to leave that denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and join another denomination, the Presbyterian Church in America.

This second denomination still honors Scripture, and she is a community of believers still confessing what Scripture clearly says: that abortion, infanticide, fornication, and homosexuality are sin. Further, church discipline is still practiced within this ecclesiastical fellowship, the Bible is still honored, and only men are eligible for the offices of pastor and elder.

While I was in the process of transferring my credentials, I was examined by the local presbytery I was seeking to enter within the PCA and was asked the following question: “Do you believe in the ordination of women as pastors and elders?”

I answered, “No; in the past I have ordained women but I repent.”

Why did I (and do I) repent of ordaining women to the eldership?

Because the Bible with great clarity and simplicity forbids women to exercise authority over men.

*Luther on Loving Word of God and Conflict: Anyone who intends to love God and His Word will not have an easy time of it. It will often hit him between the eyes, and the love will often become the kind that the devil sours and embitters for him. Hence we need the ability to hold tight and to be devoted to the Word of God. -Luther's Works, Volume 21; edited by Jaroslav Pelikan; Concordia Publishing House; Saint Louis; “Sermon on Matthew 6:24,” p. 191.

The clarity and simplicity of God's commands concerning these matters is devastating to those moderns and postmoderns who try to use Scripture for their own purposes. This is why I have a certain respect for the original feminists such as the late Paul King Jewett of Fuller Theological Seminary who, in his classic work, Man as Male and Female, had the integrity simply to say that the Bible is clear and the Bible is wrong (pp. 118-119). It is also why I respect secular feminists who, having no need to honor Scripture or its Author, put it bluntly as they see it saying: “The Bible is hopelessly patriarchal,” by which they mean that because of its patriarchy we must reject Scripture.
Read the entire article at Baylyblog.

This is a great article by Tim Blayly regarding gender roles. He talks about how he initially desired to involve women in pastoral and elder positions (when he was apart of the PCUSA). He eventually left that church to go to a PCA which generally holds the historical views of the reformed church. I especially like his point that he respects feminists who are able to admit the Bible's clear teachings on the issue. It is difficult to keep quiet when people try to inappropriately apply scripture to their worldviews. In an attempt to cater to both scripture and the modern view they blaspheme God's Word. If your foundation for reasoning is based upon scripture, there is not much room for women pastors.