The Issue Of Women In Church Office

Although WICO was supposedly settled 30 years ago, Covenant CRC's loss of 30% of its congregation over the issue of female elders suggests that it is still a very contentious matter

After spending a year and a half trying to get the leadership of Covenant CRC to give me a clear answer as to what they believed about the scriptural justification for various racial and social justice beliefs that were posted about on the CRCNA’s denominational website, it was deeply frustrating to me see the church suddenly fall apart over the issue of women in church office, something that was not even on my radar. I had been focused on issues that seemed more undecided by the CRC whereas women in church office had theoretically been decided 30 years ago.

In spite of what I believe to be the patently unbiblical nature of the teachings about race that continue to reside on the CRCNA’s website, the more conservative members of Covenant and of the church council were not outraged by it and did not see those unbiblical teachings and the financial support the church was giving to the entities promoting those teachings as a reason to leave the church. On the other hand, the issue of women in church office was something they were willing to draw a line in the sand over and leave the church in response to, and Covenant CRC lost 30% of their congregation basically overnight because of that issue. That tells me that, regardless of whether the leadership of the CRCNA thinks the matter is resolved, the matter is still as divisive now as it was 30 years ago.

This only makes sense because the idea that it is biblical for women to be elders and pastors and the idea that it is unbiblical for women to be elders and pastors are incompatible beliefs. That incompatibility well warrants a denomination splitting as the CRCNA did 30 years ago and well warrants a congregation splitting as Covenant did in 2024. If the leaders of the CRCNA care about the health and wellbeing of your denomination you should revisit this issue so that what happened at Covenant CRC of Appleton in 2024, 30 years after this issue was supposedly settled, does not happen again at another church.

Very briefly, my own story regarding egalitarianism is that I grew up in Calvary Chapel which does not allow female pastors. At the same time, both my personality and the way I was raised in my family inclined me toward an egalitarian viewpoint, even though I recognized that, pragmatically speaking, female pastors probably wouldn’t be able to provide the sort of leadership that men needed and for that reason should be a rare occurrence and were probably more appropriate in an associate role. The thing that pushed me over the edge into a full embrace of egalitarianism in my personal life was fact that I find the amount of abuse, both sexual and otherwise, by Calvary Chapel pastors to appalling, and, in response to that, I reached a point where I was unwilling to attend a church that did not allow female leaders because I felt that churches that only allowed male leaders were abusive and harmful to women and children.

Now, however, after having spent 10 years in the Episcopal church and 4 years in the CRCNA, my experience has been that churches that embrace women as bishops, pastors, and elders are not capable of maintaining sound doctrine. I feel very safe in saying the Episcopal church is a spiritually dead, unChristian organization that has embraced all manner of heresies. While I still believe that Covenant CRC is at least a Christian church, the leaders did not care about sound doctrine and the elders were actively offended when they were pushed to provide clear explanations of their doctrinal beliefs. Even pastors in Calvary Chapel, for all their abuses, would have been able to give me a basic overview of their beliefs and the scriptural justification for those beliefs.

It concerns me that the elders of Covenant believed that women should be elders and they believed this so strongly that they were willing to see the church lose 30% of its congregants, but they did not know what the scriptural justification for this belief was nor were they willing to engage in congregational study and discussion of this matter prior to indicating that they intended to hire a pastor who holds egalitarian beliefs. That suggests to me that their belief about women in church office was not shaped by scripture but by something else.

I think that if the CRCNA is committed to continuing to allow women to serve in all church offices that the denomination should make a greater effort to expect those who adhere to that view to be educated about the scriptural basis for it. You should also consider more clearly formalizing which scriptural interpretations supportive of women in church office the denomination accepts and believes are valid and which ones you believe are invalid.

I say this because, if the elders of Covenant are at all indicative of other people in the denomination, even though they firmly believe that women should be able to hold church office, they do not know why they believe that and, therefore, are probably apt to latch on to any interpretation that will support their desire in this matter. This is dangerous because for many denominations, the acceptance of women in church office has merely been a stepping stone on a path that leads to acceptance of homosexuality, same sex marriage, transgenderism, and many other fashionable sins. This is also true of a number of churches within the CRCNA who went on to embrace and promote same sex marriage after first embracing women in church office.

If the CRCNA as a whole is committed both to recognizing same sex marriage and homosexual activities as forbidden by scripture but also to recognizing women serving in church offices as scripturally allowable, you should make an effort to clarify what the CRCNA’s official Biblical interpretation is and make it clear why that interpretation cannot be extended to accepting same sex marriage. Unless that interpretation is formalized more clearly than it has been, it is difficult for me to see how the denomination will not continue to have problems with congregations that have embraced women in church office going on to embrace homosexuality.

I think the CRCNA would also benefit from conducting a study of denominations that have accepted women in church office with a focus on the doctrinal health of those denominations. Are there denominations that have maintained a strong fealty to scripture and their confessions while also allowing female elders and pastors? If so, what factors have allowed them to do that while so many denominations have lost their scriptural and confessional fidelity after having accepted female elders and pastors? Looking at the lessons learned from other denominations, what steps can the CRCNA take to make sure that, long term, it maintains its fidelity to scripture and the confessions even while allowing women to hold church offices?

I also think that the CRCNA should reconsider how it functionally treats the two views on women in church office. The denomination claims to believe it is completely valid to believe that women cannot hold church office. It also claims to believe that it is completely valid to believe that women can hold church office. Functionally speaking, however, the denomination seems to have rejected complementarianism as a valid path forward and seems to view congregations that still hold to it as being grandfathered in with the expectation that if they ever allow women to serve as elders or pastors they will never be allowed to move back to only having men hold those roles. At Covenant, the idea of returning to male-only elders again was so shocking that the elders rejected even studying the biblical arguments on the matter prior to calling a new pastor who they already determined needed to believe that women could serve as elders. If women not holding church office was genuinely held in the same respect as women holding church office is held within the CRCNA then this desire by a sizable portion of the congregation to look into the matter would not have been responded to in the disrespectful manner it was.

Beyond that, if these views were genuinely both equally respected by the denomination, I believe there would be more people in positions of leadership within the denomination who hold the view that women should not be elders or pastors. Is the General Secretary a complementarian? Are any of the heads of various entities and offices complementarians? Is the editor of the Banner a complementarian? Are the presidents of Calvin University and Calvin Theological Seminary complementarians? How many complementarians as compared to egalitarians are there in denominational leadership?

If the CRCNA has for all practical purposes determined that holding the believe that women should not serve in church office is something that disqualifies people from holding key leadership positions in the denomination then Synod should formalize so that it is clear to everyone.

Additionally, if holding the belief that women should not serve in church office is so offensive that congregations cannot functionally move back to that or even discuss the issue once they have accepted that women can serve in church office, Synod should formalize that so that it is clear to everyone. People who are searching for a church should be able to know up front that their belief that it is unbiblical for women to serve in church office is tolerate by the CRCNA to the extent that it is grandfathered in, but if a body ever changes their position to allow women to serve in church office they will not be allowed to revisit the issue or change back to allowing only men to serve in church office.

Conversely, if holding the belief that only men should hold church offices is genuinely considered as equally valid as the idea that those positions are also open to women, then the CRCNA should take steps to normalize that by hiring people who hold that view to denominational leadership positions and by reminding congregations and classes that it’s not inappropriate to revisit this matter and move to only men holding church office even after they’ve opened those positions to women.

Finally, I will be interested in seeing what kind of a path the CRCNA charts for itself going forward. From my perspective, it looks like it has chosen a unique and somewhat lonely course by accepting the biblical validity of women in church office but rejecting the biblical validity of same sex marriage. Because the CRCNA has rejected same sex marriage while the RCA has embraced same sex marriage, it is difficult for me to see how the CRCNA can practically maintain its existing relationship with the RCA. Likewise, the CRCNA’s embrace of women serving as elders and pastors resulting in it having to sever its relationship with NAPARC. I’m curious to see which, if any, denominations the CRCNA will be able to partner with going forward, or will it just be a denomination unto itself with no cross-denominational sharing of pastors and no connection to the wider Reformed church?