ordination

Ordaining Women to Ministry

by

The Emerging Role of Women in Preaching

Throughout history, the role of preaching in Christian worship has been very important. Because Christians celebrate the Incarnation, the Word becoming flesh, Christian worship has stressed the value of preaching alongside important ritual action. Especially in Protestantism, worship has been dominated by the sermon.

In recent years, as more and more women are able to fulfill their calling to ministry through ordination and pastoral ministry, more and more women are preaching. What does this mean for worship and spirituality? If Christian worshipers are hearing the Word preached by women, how does this change worship? Will preaching change as more and more women do it?

For years, arguments were made that women should not be ordained. For most Protestant churches this meant that women should not preach. People were warned, “beware of the petticoat in the pulpit.” Yet, by the mid-nineteenth century, a few women had overcome custom and were engaged in a preaching ministry. In 1859 Catherine Booth summarized the popular arguments against “female ministry”: when women indulge in the ambition or vanity associated with preaching they become unfeminine; the Bible specifically instructs women to be silent in the churches; women cannot convey the Word as Christ did because he was a man; women have natural nurturing skills, but public speaking is not a natural gift; home and family will suffer if women are preachers (it was especially onerous to imagine a pregnant preacher); the credibility of the church will deteriorate without respectable male leadership; and finally, women lack the vocal power or stamina for public speaking. In spite of these arguments, women claimed the right to preach. Antoinette Brown was ordained as pastor of a small Congregational church in upstate New York in 1853. At her ordination, the preacher (a male) stated that the church did not gather to give her the right to preach the gospel; if she did not have that right already there was nothing they could do. The church was challenged to recognize her calling.

Since that time more and more ecclesiastical bodies have recognized the call of women to preach. Although sometimes this recognition has limited her audiences or regulated her relationship to sacramental leadership, the number of women preaching and the number of parishioners hearing the gospel preached by women has increased dramatically. In 1922, one woman wrote:

Some brethren are very fearful that women preachers will feminize the church, apparently unaware that the masculine monopoly of the pulpit has already done that.… But while feminizing the church, the brethren fear that the preacher herself will become masculine. This was shown to be the stock argument against every advance step women have taken. It had been said that education would destroy their fine nature; that the vote would make them unwomanly, etc. Women have always worked; men have raised no cry lest scrubbing and washing would make them unfeminine; it is only the more desirable lines of work that cause the brethren to entertain lively fears lest women lose their femininity. (Madeline Southard, The Woman’s Pulpit 1 [1922], 3)

The Impact of Women in Preaching

Women knew that preaching was important. Today, as more and more women attend seminary, they are enrolling in preaching classes and preparing for positions that call on their gifts as preachers. By any standard they are good. But as more and more women preach, they are stretching the church’s understanding of preaching and reshaping the nature of preaching itself.

First of all, women preachers remind us again that the sermon is a unique form of personal communication. It involves a complex mixture of message and person. The preacher not only “delivers” God’s message, he or she embodies it. This emphasizes the incarnational presuppositions behind all preaching. Dogmatics are helpful, but the truest statement of God’s love for the world was not dogma but Jesus Christ. Christians know that the gospel is best shared personally. This is why reading a sermon, or listening to a tape, or even watching a preacher on television is not the same as experiencing the preaching moment. When women preach they remind us that sharing the gospel requires men and women “preaching.”

Second, if good preaching intentionally draws upon personal experience, when women preach, the worshiping community benefits from experiences never shared in quite the same way by male preachers. Most obviously, women preachers use their experience of pregnancy, birth, and mothering to enrich their sermons. Similarly, when Third World Christians preach out of their experiences with political and economic oppression, one discovers new things about his or her faith. All preaching that is done by persons whose life experiences are qualitatively different from those whose voices have been heard for many centuries has new power and strength. Old standards of excellence are shaken and new understandings of “good preaching” take their place.

Third, preaching is relational. The bond between preacher and pew is basic and quite personal. Throughout the centuries, the fact that the preacher was always male perpetuated certain relational patterns. Many of these patterns leaned upon existing social structures (family) and biological realities (sexuality). When a woman preaches, all of these habits are broken. This is why a woman preacher is sometimes so upsetting. She cannot be a “father.” Her presence creates different sexual dynamics. Men and women find it impossible to relate to the preacher in the same way. Century-old patterns of worship and spirituality no longer have the same effect.

Fourth, these changes lead to issues surrounding language. Modern linguistic study has documented that women use language differently than men. Women use more adjectives and adverbs, modifying nouns and verbs and qualifying statements. Women may handle nuances and subtleties of color and emotion more deftly in language. While a man may say “red” the woman may choose to speak of “crimson” or “burgundy.” A man may make an authoritative statement where a woman may more often qualify her statement with tag questions, “Isn’t that true?” or “Don’t you think?” Some think this weakens women’s language, conveying the feeling that she is not sure. In preaching, however, this less authoritative style could be a blessing. After all, to speak about God and salvation is an awesome thing. When the woman preacher shares her journey and vulnerability she may speak more directly to the needs of average believers.

Women have also become self-conscious about the use of masculine words to speak of human experience and to name or address God. In exploring biblical materials, women see the injustice and distortions that have resulted from the use of masculine language forms not warranted by the biblical text. These are not cosmetic problems, because language both reflects and shapes human understanding. Women preachers work self-consciously to be sure that theology shapes the language they use, rather than letting prevailing language usage shape their theology.

Finally, the relationship of preaching to all of worship and spirituality is changing as more women become preachers. In some ecclesiastical traditions preaching never played a strong role. Within most of American Protestantism, however, ordained ministry has been dominated by preaching. Churches still need and want good preaching. Women recognize the importance of preaching, but women are also more willing to accept the limits of preaching. Many women who have spent years in education, music, art, and service occupations come to preaching ready to experiment. The line between sermon, song, action, and prayer gets blurred. It is possible to share the power of God’s Word in many ways. Old assumptions about Word and sacrament change.

All of these factors point out that worship is fundamental to the Christian church. Before there was theology or ecclesiastical structure, there was worship. Women have always worshipped, but women have not always taken on the public authority of preacher and worship leader. (1) When women preach, the church is reminded that every sermon should embody the faith. Preaching needs to be incarnational. (2) When women preach, the church benefits from experiences that have rarely been available to preachers in the past. Preaching needs to draw upon all of the human experience. (3) When women preach, the church remembers that sharing the gospel involves social and sexual realities. Preaching needs to understand human communities and relationships. (4) When women preach, the church discovers that language is never gender-neutral. Preaching needs to use language with great care. (5) When women preach, the church explores the place of preaching in all worship. Preaching needs to appreciate the many ways in which God’s people can and do worship.

Choices for Women Who Preach

Any discussion of women and preaching cannot end without a comment about authority. Women who feel a call to ministry in the church today are confronted with a choice. They can seek to win equity in the existing systems that give only men opportunities to preach. This usually means accepting some of the unexamined assumptions about leadership and preaching that exist in today’s church. This certainly means doing enough, according to current expectations, to be acceptable. Many women are doing this and everyone agrees, “They are doing what men have done for years with great success.”

On the other hand, some women want to preach “as women.” Drawing upon their feminine experiences, they approach the preaching task with new sensitivities and assumptions. They use language differently. They incorporate dialogue and participation. They seek to preach through many forms of worship and spirituality. “They are doing what women have done for years, but no one called it preaching.”

By existing and emerging standards, women as preachers are adding new dimensions to worship and spirituality.

Ordination and Worship Leadership in the Early Church

by

Ordination is rooted in the need for order within the Christian community. It tends both to reflect and to shape the church’s life and witness amid changing historical circumstances. An important development in the post–New Testament period was the emergence of a three-office structure for ordained ministry (bishop, presbyter, deacon) and the subsequent transformation of that structure into a more authoritarian one as the church came to assume a public role in a wider cultural context.

Emergence of a Threefold Office Structure in the Early Church

The earliest Christian communities had no common, universal structure for leadership. Though most, if not all, had been formed in response to the preaching of itinerant apostles and prophets, the cultural contexts in which those churches were planted helped produce a variety of patterns for local leadership, some informed by Jewish models, others by models derived from Greco-Roman society. Immersed as these early churches were in the apocalyptic worldview of early apostolic preaching, such communities assumed that Jesus’ return was imminent. As a result, there was little, if any, the urgency to develop norms for office and ordination that would assure continuity in the church’s organizational leadership.

Concern for developing reproducible leadership models—less particular, more universal models—could not emerge until the church as seen in the later Gospels and Epistles began to realize the need for securing a historical future. By the end of the New Testament era, a number of factors including the death of the original apostolic witnesses, the demise of the church in Jerusalem, and the delay of the Parousia, forced the church to adopt forms of church order in which the authenticity of apostolic teaching could be maintained.

Emergence of a Threefold Office Structure

Earlier patterns of ministry had relied upon both the teaching authority of itinerant apostles, charismatic prophets, and evangelists and the organizational and the leading authority of diverse forms of collegial local church leaders. The pattern that emerged toward the end of the first century, however, consolidated the functions exercised by both local and itinerant leaders and vested them in three congregational offices of leadership: (1) single pastor-bishops, elected by each community, who presided over all aspects of the congregation’s life and worship; (2) groups of collegial community-elected leaders known as presbyters, who oversaw the life of the community under the leadership of the bishop; and (3) service-oriented ministers called deacons, who assisted the bishop in both ministry and worship. Though some forms of itinerant charismatic ministry (e.g., the prophets) continued to function alongside this new order for ministry for a while, their authority increasingly was subordinated to that of the local leaders, particularly the pastor-bishop.

This form of church order is known as “mon-episcopacy.” Its defining characteristic is the emergence of a single bishop, elected by each congregation, who is charged with presiding over the community’s life and worship in a shared and mutually cooperative way with others. The classic apology for this model is found in the letters of Ignatius of Antioch early in the second century. The bishop, says Ignatius, represents God the Father within the community, presiding over the council of elders (presbyters) and assisted by deacons. The bishop—as a representative leader—functions as a “type” for God within the community, just as the deacons become a “type” for Christ and presbyters become a “type” for the apostles. The bishop is not merely “first among equals” for Ignatius, but the one whose office preserves the unity of the church’s life and worship (cf. Epistle to the Magnesians). Though the roots of all three offices may be traced back to the New Testament, the particular configuration of the three offices and their interpretation by the early church fathers are both innovations arising from the church’s second-century concern for preserving its unity and perpetuating its historic mission.

The sources for tracing just how these leaders were chosen and ordained for these tasks are practically nonexistent until the beginning of the third century. We know from the writings of Irenaeus and Hegesippus that “succession” (didadochē) had become an important norm governing the election and ordination of bishops in order to counter Gnostic claims of revelation. The issue, however, was not framed in terms of a linear succession of persons, but in terms of fidelity to and continuity with apostolic teaching. In order to assure that fidelity and continuity (and as a sign of communion between churches), all new bishops were ordained by the bishops of neighboring congregations. During the sometimes bitter struggle to preserve orthodox teaching in the face of numerous heterodox challenges during the fourth and fifth centuries, this provision became a significant means of providing accountability in teaching.

Though some questions remain regarding its normative status for churches in other parts of the empire, the third-century church order known as the Apostolic Tradition (c. 215) provides the first substantive evidence of the rites by which persons were admitted to office in the Western church. Because Hippolytus, the author to whom the Apostolic Tradition is attributed, is believed to have been an arch-conservative, anxious to challenge the legitimacy of new thinking and practices within the church, this document is thought to reflect church practice at Rome as far back as the mid-second century.

In any case, Hippolytus provides descriptions and prayers for the ordination of bishops, presbyters, and deacons, as well as descriptions and rites for the appointment of persons to other, non-ordained offices as well. The following elements formed the matrix within which ordination took place:

First, fidelity to apostolic teaching is explicitly noted as a characteristic needed in those ordained as bishops: “ … in order that those who have been well taught by our exposition may guard that tradition” (Apostolic Tradition 1).

Second, ordination takes place on the Lord’s Day in the midst of the assembly, which must give its explicit approval to the choice of the candidate. Bishops are ordained by the laying on of hands of neighboring bishops, together with a prayer that seeks the graces needed to carry out their ministry (Apostolic Tradition 2). Presbyters are ordained by the laying on of hands of both the bishop and the congregational presbytery, together with a prayer that seeks the “Spirit of grace and counsel of the presbyterate” (Apostolic Tradition 7). Deacons are ordained by the laying on of hands by the congregation’s bishop, together with a prayer that seeks the spirit of “grace and caring and diligence” (Apostolic Tradition 8). In all cases, the prayer of the presiding minister is preceded by a period of silent prayer by the whole community for the descent of the Holy Spirit, thus underscoring that ordination is an action of the whole community and not merely of its representative leaders.

Third, those ordained as bishops receive the kiss of peace as a sign that they have been made worthy, and then immediately preside at a celebration of the Eucharist, using a prayer which thanks God for holding “us worthy to stand before you and minister to you” (Apostolic Tradition 4). This prayer is now officially approved for use at the Eucharist in nearly all mainline Protestant churches as well as the Roman Catholic church.

Later patristic era church orders in both the East and the West preserve these basic elements of the rite. Some of them also add other elements such as the bestowal of symbols of office and a formal declaration of ordination.

Transformation in Understanding of the Threefold Office Structure

Though the substance of the ordination rites for bishops, presbyters, and deacons remained fairly constant throughout the patristic era, the church’s understanding of both the offices themselves and the meaning of ordination began to change as the church began to assume a more public role in society. Three such changes were to prove particularly important.

The first such change was a gradual reappropriation of Old Testament priestly typology for interpreting the functions of ordained ministers. The earliest strata of Christian teaching had eschewed the language of the priesthood in describing church leaders, insisting that priesthood belonged only to Jesus Christ (Heb. 4:14ff). Other New Testament witnesses extended that language by analogy to the whole body of Christ, the church (1 Pet. 2:9). Beginning toward the end of the first century (Clement and the Didachē) and with increasing frequency during the second century (Justin Martyr, Polycarp, and Tertullian), the language of priesthood began to be used to describe the office of bishop (and later, the office of the presbyter). This usage was increasingly linked to the presidency at the Eucharist.

The second change arose as a by-product of the legitimation of Christianity, which occurred by fits and starts during the second and third centuries and obtained critical mass by imperial fiat during the fourth century. The structure of ordained ministry attested to in the Apostolic Tradition included a local bishop or pastor who taught and preached and presided at worship, a collegial council of advisors and overseers known as presbyters, and deacons who carried out the church’s ministries of benevolence. The increasing legitimation of the church, however, eventually led to rapid growth in church membership and strained the capacity of that model to meet the needs of a growing, and increasingly urban, church. Moreover, the church’s increasingly public status provided sanctions for appropriating and adapting the political models of the Roman Empire for its own use.

Little by little, the assumption that every congregation would have its own bishop-pastor to preside at the Eucharist and its own council of presbyters to share with the bishop in overseeing its common life gave way to a more prelatical model in which a single bishop would oversee multiple congregations within a particular region. In turn, the council of presbyters became less a collegial body of locally elected persons chosen to lead the congregation together with its local bishop-pastor, and more a group of episcopal assistants dispersed by him to preside at the Eucharist in the smaller or less important congregations under his care. The functions of deacons, who had been representative leaders not only in each congregation’s worship but in those congregations’ care of their own members and outreach to others, came to be understood primarily in terms of their liturgical roles.

The third change involved a gradual redefinition of the relationship between ordained office-bearers and the rest of the church. Though there is, particularly within the Catholic Epistles, some movement in the direction of “character tests” for those who would lead the community of faith, for most of the New Testament the most theologically and ritually significant boundary is not between leaders and members, but the boundary between those who are “in Christ” (the priesthood of all believers celebrated in baptism) and those who are not.

By the end of the patristic period, however, the focus on the eucharistic presidency as the radical principle undergirding the office of bishop or pastor, the appropriation of priestly typology and imagery for understanding ministry, and the appropriation of imperial models for organizing and overseeing the church’s life and mission-led, at least implicitly, to the drawing of a new line between clergy and laity. The sign and seal of this new boundary was celibacy, a discipline that arose first as an expectation for those ordained as bishops, but which became de rigeur for the other major offices as their responsibilities were redefined in increasingly liturgical terms. In its most developed form during the Middle Ages, the order of clergy included a series of minor offices to which persons were ordained to exercise functions that, during the early years (cf. Apostolic Tradition 9–14), had been exercised by non-ordained members of the congregation (e.g., exorcist, acolyte, porter, lector).

During the Middle Ages, these transformed understandings of ministry were wedded to juridical understandings of authority, ultimately laying a foundation for the crisis and critique of the Reformation.

Ordination in the New Testament

by

The specific terminology of ordination is not found in the New Testament, although several occasions are described on which people were set aside for special tasks of ministry. A fuller development of the theory of ordination took place in the post-New Testament church.

Ministry Differentiation in the New Testament

The present state of scholarship demands great caution in speaking about ordination, its meaning, or its rites in the New Testament. The words ordain and ordination are not found there, and there is considerable disagreement about the extent to which this later Christian use may coincide with the categories of the New Testament and with its pattern, or varied patterns, of understanding, vocabulary, and practice.

Evidence suggests that the church had both unity and differentiation from the beginning. There is equality based on baptism, equality that nevertheless requires authority, leadership, that is structured and maintained as a unity through special ministers. Ministry rather than order or status is the predominant emphasis: a mission to be accomplished, a task to be done, rather than a class to be entered or status to be attained. These differences should not be exaggerated; ministry may well involve position, and a mission may carry with it or may require a certain personal status, and ministers may be grouped together because of the nature of their function.

Ministry does not arise merely out of sociological pressure; its necessity is found at a deeper level in the person and mission of Jesus Christ. The entire ministry is ultimately the work of God (1 Cor. 12:6), the gift of Christ (Eph. 4:7–12), and of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:4–11; cf. Acts 20:28) in and through and for the church, the body of Christ. The most important forms of ministry can be characterized as those of leadership: preaching the gospel and founding new churches, supervising and nurturing the growth of the young churches, leading the communities as they become established. This ministry of leadership manifests itself in a variety of activities: instruction, encouragement, reproof, visitation, appointment, and supervision of some ministries, and so on—all that is demanded by the task of building up the body of Christ.

Procedures for Designation of Leadership

Scholars are not agreed about the manner in which Christian positions of leadership came into being in the early church. The recent trend has been toward the view that leaders emerged or were appointed in different ways in different communities with different church orders. Is there any evidence of a rite associated with this? Rather than discuss the question simply as a New Testament issue, it is best to look at it with an eye to subsequent developments.

The New Testament mentions the laying on of hands on four main occasions that could be important for consideration of the sacrament of orders (Acts 6:6; 13:3; 1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6; cf. 1 Tim. 5:22). Scholars do not agree on the background of this Christian action, whether it was borrowed from a supposed Jewish rite of ordination or was derived from more general Old Testament influences or was primarily a Christian introduction. Nor is there agreement that in these instances the function and the meaning of the gesture are the same.

In Acts 6:6 the seven are chosen in Jerusalem by the whole body of disciples for appointment by the apostles, who pray and lay their hands on them. In Acts 13:1–3, Barnabas and Saul are set apart in the church at Antioch for a mission in obedience to a command of the Holy Spirit. After fasting and prayer they (the prophets and teachers? others?) lay hands on Barnabas and Saul and send them on their mission. They are understood to be sent out by the Holy Spirit (Acts 13:4). In neither of these cases do scholars agree about the function or the meaning of this imposition of hands. The second especially may have been no more than a blessing or the acknowledgment of a mandate (cf. Acts 14:26, which may interpret this rite in saying that they were commended to the grace of God for this work). One other text from Acts makes an interesting parallel. According to Acts 14:23, Paul and Barnabas appointed elders in every church with prayer and fasting. The mention of prayer and fasting and the absence of reference to the laying on of hands are worth noting, though it could well be that the latter is assumed.

Although there is also disagreement as to the meaning of the imposition of hands in the two instances from the Pastoral Epistles (1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6), perhaps there is a firmer consensus that it is part of what may be called with greater confidence an ordination rite. The choice of Timothy may have been made by prophetic utterance (1 Tim. 1:18; 4:14; cf. Acts 13:2), and the core of the rite by which he was commissioned is presented as the laying on of hands done by the body of presbyters and by Paul (1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6). Probably this was done in public (cf. 2 Tim. 2:2 “in the presence of many witnesses”). In or through this rite a spiritual gift, a gift of God has been conferred. This gift is at the service of the Word, strengthening Timothy to bear public witness to the gospel (2 Tim. 1:8–14). He is warned “do not neglect” (1 Tim. 4:14); he is to “rekindle” this gift of God that he has received, and in fact, the last two chapters of 1 Timothy envisage a broad range of responsibility for the apostolate and the community. It is a power that enables him to carry out his ministry, a charisma for the office that he has received. Here we have the makings of a later, explicitly “sacramental,” understanding of such a rite.

No doubt these texts, partial as they are, represent different situations of time and place. They may not simply be collated in the expectation that the ensemble will provide the ordination rite of the early church or of Paul. Scholars maintain that the pattern of ministry, its understanding, and its mode of appointment or recognition, may be more varied than has been acknowledged in the past. In addition, as has been pointed out, the precise influences that led to the Christian use of the laying on of hands are unclear, and so the meaning of this action, and in some cases, its role, are also unclear. It is not evident that some such form was always and everywhere used during the New Testament period or indeed for some time after it, nor is there any probability that all these elements were present on all occasions. But neither can it be proved from the evidence of the New Testament that such a form was exceptional. Elements do undoubtedly emerge from the church of the New Testament that will influence all later generations and that will in fact endure.

Subject to all the qualifications that have been made, the following may serve as a summary of some of the points from the New Testament that will be prominent also in the subsequent tradition. In the appointment of ministers to positions of leadership, the whole local body of the church, and yet also particular ministers or groups of ministers, have an important role. The context of worship, of prayer and fasting, is mentioned, suggesting a liturgical setting and referring the ministry and appointment to it by God. Hands are laid on the candidate by a group within the church and/or by such individuals as Paul and Timothy. What the church does through its corporate action or through its leaders is regarded as inspired by the Holy Spirit, and through the church’s choice and the liturgical action, God provides for the church and gives a spiritual gift that in some way endures. This interworking of God-church-special ministers is to be noted, as is the religious form of the prayer-fasting-liturgical rite that is part of it.

Post-New Testament Developments

During the second century, episcopacy, presbyterate, and diaconate emerge almost everywhere as the most important ministries and form what will be the universal pattern. From the letter of Clement onward, correspondences are noted between the Jewish structure of authority and the Christian. Ignatius of Antioch already presents the bishop as an image of the Father, and here and elsewhere bishop, presbyter, and deacon are related in a variety of ways to God and to Jesus Christ. These comparisons manifest the conviction that the existence and the pattern of this ministry in the church are willed by God and mediate the authority and the power of God. Between God and the church is Jesus Christ, who came from God and from whom the power and the authority of the church originated historically. In the second and third centuries, a consensus may not yet have emerged as to the way the church commissions these ministers. Tertullian is the first that we know to use the Latin words ordo-ordinare-ordinatio as part of the Christian terminology.