Nine Questions About Women’s Ministry in the Church

The church has been breathing feminist air for so long that many Christians no longer recognize what earlier generations regarded as ordinary biblical teaching.  The church has needed this book for a very long time. Nine Questions About Women’s Ministry in the Church by D. Michael Clary and Zachary M. Garris offer us a clear, courageous call back from the fashions of the age to the order God has established for His church. For generations, wave after wave of feminism has washed over the church, eroding historic Christian convictions about the roles and responsibilities of men and women. What the church once regarded as ordinary biblical teaching is now often dismissed as hateful, radical, divisive, or even misogynistic. Garris and Clary have given the church a timely gift to help us remember where the furniture belongs. I pray that a new generation of pastors will be courageous enough to turn from the errors of my generation.

We live, work, and worship in a culture thoroughly saturated with feminism, and its disastrous effects are evident everywhere—from the slaughter of millions of children through abortion to the confusion that has entered the church. Zachary Garris and Michael Clary have done the Reformed church a great service by recovering a positive biblical vision for women serving the church without measuring faithful women by masculine callings. They neither diminish women by treating them as unhelpful nor dishonor them by placing them in roles God has given to men. God has established masculine leadership and authority in the home, church, and beyond, and Christ has ordered His church accordingly. Grounded in Scripture and the Reformed tradition, this book offers much-needed wisdom for churches seeking to honor God’s good design for men and women. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

A number of years ago, I heard an effective church planter make the case that after calling an executive pastor, the next staff position he would hire would be that of a female leader. To the best of my knowledge, this woman would not be a pastor, but she would shape the church’s ministry to women. At the time, I thought this was a novel idea and one that needed more biblical reflection, but I didn’t have a well-formed argument against it or a book that might offer a counter proposal.

For the last decade or more, the push among complementarians to include women in decision-making and pastoral care has only grown, even if the title pastor has been reserved for qualified men. This has led to the growth of shepherdesses in some churches and the need for women’s ministry leaders in others. Yet, in attempting to minister to women, the rise of women’s ministries has often come with bitter fruits.

From church splits, to splintered relationship, to hurt feelings, the rise of women’s ministries has led to a host of problems. I don’t have enough fingers to count all the churches that have been harmed by one or many overzealous female leaders. And with conferences, seminars, and books continuing to encourage women to lead and teach, the troubles will only continue, unless we revisit the place and purpose of women’s ministries.

This is where Michael Clary and Zachary Garris come in. Their book, Nine Questions About Women’s Ministry in the Church, is both biblical and practical. With years of pastoral ministry between them, they have seen how feminism and standpoint epistemology (the belief that personal experience is required for proper instruction) have harmed the church. And specifically, they have seen the way that an unfettered women’s ministry can hurt women by inviting them to positions of ministry that goes against God’s Word, while also hindering the ways God has made woman to serve the church.

Therefore, for those with women’s ministries, for those looking to start a women’s ministry, and for those looking to correct a women’s ministry that has gone off the rails, this is a needed book. Years ago I didn’t have a book to consider the subject, but now I do. And for pastors and the women they shepherd, Nine Questions About Women’s Ministry in the Church should be required reading.