There are seasons in the life of the Church when a thing held everywhere, by all, and without dispute must be confessed again in deliberate words. Not because the truth has shifted—truth does not shift—but because the age has lost its nerve, and what was once carried quietly in the bones and DNA of the people of God must now be spoken aloud and signed for the purpose of distinguishing where a person or church stands on items of doctrine. This is such a season.
For nineteen centuries the Church of Jesus Christ, in every land and in every communion that held the Scriptures to be the Word of God, reserved the office of pastor, elder, and overseer to qualified men. This was not a parochial custom of one tribe or one century. It was the settled practice of the East and the West, of the martyrs and the monks, of Geneva and Wittenberg, of the Baptists in their meetinghouses and the missionaries in the far fields. It was assumed in the creeds, written into the confessions, and watered with the blood of men who died rather than betray the deposit handed to them.
It is no longer assumed. Within the span of a single lifetime—not by fresh exegesis, not by a recovered manuscript, not by any voice from heaven, but by the pressure of a movement that began outside the Church and was carried inward on the tide of the age—congregations once faithful have set women in the pastoral office and called it progress. They have done in a little more than a century what the Church declined to do in nineteen hundred. They mistook novelty for courage and surrender for love, and have begun the gradual drift toward liberalism.
We do not write to wound the women of God, whom we honor, nor to flatter the men, whom we summon to the burden of the office. We write to draw a line that can be seen in daylight, so that a church may say plainly where it stands and a believer may know plainly what they are joining. We have grown weary of the fog and confusion. We have watched faithful saints deceived by soft words and clever readings, by men who would keep the title while surrendering the truth, who affirm the doctrine in the abstract and dismantle it in the particular.
Therefore we set our names to the confession that follows. We affirm and we deny. And in the denying we mean to leave no refuge for evasion, no shaded corner where the plain command of God may be smuggled out the back door under a new name or title.
The Confession in Brief
- God created man and woman in His own image, equal in worth, equal in dignity, equal in their standing before Him and their inheritance in Christ, and yet distinct by His design, appointed to complementary callings that He Himself ordained before the Fall and did not surrender after it. (Gen. 1:27; 2:18–24; Gal. 3:28)
- To the office of pastor, which is the one office of elder, overseer, and shepherd, named by three words and divided by none, God has called qualified men, and to no others. This is the testimony of Scripture, written plainly and grounded not in the customs of any culture but in the order of creation itself. (1 Tim. 2:12–13; 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9)
- The Holy Scriptures, being the inerrant and sufficient Word of the living God, do not whisper on this matter and do not contradict themselves. Where the apostle commands, the Church obeys; and where men have labored to overturn the command, they have done so against the text, not from it. (2 Tim. 3:16–17; 2 Pet. 1:20–21)
- The witness of the Church across the centuries is one witness. No era of orthodoxy ordained women to the pastoral office. The contrary practice is a thing of the modern age alone, and its arrival can be traced not to the recovery of forgotten truth but to the advance of a worldly spirit into the sanctuary.
- We hold this confession to be a matter of fidelity, not preference; of obedience, not opinion. We invite every church and every servant of Christ who fears the Word more than the age to set their hand to it. (Luke 6:46)
What We Affirm, What We Deny
Of the Supremacy of Scripture
AffirmThe sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments are the inspired, inerrant, and wholly sufficient Word of God, and they alone bind the conscience of the Church on the ordering of her offices. (2 Tim. 3:16–17; 2 Pet. 1:20–21)
DenyThat any tradition, experience, cultural development, claim of the Spirit, or appeal to fairness may stand against the plain teaching of Scripture, or may license the Church to do what the Word forbids. (Mark 7:8–9; Isa. 8:20)
Of the Image and the Order
AffirmMan and woman are made equally in the image of God, equal in worth and dignity, and equal heirs of the grace of life. (Gen. 1:27; Gal. 3:28; 1 Pet. 3:7)
DenyThat this equality of nature erases the distinction of role, and we deny that to assign different callings to man and woman is to assign different value, for the Father and the Son are equal in glory and ordered in their working. (1 Cor. 11:3; 15:28)
Of Creation and Headship
AffirmGod established the leadership of man and the helping-honor of woman by the order of creation itself: that man was formed first and woman from him and for him; that the command was given to Adam before Eve was made; and that the apostle grounds his ruling in this creation order and not in any passing circumstance. (Gen. 2:7, 18–23; 1 Cor. 11:8–9; 1 Tim. 2:13)
DenyThat male headship is a consequence of the Fall, a wound to be healed by the gospel, or a relic of an ancient society. It is older than sin, and the redemption of Christ restores it rather than abolishes it. (Gen. 2:18–24; cf. 3:16)
Of the One Pastoral Office
AffirmThe office of pastor, elder, overseer, and shepherd is a single office named by several titles, charged with ruling, teaching, guarding, and feeding the flock of God. (Acts 20:17, 28; 1 Pet. 5:1–2; Titus 1:5, 7)
DenyThat this office may be divided so that a woman might hold one part while a man holds another—that she might shepherd without ruling, teach without the title, or exercise the labor of the office while disclaiming its name.
Of the Qualifications of the Office
AffirmThe Scriptures require the overseer to be a man—“the husband of one wife,” a man able to teach, a man whose household commends him—and that these qualifications are given by the Holy Spirit as the standing pattern for the Church in every age. (1 Tim. 3:1–7; Titus 1:5–9)
DenyThat the masculine language of the qualifications is incidental, accommodating, or culturally bound, and we deny that any congregation may set it aside as a matter of indifference.
Of the Apostolic Prohibition
AffirmThe apostle Paul, writing as the mouthpiece of Christ, forbids a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man in the assembly of the saints, and that this prohibition is permanent because its reasons are permanent: the order of creation and the account of the Fall. (1 Tim. 2:12–14)
DenyThat this command was a local correction for a single troubled congregation, a temporary measure against untrained women, or a concession to the prejudices of the first century now happily outgrown. (1 Cor. 14:37–38)
Of the Pattern of Christ and the Apostles
AffirmThe Lord Jesus, who broke every needless barrier of His day and honored women as no rabbi before Him, nevertheless appointed twelve men to the apostolic office, and that the apostles in turn appointed men as elders in every city. (Luke 6:12–16; Acts 14:23; Titus 1:5)
DenyThat this pattern was a captivity to culture, for the One who chose it was the Maker of culture and the Judge of it, and He did nothing by accident.
Of Teaching and Authority
AffirmThe public preaching of the Word to the gathered church, and the governing of the church through her eldership, are acts of the pastoral office reserved to qualified men. (1 Tim. 2:12; 5:17; 1 Cor. 14:34–35)
DenyThat a woman may regularly preach to or teach the assembled body of men and women under any title whatever, and we deny that the mere absence of the word “pastor” sanctifies what Scripture forbids.
Of the Honor and Ministry of Women
AffirmWomen are indispensable to the life and mission of the Church; that they prophesied, prayed, labored in the gospel, taught the younger women, instructed children, showed hospitality, and gave their lives for Christ; and that a church that silences and sidelines its women has sinned as surely as one that ordains them. (Acts 21:9; 1 Cor. 11:5; Rom. 16:1–6; Titus 2:3–5; 2 Tim. 1:5)
DenyThat the reservation of the pastoral office to men is a license to despise, demean, or waste the gifts of women, and we deny that any man honors this confession who keeps its letter while crushing its spirit.
Of the Witness of the Church
AffirmThe unbroken testimony of the Church, East and West, ancient and Reformed, in her creeds and her confessions and her constant practice, has reserved the pastoral office to men, and that this catholic consent confirms the plain reading of the text. (Jude 3)
DenyThat the ordination of women to the pastoral office has any home in the historic orthodox Church, and we deny that the modern practice represents a recovery of anything lost. It is an innovation of the present age, arriving with the spirit of the age, and it must be judged by the Word and not the calendar.
Of the Spirit of the Age
AffirmThe egalitarian reordering of the Church’s offices entered the sanctuary from the world and not from the Word, carried on the current of a movement that taught the daughters of Eve to read submission as oppression and order as injury. (Rom. 12:2; Col. 2:8)
DenyThat the conscience of the Church may be formed by the slogans of any movement, and we deny that faithfulness to Scripture may be dismissed as the residue of a darker time. The darkness is not behind us; it is the fog we are commanded to refuse. (Eph. 5:11; 1 Thess. 5:21–22)
Of Confession and Cost
AffirmTo confess this truth in the present hour is to accept reproach, and that the Church has never lacked for men and women willing to bear reproach for the Word of God. (Matt. 10:32–33; 2 Tim. 3:12; Heb. 13:13)
DenyThat the fear of man, the love of approval, or the desire for institutional peace is sufficient reason to soften, qualify, or withhold what God has plainly said. (Prov. 29:25; Gal. 1:10)
The Denials
It is the manner of a compromised age to keep the words of orthodoxy while emptying them of force, to grant the principle and steal it back in the particulars. We have seen the office surrendered by every door but the front one. Therefore we deny, severally and plainly, that any of the following may be reconciled with the Word of God or with this confession. We name them not to multiply rules but to close every gate.
We denythat a woman may hold the office of pastor, elder, overseer, or shepherd under that name or any other. (1 Tim. 2:12; 3:2)
We denythat a church may grant a woman the function, labor, and authority of the office while withholding only the title, as though God forbade a word and not a work.
We denythat the title “co-pastor,” “associate pastor,” “teaching pastor,” “executive pastor,” “campus pastor,” or any compound of the word “pastor” sanctifies a woman’s occupancy of the office.
We denythat a “children’s pastor,” “women’s pastor,” “worship pastor,” “family pastor,” or “discipleship pastor” who is a woman has been rightly named, and we hold that the use of the pastoral title for such ministries blurs the very line this confession is written to draw.
We denythat a woman may regularly preach the sermon to the gathered congregation of men and women, whether she is called a pastor or a teacher or a speaker, and whether or not a man has “covered,” “authorized,” or “invited” her, for no covering of man can authorize what the Lord has forbidden.
We denythat a woman may sit on or lead the council of elders, the body that rules and shepherds the church, in fact or in function, by vote or by veto.
We denythat the appeal to Galatians 3:28 abolishes the distinction of office, for that text declares the equal salvation of all in Christ and says nothing of the eldership; what unites us at the cross does not flatten what God ordered in creation. (Gal. 3:28)
We denythat Phoebe, Junia, Priscilla, the daughters of Philip, or any woman named in Scripture was an apostle, elder, or pastor of the Church, or that the honored service of women in the New Testament establishes a single instance of a woman holding the pastoral office. (Rom. 16:1–7; Acts 18:26; 21:9)
We denythat the order of widows, the diaconal service of women, or any ministry of women in the early Church constitutes evidence of women in the pastoral office; that these existed alongside a male eldership is proof of the very distinction we confess. (1 Tim. 5:9–10; Rom. 16:1)
We denythat a woman may exercise the office on a foreign field, in a church plant, or in a season of scarcity that she may not exercise in an established church, as though the command of God expired where men grew few. The God who commands also provides.
We denythat personal calling, evident gifting, fruitful ministry, or the testimony of a changed life may overturn the written Word, for God does not call any soul to disobey Him, and gifts are given to be used in the order He appointed. (1 Cor. 14:37–38)
We denythat this is a matter of indifference, a second-tier dispute, or a question on which faithful churches may simply agree to differ without consequence, for the authority of Scripture and the integrity of the Church’s order are not second-tier things.
We deny, finally, that any signatory may subscribe to this confession in word while evading it in practice; for the whole purpose of a confession is that it be obeyed, and a line drawn in daylight is no line at all if it is crossed in the dark.
The Pledge of the Signers
We, the undersigned churches, ministers, theologians, and institutions, set our hands to this confession. We affirm what it affirms and we deny what it denies. We mean by it exactly what it says, without the private reservation, the crossed fingers, or the quiet exception. We hold the pastoral office to be the calling of qualified men, by the plain Word of God, by the order of His creation, and by the unbroken witness of His Church; and we will not be moved from it by the spirit of any age.
Soli Deo Gloria