Feminization and the Problem of Functional Female Officers
For Dr. Guy Waters’ article on “What Is Biblical Ordination?”
For Matt Adams’ article on “Do Deacons Have Ecclesial Authority?”
Introduction
I write not as a theologian, minister, or church officer, but as a woman and an ordinary PCA churchgoer who has a real stake in the continuing faithfulness of the church. Decisions made at the General Assembly and in presbyteries are not abstract, but have an impact on ordinary congregations. Like many others, I am a sheep affected by the decisions my shepherds make. Leaders in the church have a responsibility to their members to reject cultural forces and errant logic shaping the debate about women in church office. Currently, the question is whether the church may stage the appearance of women in leadership, without the actual substance of authority, in order to respond to cultural expectations or internal pressures. I argue that it may not and that doing so carries real costs for the church’s doctrine, worship, and witness.
What Is The Core Issue In This Debate?
The debate over “functional female officers” is often framed as a question of pastoral sensitivity or pragmatic flexibility. But it is neither. The push for women in visible leadership roles in the PCA is largely an appeal to empathy. Women’s participation is seen as a way to honor them, as a loving acknowledgement of their gifts and talents. Treating office as something that women must visibly approximate in order to be appreciated imports a worldly view of hierarchy into the church. Leadership grants fulfillment, and visibility confirms value. But this is a thoroughly modern assumption that the New Testament never makes.
There are two main problems with the question before us. Firstly, much of the present debate proceeds as though the central concern were the distribution of gifts, but this is the wrong question. Nobody denies that women are gifted and valuable members of Christ’s body. Secondly, the insistence on latitude and flexibility with our practice is too suspiciously responsive to cultural expectations about men and women.
In her essay The Great Feminization, Helen Andrews posits that nearly every major institution in America has been reshaped by “feminization”: the imposition of feminine-coded social norms like empathy over rationality, safety over risk, cohesion over principled disagreement. (1) Over time, these norms reshape institutions, not through formal revolutions, but through gradual accommodation. Institutional leaders on the whole respond to cultural expectations about what it means to be kind, loving, or inclusive.
We can see how over time cultural expectations reshape institutions, not through formal revolutions, but through gradual accommodation. The most readily available example we have of this happening in the church is the state of the mainline denominations, which began to ordain women over 60 years ago. And the Presbyterian Church in America is not immune to the same kinds of emotional leverage that captured our mother church.
An Example Of The Underlying Issue
For example, Overture 38 from Metro Atlanta Presbytery calls for “flexibility regarding the diaconate”. This overture, in particular, is interesting since it seeks to change what the BCO says about officers, but not in a way that explicitly calls for the PCA to change the stated beliefs on ordination. The stakes are made to sound low, and certainty on the church’s message unimportant. But is that actually the case?
A similar argument made in favor of loosening our perspective on women’s roles in the church is that women in the PCA are being “sidelined”. (2) Yet this claim is not really explained at any point. How could you make such a claim that women are being “sidelined”? Nobody knows how every PCA church operates on a day to day basis. The only thing that could be pointed to is the objective fact that women are not ordained to any office in our churches.
The above arguments are calls to merely soften the church’s doctrine and position, but not to officially change anything about the doctrine. The most common argument is that churches should be able to exercise a very wide range of positions on women’s participation in visible leadership. The reason for this seems to be that the stated doctrinal position keeps women “sidelined” and subdued (an argument, I’ll note, that leans on the way women are perceived more than anything else).
Since we tend to see this primarily as a doctrinal debate, we are often discussing the substance of authority and the evidence for different positions. However, opposing arguments don’t seem to rely on advocating for a specific doctrinal position. Rather, they seek to maintain a status quo where multiple views are tolerated. Maintaining the appearance of women in authority seems to be much more important than defending a concrete doctrinal position about women in leadership.
The Problem Of Creating Roles
When churches create roles for women that closely resemble the work, visibility, and symbolic authority of ordained officers—while denying that these roles carry authority—they introduce confusion. Authority becomes something that can be visually imitated without being formally bestowed. The congregation is taught (however unintentionally) that authority is aesthetic rather than substantive.
The PCA’s restriction of ordination to qualified men is not a judgment on women’s worth or spiritual capacity. It is a theological claim about how God governs His church. It is grounded not in cultural conditions, but in creation order and apostolic command (1 Tim. 2:12–14). Currently, authority is being treated like a costume that women can don instead of a biblical reality to obey. The push for deaconesses or functional officers rests on a category error: the assumption that meaningful contribution requires formal leadership.
Church office is not the church’s mechanism for recognizing talent or affirming dignity. Elders and deacons do not merely perform tasks; they visibly represent Christ’s authority over His church (Heb. 13:17). This is why Scripture provides careful qualifications for these offices (1 Tim. 3:1–13; Titus 1:5–9), and why authority to teach, rebuke, and govern is explicitly tied to ordination (Titus 1:9; 1 Tim. 5:17). Authority belongs to office, not to personality or optics.
When we make functional officers out of women, we fall into two errors. First, we counter the clear biblical direction for how the Lord wants us to govern the church. Second, we ironically end up diminishing all the important work, giftings, and blessings that women as they already are bring to Christ’s church. The New Testament repeatedly affirms the indispensable service of women without collapsing that service into office (Rom. 16:1–6; Phil. 4:3). The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you” (1 Cor 12:21). But the eye also cannot say to the hand, “I need you to pretend to be an eye, because I am an eye, and take it from me—being an eye is a much more fulfilling and important role than being a hand.”
The Functional Experimentation
Many churches in the PCA today are experimenting with practices that place women in visible, quasi-official leadership roles while continuing to formally affirm the doctrine of male-only ordination. Women in our churches can be found leading calls to worship, reading Scripture, offering pastoral prayers, distributing the Lord’s Supper, and other types of public prayer. Those who defend such practices carefully insist that no authority has been granted, defending their choices as pastorally sensitive, pragmatic, and caring.
At its core, this debate is a worship issue. God is zealous for the right ordering of His church because the church exists to glorify Him. Scripture consistently connects disorder in worship with irreverence toward God Himself (Lev. 10:1–3). Social pressures about the roles of men and women shouldn’t affect our ability to present honorable, pure, and acceptable worship to the Lord. This applies not only to liturgy, but to the governance of His church (1 Cor. 14:33, 40). It is in God’s prerogative to decide what best serves His own glory, and our duty to present Him with obedience. While one can’t legislate the heart of the minister or the heart of the worshiper, officers can and should set parameters for what range of practices the PCA will permit in pursuit of pure worship.
The Functional Strategy
There are many different kinds of arguments for women in leadership, not all of them to the same degree of severity. But the bottom line is this: the effect of functional female officers is dialectical. The goal does not seem to be to challenge the church’s doctrine, but to gradually push the boundaries of its practice. Bold arguments that openly challenge complementarian views on gender roles in the church, (like the ones made here) are accompanied by a slough of less shocking arguments and a call to meet in the middle on our views of women by allowing for flexibility and latitude.
There is a pattern of discussion, process, and synthesis that is gradually shifting the denominational perspective on officers and authority. Maintaining formal doctrine while normalizing contradictory practice is the result. And it is dangerous. The boundary-pushing must be ended before there are long-term consequences. If the best we can do is make our activists reasonably uncomfortable so that they leave on their own accord, we’ve won nothing but the most dangerous kind of temporary peace.
The PCA will increasingly be told that its convictions on male eldership are degrading, insulting to women, and, as one article puts it, rooted in “cultural anxiety”. (3) These claims are neither made in good faith nor intend to build up the body of Christ. The answer to relieving cultural pressure on our denomination is not flexibility on the optics of officers; it is integrity. Our practice in the church must align with the truths we confess.
It’s Good To Be Different
As Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones once put it, “When the Church is absolutely different from the world, she invariably attracts it. It is then that the world is made to listen to her message, though it may hate it at first”. Softening and minimizing Scripture’s clear, specific principles about church leadership is exactly the opposite way to accomplish this. We must reject the logic of the world that says that hierarchy and authority are the only ways for women to be dignified and valued. The beauty of a confessional church is that it understands how vital godly women and their work are to the church. Opposing functional female officers in no way belittles women, but actually values them in a godly way. Faithfulness does not require innovation. It requires obedience and courage.
I belong to a church that, just this past Lord’s Day, became a particular congregation in the Presbyterian Church in America. As part of our graduation from being a church plant, we had the unique privilege and gift from God of installing (and ordaining in two cases) our own local leadership. The BCO instructs us that Christ “hath appointed officers in His Church, distinct in powers and duties,” and that this distinction is essential to the peace and purity of the church. (4) We sang that wonderful hymn “The Church’s One Foundation,” which includes the line “the church shall never perish, her dear Lord to defend, to guide, sustain, and cherish, is with her to the end”!
Christ has given us everything we need for the protection, preservation, and purity of the church. While we cannot imagine that it is in our power or control to determine the church’s future, we each have a God-given duty to pursue the good of the church in this life, with gentleness and zeal.
Conclusion
Women have beautiful, meaningful, and essential roles to play in making the church a place that worships God and glorifies Christ. But mimicking the offices of men is not an essential part of that service. As your sister in Christ, and as your inferior (WLC Q 127), my humble plea to any elder reading this is to be faithful to those in your care when it comes to your participation in this matter, and refuse to give up the fight for the church’s purity & clarity of message. Not an inch, dear sirs, not an inch.
(1) https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/
(2) https://a4mr.org/pursuing-a-unified-vision-for-mission-and-renewal-in-the-pca/
(3) https://a4mr.org/a-pastoral-resource-list-on-women-and-ministry/
(4) PCA BCO Preliminary Principle No. 3, https://www.pcaac.org/book-of-church-order/preface/