Why I Believe in Women in Ministry: Part 1 (Gupta)

I (Nijay Gupta) have been an egalitarian for over 15 years. So, I am definitely long overdue for expressing my views in an extended, written format. There will be a large number of posts in this series, so stay tuned.

Starting from the beginning

Before getting into biblical and theological arguments and views, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about my story.

I became a believer as a teenager. In college (at a secular university), I was involved with Campus Crusade for Christ and the Navigators. I went to a conservative evangelical (non-denominational) church. In those years, I started to read books by theologians and Christian leaders—C. S. Lewis, Max Lucado, Dallas Willard, Jerry Bridges, Ravi Zacharias and especially John Piper (this was the ‘90’s!). I did not have a very well thought out view of what women should or should not do in ministry. Either I had never seen or heard of a woman pastor, or I assumed anyone associated with such views just didn’t take the Bible very seriously.

I subscribed to what I call “package theology.” If I found a scholar convincing in one area of theology, then they must be “right” in all areas—hence, I bought their “package.” So with Piper, I liked his writings on glorifying God, I liked his work on missions, so I took his whole package, which includes a strict view that men alone ought to lead churches. (I was so enamored with Piper that I once drove 14 hours from southern Ohio to Dallas to hear Piper preach at Dallas Theological Seminary.)

And yet, even in my college days, there were a few things that contradicted or challenged some of my assumptions about women in leadership. First, there was an amazing staff leader with Campus Crusade named Jane Armstrong. Everyone who knew her respected her deeply; she was and is wise, godly, mature, caring, and competently led many men and women on missions trips (including myself). But, in Crusade’s leadership system, she could never be the campus director because she is a woman. She could be an associate campus director (which she was), but a man must be the director. (That is what I had heard.) But why?

A second thing during that time stuck with me. When I went home in the summers, I would help out with my home church, and I did an internship there as well. My church believed that women were not allowed to be “pastors.” But there was a female director of children’s ministry on staff. She was very wise, much beloved in the community, and she went on the “pastors’ retreat” every year (I know that because as an intern I went once as well). For all intents and purposes, she was indeed a “pastor.” But the church used a terminology loophole to maintain what they considered a biblical view.

It wasn’t until I attended seminary that I really took a hard look at the issue of women in ministry. I went to Gordon-Conwell where there were faculty on both sides of the debate. To be perfectly honest, I was still staunchly complementarian my first year of seminary. In fact, I wrote my first systematic theology paper on this (self-chosen topic): “Why Women Shouldn’t Be Pastors.” (I got an “A” on the paper, btw). But in my second year of seminary, I went through a long journey of thinking and study that led me to the opposite conclusion. So I wrote my final (3^rd year) systematic theology paper on this subject: “Why Women Should Be Pastors” (I also got an “A” on that one!)

What changed my mind? It wasn’t one single thing. Rather, it was the erosion of the false confidence I had in my complementarian view. Almost all of the assumptions I had about the key biblical texts were not as secure as I had assumed, once I dug into the academic discussions. Furthermore, I continued to meet and become aware of respected evangelical scholars who supported women in ministry (people like Walter Kaiser, Gordon Fee, Howard Marshall, and F. F. Bruce). This started to disassemble that Piper “package” I had once bought into. Thirdly, I got to know some evangelical women scholars who supported women in ministry (esp. Catherine Kroeger, for whom I eventually served as a research assistant), and to my surprise, they were wonderful, conservative, Bible-loving, God-honoring scholars.

In my experience, people do not often change their mind just by reading biblical scholarship- although the exegesis matters greatly. Rather, for me, I was stuck on trying to ponder the rationale and logic of male-only pastors. We all know incredibly gifted women who are highly competent to serve as leaders (I’m married to one!). If anyone ever tells you, “do this, because the Bible says so,” but they can’t explain why, that is bad theology and ethics.

So that is the beginning of my story. More to come; next up…”Setting the Table: Terms and Translations.”

[Disclaimer: rude comments will be removed; constructive comments and questions will be permitted and I will try to interact with as many as I can.]