Women Started the Church

But were never officially recognized as the Founding Pastors

“You see. They knew they had to find a man to pastor the church.” I didn’t agree with that reasoning, but I listened as the pastor stressed that only men could be senior pastors.

Decades after two amazing women had founded the church, the senior pastor felt it important that I understand why the assembly had never officially recognized the true founders of their church, as the founding pastors.

In truth, though the church published their history online, nowhere is anyone recognized as their founding pastor. And now I knew why.

Founding pastors are always senior pastors, until they relinquish that position to another. This pastor seemed proud of the fact it had been two women who founded their congregation. But he made sure that I heard that it was also inappropriate for women to lead a church. And he wanted me to believe that the women who started his church had believed it as well.

Perhaps they did believe it. But I doubt it. I propose, instead, that the women who founded that church were spiritually gifted as either apostles, prophets, evangelists, or teachers, but they knew their ministry gifts did not include that of pastors. And that is the real reason they may have been uncomfortable in the role and sought someone besides themselves to serve as pastor.

Neither the church nor the pastor I spoke with ever acknowledged these founding women as possessing any kind of spiritual or ministry gifts.

Being women of their time, they may have truly believed [or been pressure by others to agree (whether they believed it or not)] that women are not gifted with the ministry gifts and that it was necessary to find a man to fill the role of pastor.

Believers with the ministry gifts of apostle, prophet, evangelist, or teacher can and do win souls, make disciples, and often establish brand-new congregations. We have biblical examples of that. Believers without the gift and calling of pastor sometimes temporarily serve in that role. But they usually know what their primary gifting and calling is and are happy to relinquish that temporary role when God raises up someone whose primary calling is that of pastor.

Though I have known men who were not called as pastor to accept permanent paid positions as such, knowing it was outside of their primary gifting and calling. They have admitted as much to me, saying they did it for “financial stability” purposes, because their wife was “expecting” or some such other reason. The churches they “pastored” always experience upheaval of one sort or another.

The gifts and callings of the Holy Spirit are not gender specific.

I propose that the two women who founded this church, were never recognized in the capacity of their true callings because of the fact that they were women—as simple as that. And the story that they “knew” a man was needed to pastor the church was created because men, not part of the original founding membership but who had joined the church later, were less accepting of female leadership than those who helped found the congregation.

What the current pastor shared with me, has been the narrative that church ever since these gifted women stepped aside, without their true ministry gifts ever having been officially recognized.

The church does not mention their founding pastors anywhere in their official history, which they likely would have done had they been men. But the oral tradition of the women who founded their church remains alive and well within the congregation. The pastor I spoke with was proud, or pretend to be, proud of the fact that the church had been founded by women. Knowing who I was, he told me about it in an effort to make the church seem unprejudiced against women. Additionally, and it wasn’t lost on me, that the pastor stressed male governance, even as he boasted about the strong female genesis of their existence as a church.

The Church is only fifty-years old, and some of the founding members who, for a time, followed these two women, and called them pastor, still attend that church, today. Though, the older pastor I spoke with, admitted that he had not been part of the original founding membership.

Male governance was established early on and is still practice in that church, today. Though they like to portray a progressive image—the congregation sports a token husband/wife team as "co-pastors"—the husband is clearly the one in charge. And the church is unapologetically complementarian, teaching that women are always subordinate to what complementarians call, among other things, "male “leadership.”

I put the word “leadership” in quotes because “male leadership” really means the autocracy of male governance, and I refuse to support an unscriptural and injurious doctrine by cooperating with high sounding semantics intended to cloak the hideousness that is complementarianism.

Complementarians, who teach female subordination to what they call male headship or male “servant leadership,” like to use the term "soft comp (short for complementarian)" for churches that allow women in limited positions of leadership.

Soft comp means that the women, regardless of how much they may enjoy their limited freedom and influence, are always under male control. And 100% of these churches teach 100% male control in the home. They dress up their doctrine of male dominance by calling it “servant leadership,” of which only men can be “servant leaders.” These men compare themselves with Jesus, who said he had not come to be served but to serve.

How can anyone who claims to be born again and indwelled by the Holy Spirit accept this unbiblical and iniquitous paradigm [thinly disguised as Christian] by using flowery though wholly unscriptural terminology? The Bible does refer to those who use great and swelling words and extravagant language to deceive.

Complementarianism is complementarianism. Accept no part of it. Forget the sliding scale of soft comp to hard comp. Comp is comp. Stop accepting the sliding scale as reasonable and partially good. It is not.

Any attempt at enforcing female subordination to male dominance, in church or at home—through indoctrination, church policy or covenants, or otherwise— by creating degrees of servitude, limited freedom, producing a few of what I call “happy slaves,” is unacceptable in its entirety.

Jocelyn Andersen is an author and Bible teacher who speaks and writes about a variety of topics, with a special emphasis on the subject of God and Women. Her work has been featured in magazines, newspapers, radio, and television. Jocelyn is open to invitations to speak at your conference, church, or event, and she is open to requests for writing assignments or anthology contributions.