An Egalitarian Church
Why egalitarianism doesn’t merely adjust church roles. It redefines authority, responsibility, and formation.
This was a talk delivered on January 21, 2026 at the Pre-Conference gathering for the Founders Conference. You can learn more about Founders Ministries here. Some of this talk includes excerpts from my upcoming book.
What’s the Big Deal?
Here’s my working assumption. I don’t think that if you’re reading this article, you’re the type of person who has women as pastors at their church. Now maybe a friend sent this to you and I am mistaken. My father did warn me about making assumptions. But for most of my readers, they are not interested in promoting feminism in the church.
But, I know that in our day egalitarianism is a very popular thing to do. It seems that every hip new church plant I come across has a woman listed as pastor. To be clear, what I’m referring to is the practice of installing women as pastors and elders in churches. It is related to the ideological concept of egalitarianism more broadly in our equality obsessed age. But we are talking here about the church. These egalitarians, or Christian feminists (a name they do not shy away from), are very en vogue.
You have church planters that are husband and wife pastors. Even the lauded North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention has participated in planting some of these churches. It is the assumed norm for many that women not just can, but should be pastors. This may not be true for Reformed Baptists but in evangelicalism it is just the norm and so many of your Christian friends, many of the people you’re discipling who are looking for a church are coming pre-loaded with the belief that women being pastors is completely normal.
They see this modeled in culture with women being celebrated and lauded and given preferential treatment through law, they see this modeled in our world in media, they even hear it from very big names like JD Greear, the pastor of Summit Church, when he accused the Southern Baptist Convention of “failing to listen to and honor women in the church and failing to include them in top leadership roles.”1 Or when Matt Chandler of The Village Church decides to platform Jen Wilkin as the executive director of their theological training.2 Or when Kathy Keller, wife of the late Tim Keller, teaches that a woman can do anything an unordained man can do in the church.3
This is the camel’s nose under the tent in our theological neck of the woods. It’s not obvious what they’re doing. It sounds nice, very tolerant and inclusive which is how people define “love” today. That is how they always frame it. They are the ones being loving like Jesus, so they say. But it is important, however much it bothers people, to speak plainly on this issue.
So, given these assumptions and given what is being heralded around us, I want to help you and equip you to love God and obey his Word by understanding 3 things:
What does a healthy church look like in terms of men and women?
What does an unhealthy (or unbiblical) church look like in terms of men and women?
And three how do we resist the temptation ourselves and equip others on what the Bible teaches?
Creation, Biology, and God’s Original Design
First, let’s talk anthropology, more specifically biology. We know that grace restores nature. Meaning that God’s plan of redemption does not obliterate distinction. It does not somehow come in and overthrow creation itself. In fact, it restores what was lost.
When God finished the work of creation, it was very good. It was perfect. There was no error, no deviation from what God spoke into being. Just imagine this: not only the heavens and earth and everything in the earth designed to divine precision, not only the order and structure, their very purposes were tuned to the exact song with parts, perfectly harmonious, that brought God glory exactly as it should have without any lack.
Have you ever tried writing a song? I used to write songs more. None of my songs were very quality, but it’s fun and good, David wrote songs. Men write songs. Anyways, imagine you were writing a song and it was perfect, no defect, no insufficiency, no missing instrument tracks, melody and harmony absolutely dialed in, and the mix was the best the world has ever heard. And this was creation.
But consider just one thing, like one line in a song, in creation. “Male and female he created them.” This one creation, mankind, the pinnacle of God’s work, and knowing that it was not good for man to be alone, he created woman out of his side, foreshadowing the side of Christ that was pierced on the cross to form his own bride, the church. This man, the vice-regent of the Lord on the earth given a mandate to subdue it and have dominion, to name, to create. His queen, the bride, Eve, was his chief companion and helper to accomplish this great work.
Everything about them was perfect. There was no sickness and death. No cancer, no depression, no anxiety, no fears. Just harmony and flourishing and glorifying God. Think about their design. Adam perfectly designed biologically for the task at hand. Eve perfectly designed for the job she had. Adam created first, Eve second. Adam with the exact specifications biologically that he needed, the hormones, testosterone and others, perfectly balanced, his physical capabilities were perfectly suited for the work God had given him. Eve the perfect match for Adam, with the parts and design, estrogen and glands divinely made and paired for Adam. Of course we don’t know many things about their biology. We don’t know what Adam’s T-levels were. We don’t know what level of estrogen Eve had. I’m pretty sure she didn’t have a hormone imbalance though.
I discuss this in my book from Founders Press, Offensive Christianity, that our bodies are not a mistake. God gave you a body. You exist, reading this, using your body and brain to comprehend the words written with eyes designed by God. The existence of man is not merely a matter that is a social construct but a deeply material reality. You don’t hear this from many pulpits today. Rather we are absolutely inundated with preaching that is not just androgynous but anti-material. As if God’s purposes in the world have nothing to do with our bodies. This is what we might call spiritual androgyny.
This spiritual androgyny posits that men and women are basically the same and that the end goal is not glory but equality. It cannot fathom that the inherent differences between men and women are good and right. The goal in this spiritual androgyny is the erasure of distinction. For many, and I’m speaking specifically to men, it is imagined that our maleness is an impediment to true spirituality. And rather than true spirituality, the pursuit of glory being the goal, the telos or goal seems to be an obliteration of reality. It is focused not on mastery and excellence and discipline over the body but considers the body to be inherently problematic, a shell to be discarded.
Christianity neglects the reality of the body at its own peril. It is a peculiar thing since the physical reality of our bodies is central to our beliefs. The Son of God took on human flesh to secure redemption. We worship a risen embodied Lord. Christ has a body. And our eternal destiny is embodied. We will dwell in eternity with bodies. Glory is not ultimately disembodied. This body God has formed men with has incredible potential and purpose. Men have the capacity for great deeds of heroism and violence, the ability to conquer cities and lay waste to enemies, and the desire for rulership and reproduction. We aspire to magnanimity and grandeur, kindness, love, charity, and heroism all with our bodies.
Men were made for more than consumption. We were made for more than comfort and convenience. Life is not just a slow death of watching the next blue light screen show alone in the dark. There is a beating heart in every man to not just fulfill his duties but an aspiration for glory in whatever domain God has placed us in. Men hunger for eternal glory (Eccl. 3:11).
In the garden, all that potential given to Adam was aimed and directed at bringing glory to God. We are like arrows pointed at the bullseye of God’s glory. Man was designed to reflect God’s glory in the world, a vice-regent of his Lordship, created to rule. Adam was designed to accomplish this by obeying God fully and fulfilling his design to work and keep the garden. The body of man was made for fitness, vitality, and strength. To work and keep the garden would have involved labor and movement. Knit biologically by God with the “very good” design of very particular biological make up, man is full of life and vigor. There is something that animates man that drives him. He is driven by an ambition to glorify God in his body. This body that could push and pull, fashion and fix, move and make, was crafted by God to accomplish incredible things.
And Paul says in places like 1 Timothy that the order in the church is based on these prior matters. Why? Because the church was not formed to overthrow creation but to restore creation and pattern it. Because the Christ is the new Adam, and we are his people, his bride.
Now of course the fall corrupted things. Sin entered the world, through Adam’s passivity and Eve’s listening to the serpent, they fell, and all of creation was affected. Now creation groans for deliverance. The extent of the effects of the fall, what some call the noetic effects of the fall, is far reaching. Some of it we do to ourselves. Some of it is baked in by the curse. There is not only sickness and death but dysfunction.
However, the fall does not obliterate the biological makeup of mankind. And redemption does not somehow invert or pervert the biological makeup that God designed. Too many Christians treat creation as a mistake and redemption as some kind of remedy to the mistake of creation. When in fact, we are called look at the creation account as instructive for us in our churches.
The redemption that Christ secured through his life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension was full and final for those he has redeemed. Christ’s manhood did not impeded or limit his ability to save women. It is for all. But that does not mean that because salvation is both for men and women, that somehow men and women as categories or creational goods are irrelevant or have been destroyed as realities in themselves.
On the contrary, now in Christ, we can live fully alive in Him according to God’s design for us as men or women. You, man, can honor Christ as a man without needing to adopt mannerisms, behaviors, dispositions, or tones that are feminine. And you woman, can honor Christ without needing to be manly.
Men are stronger than women. Women weaker than men. Men are to protect, physically and spiritually. Women are to nurture. This is Adam and Eve in the garden. Adam being the first priest so to speak given the authority and responsibility to love Eve and teach her.
Let’s look more closely at God’s Word and his design.
How it Should Be: God’s Design in the Church and Home
I want to look at how it should be for us. What is the standard? How are we to discern the practical implications of these things?
Church leadership
1 Timothy 3:2-3 - qualifications for overseers and deacons. Paul lists out for Timothy the expectations for pastors and elders in the church, building off the Old Testament, these were to be men, not women.
The expectation according to the Bible is that officers in the church are to be men. This is historic Christian teaching on these passages that is not simply an arbitrary rule because Paul doesn’t like women. It is rooted in the garden in creation. It’s about creation not God arbitrarily trying to hold women back.
Pastors are to be men, they should act like men. One great source of ill in our world is confusion over this matter. In fact, I argue that transgenderism as a demonic ideology entered our church long before government schools started teaching boys that they could become girls. And it started in the mid 19th century when the first woman was ordained into the pastorate. Because when the church is confused on the particular roles for men and women in the church, what kind of witness do we offer to the world? Confusion.
The fact that this is perceived as controversial, that pastors are men, is symptomatic of the problem we face today. This has been the assumed norm of Christians for millennia, and is the assumed norm of God’s Word, and it is good.
Let’s talk about worship. The office of pastor is uniquely designed for men. What about the worship gathering?
Worship
1 Timothy 2:8-14 - Men and women. This is an often overlooked passage that speaks to gendered piety. In fact, many avoid teaching this passage, which is weird because I think there’s so much to be gleaned from those passages in the Bible which are the most uncomfortable for us today. Gendered piety: Meaning that men and women have different expectations in worship. Men are called to raise their hands and worship God with pure hearts. Women are called to adorn themselves properly and remain silent, specifically when it comes to teaching the Word of God during worship.
In Christ, there are different expectations for men and women in worship. This cuts against our egalitarian spirit of our age where there is basically no distinction taught, implied, or applied. But this is how we honor God in worship. Based on creation there are specific duties and rights men and women have, both equal before the Lord in their sin and need of salvation, both can only be saved through the God man Jesus Christ and yet still there are particular ways that their sanctification and holiness develops.
Marriage and family
Ephesians 5:22-28
This is one of my favorite passages to use when I do weddings. It’s beautiful. In marriage men and women are supposed to point towards different things. Men are to model Christ and his love, being willing to die for their wife. They are to lead their wives in love so that they might grow into maturity and holiness. Women are to submit to their husband’s leadership and headship as the church gladly submits to Christ.
These are common teachings from Paul. Some scholars suggest he is borrowing from what they called “household codes” and applying Christianity to it. But I don’t think that’s the best way to understand these passages because that makes the teaching in them subservient to the culture. And so if the culture is different you can disregard these passages. I think the Romans with their household codes were borrowing from creation. And Paul was not inverting things or creating women’s rights but clarifying what God designed by speaking in a way that would make sense to them.
These passages show us the beautiful design that God has made and communicated from creation and his Word. It is harmonious hierarchy.
Harmony and hierarchy
“Paul is making a claim about the differences between men and women, even at creation. Men are created by God to be strong, to fight and contend when necessary (physically and verbally), and to provide and protect (1 Tim 5:8; 6:12; Jude 1:3). Women are created by God to nurture, to preserve harmony in the family, and to focus on the day-to-day well-being of the household (Titus 2:3–5; 1 Pet 3:1–6). These are virtues for men and women when employed rightly, but they can be corrupted into vices. Men can become abusive instead of being strong protectors. Women are vulnerable to being pulled by their nurturing instinct to seek peace and harmony when there must be battle.”4
There are plenty of warnings that can be offered to both men and women. But here I’ve just focused on the design itself, building off creation, not invented by Paul but designed by God. And both men and women working for God’s glory in their respective sex, is a wonderful thing.
Illustration: Botanical Garden vs. Community Garden
I love botanical gardens. Golf courses too. My wife and I went to New Zealand for our honeymoon. It seems like a lifetime ago at this point for us. This was 2009. We did not have iPhones. We booked hostels. We had to use a map. Drove on the wrong side of the road. We went skydiving. It was incredible. But one of the my favorite things was seeing the botanical gardens. Now hang with me. My wife loves Hydrangeas. And in one of these botanical gardens they had the most hydrangeas we have ever seen. Blues, and pinks, and purples, and whites. In this forest. It was cultivated so that it looked like it was part of the forest. Wonderful. And my wife was so happy.
A botanical garden is cultivated, there is intentionality, and beauty. God’s design is like this. A church that is operating at peak performance, in line with God’s Word and creation, is like a botanical garden.
Contrast that with your average egalitarian church and that looks more like a community garden. You may have these in your community. These churches are not a botanical garden but a community garden. It fits because most of them would take that as a compliment. Everyone gets a plot, democratic decision-making, no master plan, results vary wildly by who shows up. Some sections thrive, others have weeds. The appeal is “authenticity” and “inclusion” rather than cohesive design that’s expanding and harmonious. It’s fake order. Choose your own adventure.
How It Is: Egalitarian Readings and Their Claims
In each of these we will see that the feminist reads Scripture not looking for liberty in Christ but expecting Christ to overthrow the natural order and set them free from patriarchal oppression. In other words, for them, the basic plot of a Disney movie is the lens through which they read Scripture. And we will see that by reading Scripture this way, they not only miss the plot but diminish the beauty and harmony that women were created for.
Church leadership
Romans 16:1 - Phoebe, deacon minister. In the egalitarian, or feminist framework, Phoebe is held up as some kind of women’s liberation figure. She breaks the mold, the glass ceiling, and Paul endorses this, or so they say, when in reality Paul uses this work servant or deacon for a variety of people including magistrates who do not have a de facto office in the church, as much as it may disappoint my friends who love monarchy.
But this word does not designate Phoebe as a deaconess but simply points out that Phoebe was a wonderful woman who served the church. And by making Phoebe the lynchpin for their arguments they diminish the normal everyday service that good Christian women do in the church by making it seem like their genuine and sincere service is not legitimate unless they have an office in the church.
Worship
1 Corinthians 11:2-16 - women are prophesying in worship. We see women participating in worship. Great. Excellent. But to suggest that somehow this justifies women being pastors is to suggest that Paul contradicted himself. Women should sing in church, they should worship with glad hearts in the salvation God has wrought for them. But this does not give them permission to break creation or go against God’s clear teaching. Again, by making this an argument, it creates a latent anxiety in many women that their sincere worship is not good enough unless they get to preach. Nonsense.
Marriage and family
Ephesians 5:21 - submit to one another. This is a classic text used by feminists to suggest that roles and distinction in marriage are null and void, as if creation itself is null and void. But in the very next passage which we read earlier, Paul clearly says that wives are to submit to their own husbands. Yes of course, all Chrsitians should have a humble and meek disposition and behave in gracious and loving manner towards one another. But that does not negate Paul’s instruction in the next verse. And by teaching that is somehow does, not only does it make Paul seem insane but it diminishes the actual submission that all Christians are to have among one another, genuine service, love, and fellowship.
And then finally, rather than a harmonious hierarchy, the feminist framework flattens distinction. They make a song that is one note only, and off key at that. One note and bland (egalitarian) They teach non-gendered piety from places like Galatians 3:28. They will read this passage to suggest that nothing about each individual matters at all. Of course, what Paul is clearly teaching is that salvation is Christ is for all, not that male and female don’t matter. That is how we get not just androgyny but transgenderism. That’s nonsense.
Symptoms and Consequences in Real Churches
We can all recognize these errors in the community garden. But there are weeds that grow even in the botanical garden. Even on a golf course, there are things that must be tended and mended. I’d like to share some the way that churches who earnestly follow God’s Word on these matters still get sideways.
Longhouse Church. What is the longhouse?
Men today have been raised in a feminized world which teaches them that conflict is bad. Some have referred to this as “the longhouse.” This refers to the reality that nearly every institution today cultivates “social norms centering feminine needs and feminine methods for controlling, directing, and modeling behavior.”5 “Jonathan Haidt explains that privileging female strategies does not eliminate conflict. Rather it yields “a different kind of conflict. There is a greater emphasis on what someone said which hurt someone else, even if unintentionally. There is a greater tendency to respond to an offense by mobilizing social resources to ostracize the alleged offender.”6
This has become commonplace. The Human Resources department in your local globocorp is a prime example. They constantly reinforce norms and rules for compliance that seek to not just mitigate conflict but eliminate it altogether.
Schools, mainly run by women, teach the rules of the longhouse from a young age. They teach young people to avoid conflict or prevent them from forwarding positions that disrupt the class. Classrooms themselves become places where girls excel, and boys suffer. The expected norm in the average classroom today is conformity and silence. Of course, children should respect their teachers. They should honor them. We should desire children to be educated. But too often that learning comes in the form of a quiet submissive spirit, which just so happens to be the spirit that women are to be cultivating.
Churches are not immune from the longhouse. In fact, they have reified the longhouse by making the longhouse Christian. Rather than raising up godly men who are comfortable staking out unpopular positions or defending their faith against a hostile world, churches raise up effeminate men who see tolerance and inclusion as downright Christian.
“The implications of the Longhouse reach yet further across the social landscape. The Longhouse distrusts overt ambition. It censures the drive to assert oneself on the world, to strike out for conquest and expansion. Male competition and the hierarchies that drive it are unwelcome. Even constructive expressions of these instincts are deemed toxic, patriarchal, or even racist.”7
The difficulty for churches is this. Because they have now baptized longhouse dynamics into their religion, it will become very difficult to extricate it. It was one thing for a local business to adopt the longhouse as a strategy to drive traffic or take advantage of the labor market. That can be changed. It will be difficult and may result in layoffs. But for a church to rid itself of a feminized culture will require them to publicly own where they have erred. This is very difficult to do and will require men of integrity to admit where they have failed to discharge their duties.
And it will be very upsetting to women, of both sexes, who have been catered to in many modern churches. Sometimes the leaders of the church can quietly shift directions in order to minimize disruptions to the congregation. But other times, it must be publicly repented of. These are complex matters that I wish on no pastor but unfortunately many must take responsibility for the complicity in longhouse Christianity today.
Helen Andrews, not a Christian herself, has written on the feminization of business and other organizations. In her research she documented that as institutions employ more women; the entire institution itself becomes feminized.8 This leads organizations to spend more effort on inclusivity and less on achievement. They are focused not on output and performance but making sure people feel heard. The same is true in the church. The more that women are encouraged to become leaders in the church, the church invariably becomes more feminized. If a church promotes women as leaders in the church, the women naturally make the church more feminine. Hard stances on doctrinal matters that are seen as exclusionary will be frowned upon. Strong statements about sin or the evils we face will be viewed with suspicion at best. Christianity that offends is unwelcome. Offensive Christianity will be seen as dangerous and unchristian.
Elders wives
Now, some churches may have very clean doctrinal statement regarding the office of pastor being reserved for men and yet they still have problems. Why? Because the elders are not leading at home. They have not learned or developed the skill to say “no” to their wives.
This happens in many teams or board rooms. The team makes a decision and then when the spouse hears about the decision and is upset, that team member then has a sudden change of heart and starts back-channeling, talking to other board members, meeting with potentially aggrieved members, in order to stir up up people and then bring the “concerns” to the elder team.
Let’s say that the elders of the church decide to cancel the Christmas program that your wife normally runs. Your wife finds out and she is sad, hurt, and disappointed. Instead of loving her with sympathy, you decide to take it upon yourself to try and deliver justice for her hurt feelings. You demand a meeting with the elders. You meet with them and they explain the reason for the decision. It sounds perfectly reasonable. Space limitations, budget constraints, not really what they’re going for this year. But you know that none of this will satiate your wife, she will not be comforted by reason. And so you escalate.
You start spreading dissension, meeting with people you know that don’t like the church and have been disappointed with their decisions or found their preaching lacking or maybe there aren’t as many baptisms as there used to be, whatever it is. You start putting threads together into a noose and demand another meeting with the elders. This time, with your pattern recognition off the charts, you accuse them of squelching the Spirit or not being gospel-centered enough. It needs to sounds biblical so that the accusation lands and then if they deny your accusation you can then share it with other Christians to further erode trust in the elders of the church.
The sad reality is that many churches operate this way. There are shadow elders who, intentionally or unintentionally, determine the direction of the church. And more often than not the shadow elder is simply the emotional world of an elder’s wife because the elder himself will not love her as he ought.
This is why it is crucial for elders to be examined and that their homes are harmonious and operate according to God’s design. I have seen so many churches and pastors taken out all because the “husband of one wife” had never been able to biblically comfort his wife while telling his wife no. This is a crucial matter for many churches. They must educate men and women on these matters of gendered piety.
Softening of biblical conviction to reach youth or to reach the lost
I don’t think many churches set out to say “how can we compromise our convictions?” I think they set out with good intentions that get corrupted over time. This happens when churches take the focus off glorifying God together and make it something else like church growth or reaching the lost. Reaching the lost is a classic one because all Christians I know want to reach the lost, they want to disciple, they want and often practice evangelism. But if they make that the north star and guiding light of the church, they often shipwreck their faith. How?
Because instead of focusing on what pleases the Lord they make church into a platform for reaching the lost. It is about how many people get saved and baptized or how many new people are visiting. And when that becomes the central idea of churches, compromise follows. And it almost always happens on issues of sexuality, and it almost always starts with allowing feminism to gain a foothold by placing women in positions of authority. This is all done in the name of nuancing the message or contextualization. Because they realize that the world today is very feminized, they, just like Target or any other organization, take the cue and then curtail the biblical message in order to reach a target market.
And so then, they soften the clear teaching of the Bible, the Word of God, in order to reach people for God. It is as if they think God needs a new public relations department.
Reaching the next generation as a goal is extremely susceptible to this kind of compromise. They believe that young people are turned off by traditional biblical teaching on marriage and sexuality and so in order to reach the next generation they start tailoring the message so that it might attract them. After all, “we should not make it hard to come to Christ by teaching things that alienate them,” or so they say. Now instead of teaching young men and young women what it means to honor God as male and female, they just “focus on the gospel.”
Visitors and New People
Egalitarianism is how many churches operate today. It makes it difficult for those of who minister according to God’s Word because we are constantly feeling like we’re on the defensive. As if what the church has believed for two thousand years regarding male and female is so controversial today that we have to justify our beliefs because they’re weird. No. The weird ones are those who abuse Scripture and twist it to fit a modern feminist framework. We are the normal Christians aiming to honor the Lord in how we conduct ourselves.
The important thing about our faith and something that you must get crystal clear on is that you have no need to feel anxious about anything in God’s Word. There is nothing in there that you should be embarrassed by. After all, we should never be ashamed of Christ and He taught us to teach others everything he has commanded. If we are ashamed of Christ, he will not be pleased. I think there is a verse about that (Luke 9:26).
We must live as if God’s Word is true, right, and good. Because it is. This is what we call “assuming the center.” Meaning that instead of feeling like you are on the defensive or having to nuance and explain your position to death, why not just live like it is true and real. You don’t need to become angry and frustrated. You know what God’s Word teaches and you can help these new people understand what God’s Word teaches. What a privilege.
So What Should We Do?
God’s Word
Return
We must turn back to God’s Word to live according to his ways. This is the call of God upon all people: to repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation. But even as Christians we must repent for where we have compromised or given the devil a foothold. That means putting away all worldly ideologies that threaten to take us from the blessed life that is found in Christ and obedience to him. It means taking ownership of where you have deviated from God’s design.
Remember
We must remember the God who has saved us. All throughout God’s Word, God’s people are called to remember the Lord their God who brought them out of the land of Egypt. If you are a Christian, you have been bought with a price. You were dwelling in darkness, dead in your sins, and Christ Jesus sought you out, gave his life as the propitiation for yours sins to bring you into his marvelous light.
Take Heart
We must take heart. No other topic is more contested today than this. In fact, I believe that this issue, the issue of egalitarianism is not just one topic among many. It strikes to the heart of the confusion of our day. This is why I felt compelled to write a book speaking to directly to men. Because issues of anthropology, that is the topic of what is human, is the defining question of our time. We have those on the left who suggest that human life is essentially worthless material matter with no purpose. That life can be discarded, that children slaughtered in the womb, that those who are in pain should just end their life. We have those on the right, the tech right, who believe that we can somehow create a utopian future where we are disembodied. These transhumanists want to upload their consciousness to the cloud. This is a dark parallel to the Christian view which teaches that when the soul is separated from the body at death we go to glory in the intermediate state.
All these issues of male and female are not just one issue among many. They get to the heart of our redemption in Christ and the future we long for. Our sexuality is not an accident, it is not a mistake, it is designed by God with purpose. And we should honor the Lord in our bodies. The transgender lie must be utterly rejected in our pulpits and churches and it must begin with a rejection of the false notion that men and women are interchangeable in ministry.
Be Wise
A temptation to avoid is that in order to promote this biblical vision of beauty and order that somehow we must attack women. Now I want to be precise here. Very precise. Christians, we must tear down every false doctrine. We should feel no shame about that. It is crucial.
And make no mistake: when you speak clearly on these matters, and by clearly I do not mean mealy-mouthed-nuance, I mean plainly, directly, and with urgency, you will be perceived as offensive. Some people will not take it well. And so they will call you names and slander and revile you because you speak the truth. The bottom line is that if you go after feminism, which you should, and you do so plainly, they will say all kinds of things about you. They will try to destroy you.
And here’s the challenge in our day. Christians are fine standing up to the mob and slanderers and revilers if the mob is coming after you for saying that “God saves sinners.” Most all Christians would have your back. And so the devil knowing this and wanting to divide Christians is not so much focused on Christians talking about soteriology. The devil is going to leverage ideas and ideologies like feminism or egalitarianism that are more tolerated in our day. So that if you raise your voice about these matters, other Christians will give you the cold shoulder and offer no aid other than tell you that maybe you could have been more winsome. In other words, you brought this on yourself.
Think of it this way. If the world hated me for standing for the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the way to salvation, most Christians would have sympathy (unless they said you were unnecessarily harsh about calling other religions false). But if the world hated me for standing for the truth that God created male and female and that transgenderism is demonic, many Christians might silently nod along but they would not want to suffer consequences. But both are the truth. Both realities are easily discernible in Scripture. But the world has trained Christians that if they say one thing there are few consequences, sometimes the law might even protect us, but if they say the other there are social costs, you might lose friends, family members, or your business.
This is the situation that many face when discussing egalitarianism. They have friends and family that have been going to churches with women pastors, they do not think it is a big deal, and so when you try to show them it is a big deal, they look at you weird and wonder why you hate women. But that should not dissuade us. We are not in the business of pleasing man. We are in the business of pleasing God.
But, some men today, after living in the longhouse and seeing how bad it is, seem to have made it their mission to attack women just by nature of being women. This is not good. Women can be celebrated for the wonderful gift they are. We can champion God’s design for women. And also, we can discuss sins that plague women.
For some reading this, the most courageous thing you need to do is muster the strength and resolve to tell women to stop sinning. If I get in the pulpit and I rebuke the men for a variety of sins: greed, gluttony, lust, most would take their licks and move on. But if I get in the pulpit and I rebuke the women for a variety of sin: gossip, slander, vanity, etc. then at most churches there would be not a small disturbance. Or think if I told men they should dress better and stop looking so slovenly like they just woke up, most would receive this remark as intended, an exhortation. But women are not so easily encouraged.
When we come to the Word of God, wanting to be shaped by God and grow in holiness we cannot back down from naming sins. There are sins common to both men and women. And the sins that are common to both play out differently in men and women. This all takes wisdom and humility because you might mess up, you might make mistakes, you probably will, but God’s grace is sufficient for our weaknesses. And so we must take courage.
Why This Is Refreshing
Alignment with God’s Word
When we live according to God’s Word, we bring him glory and honor. There is great pleasure and comfort in this. Think of when your car is out of alignment. Last year I was driving back from the lake and my friend was behind me. He noticed that my truck was crabbing, meaning that the front wheels were lined up differently than the back wheels. I wouldn’t have noticed this unless he told me. I took it to the shop and they saw that a pin from my leaf springs had sheared off and it needed to be repaired to bring it into alignment. This is what it is like to submit our lives to God’s Word. We are brining our lives into alignment with his purposes. That way our direction and path can be directed to glory instead of veering to the left or right.
Restoration rather than exhaustion
The life of confusion that is offered by the feminists does not lead to flourishing but destruction. It leads to envy, bitterness, and anger. Think of it, when you hear the word feminist, you typically don’t think of someone at peace with God and others, you think of people who are very angry. When this seeps into the church, it breeds fruit of discontentment and covetousness. The focus becomes on selfish rivalries rather than outdoing one another in showing honor.
Living lives to the glory of God
We strive to live our lives to the glory of God. We have life to the full in Jesus Christ. And this full life, this life bursting forth with the fruit of the Spirit, is ours because of Christ. Christian, you have nothing to be ashamed of and every reason to boast in the Lord. We are his inheritance, his people, and we have the honor of living lives worthy of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords Jesus Christ. Assume the center, kill your sin, and live lives according to God’s design. Nothing is more beautiful than this. And of all the things the world needs to hear today it’s the truth about men and women. And if I may play on your evangelistic desires, there is an entire generation of young people coming up that is desperate for a pastor to tell them the truth.
https://www.christianpost.com/news/jd-greear-calls-on-sbc-to-better-include-women-in-leadership-recommit-to-exposing-abuse.html
https://institute.thevillagechurch.net/institute-about
https://americanreformer.org/2024/11/are-women-and-unordained-men-identical/
https://firstthings.com/what-is-the-longhouse/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/12/opinion/gender-gap-politics.htm
https://firstthings.com/what-is-the-longhouse/
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/