If Your Church has a Female "Co-Pastor" Leave NOW...Here's Why!

recently somebody asked me the question hey brother allen my church is being led by a husband and a wife and they call themselves co-pastors should i stay at this church is the concept of co-pastoring from a husband and a wife biblical so a husband and a wife co-pastoring a church seems to be a hot trend that is permeating through the church today with people like creflo and taffy dollar or john and eventer gray of relentless church where both the husband and the wife are positioning themselves as co-pastors having equal authority or so it seems over not only each other but also the members of that local church now while it may look real cute having a husband and a wife teaming up together showing a united front on the front of your website as co-pastors the question we have to always ask ourselves is is this a biblical concept so whenever we assess the idea of a husband and a wife co-pastoring with equal authority over the members of the church is that biblical well i'm going to give you three reasons why i think it's not only not biblical but i think it's also very very dangerous as well reason number one is that there is no model of co-pastoring between a husband and a wife found in early church history and most of church history and there is no example in the bible of a husband and a wife co-pastoring together having equal authority so any time my friends you find people bringing in new cultures and new traditions if you will into the church that we see happening in culture just because it's culturally relevant or it's politically correct or it looks good or it sounds good but when you look at church history and there isn't any sort of model or example of this particular practice being embraced by christianity as a whole for the past 2000 years that is something that you really need to pay attention to because more than likely what's happening is that church is caving into the pressure of the culture rather than looking at it from a christian biblical perspective reason number two and probably the strongest one is that the scriptures don't support this idea of a husband and a wife as co-pastors having co-equal authority now some of you right now i can already see that you're going to end up getting upset with me because i'm going to start talking about the role of a woman in the church but let me just encourage you brother allen did not write these scriptures at all i did not write any scripture i was not inspired by the holy spirit to write any of this i'm simply the mailman i'm communicating to you what thus says the lord in the scriptures and so the first one i want to look at is first timothy chapter 3 verse 1 which says the saying is trustworthy if anyone aspires to the office of overseer he desires a noble task i want you to take special notice here of the third person masculine pronoun he that paul uses throughout this entire passage so essentially he's saying if a man desires to be an overseer then he desires a noble task now let's keep going it also says therefore an overseer must be above reproach the husband of one wife the husband of one wife the husband of one wife sober-minded self-controlled respectable hospitable able to teach so by saying that a church leader or an overseer must be the husband of one wife automatically disqualifies any woman from actually being the soul or the co-pastor of a church exercising authority because it's impossible for a woman to be a husband of one wife now paul continues and says this he must manage his own household well with all dignity keeping his children submissive so in these times it was expected and understood that a man was supposed to govern or to manage his own household and the idea is that if a man is not able to have his own household in order then how is he going to manage god's household now beyond this the verse that is probably most disputed in the new testament more than likely is probably first timothy chapter 2 verse 12 where paul says i do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man rather she is to remain quiet now i will admit that this is a very very difficult verse to interpret which is the reason why one of the rules of bible interpretation is to always let what is clear help us understand or interpret what is not clear so if this verse is is kind of tricky and hard to understand you have to look outside this verse to see what the rest of the bible has to say about this but regardless if we just read this verse in plain sense it's clear that paul is saying hey i don't permit a woman to necessarily exercise authority over the church and so if a woman is a co-pastor then by definition she's an overseer she's an elder and therefore exercising authority over men in the church now for those who may make the argument and say well you know what paul was using a cultural argument at the time and things have changed in the culture and so therefore what paul was talking about here applied to the church at that time but it wasn't really applying to the church throughout all christianity paul in previous verses actually extends this beyond culture and goes all the way back to creation and says hey this is how it was from creation notice he says for adam was formed first and then eve and adam was not deceived but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor so essentially paul is establishing the precedent that it was always god's intent for man to lead from the beginning man even gave his wife the name he also named and had dominion over the creatures in the garden so on and so forth now as an aside in a recent article that i found online by a woman by the name of kathy escobar entitled why i believe in co-pastoring i found something very very interesting and i'm going to link it up in the description box below in this entire article there is not one scripture referenced in the entire article as to why we should believe or accept this idea of co-passing by the way from what i understand this woman kathy escobar actually co-pastors a church with another man who is not even her husband so she's married to somebody the co-pastor is married to another woman and they are coming together and co-pastoring a church so i don't think this model is necessarily biblical and i don't find any biblical proof or authority in the scriptures on this one and then the third and final reason is that a wife can support her husband in every imaginable way possible without having the title of co-pastor so in many of the instances that i talked about and referenced earlier a lot of times churches like to hire a husband and a wife team not only because they get two for one but also the wife's gifts complement the husband's gifts well but does that mean we need to slap a label on that woman and elevate her to the place of co-pastoring i've got news for you women have been supporting their husbands in ministry for centuries and centuries without having to be called co-pastor here's the beautiful thing is that we have to understand that the office of pastoring and the spiritual gift of pastoring are two different things there is no spiritual gift in the new testament that is reserved for either man or woman every single spiritual gift can be used let me give you an example if a woman has the spiritual gift of pastoring or shepherding then she can use that gift to pastor oversee nurture pour into and shepherd a group of women or group of children depending upon how old you find a child to also be a man if a woman has the spiritual gift of teaching or preaching for that matter she can exercise that gift as she is teaching or preaching to women and any other gift as well now the office of pastoring is the position of leadership as overseeing a church but the giftedness she's able to express in a variety of ways so there should be very minimal times if you will where a woman feels restricted where she's got this passion to want to use this gift for the lord and yet she is being restricted or prohibited from expressing her god-given gift with the world so with all that being said the main reason why i believe that this is unbiblical and more so dangerous is because if a church is willing to slide and compromise on an area like this when the scriptures seem to be pretty clear on the issue of female leadership in the church or this idea of co-pastoring you have to also entertain the thought how much more how many other little doctrines or little things in the bible is this church willing to overlook because it's more convenient for them to do this or to do that than it is to strictly look at the word of god and say okay this is what the bible says and because it says this this is what we are going to believe and this is what we're going to practice so i'd love to hear your thoughts what do you think about this idea of co-pastoring let me know in the comment section below and let's talk about it if you found this video helpful in any way feel free to share it with a friend also if you haven't done so already i would love it if you would subscribe check out some of the other videos on this channel thank you so much for watching i'll see you next time on the beat

Channel: THE BEAT by Allen Parr

Views: 309,331

Rating: 4.6508136 out of 5

Keywords: allen parr, co pastors, should women, should women preach, should women pastor, female pastors, should women keep silent in church, women co pastors, womens role in ministry, womens role in ministr, co pastor, co-pastor

Id: 8YQQw3XLQx4

Length: 10min 26sec (626 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 03 2021