Why I Believe Women Should Be In Ministry
And The Historical Fallacy Of Pentecostalism As An Egalitarian Innovator
Here’s a clip of my friend, Dr. Allen Tennyson, explaining why he believes women can be in ministry.
I think he makes a couple statements about Pentecostalism that go a little too far. And while I agree with him about 90% (and I’ll explain where I diverge in a moment), it’s important to make measured claims—ones that aren’t a Google search away from getting body-slammed.
So full disclosure: I believe women can preach because of 1 Corinthians 11—and I got there thanks to Gordon Fee.
In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul describes women prophesying with their heads covered. Then he launches into a theological diatribe about headship and head coverings.
Paul lays out an authority structure that looks like this:
God is the head of Christ.
Christ is the head of man.
Man is the head of woman.
It’s so clear you can’t wiggle around it—it’s a theological rock that simply won’t budge. Then he gives instructions about head coverings. This isn’t about headship per se; it’s about modesty in worship.
Conflating the two—headship and modesty—is dishonest exegesis. Paul is making two distinct points:
There is a clear hierarchy, even within the Godhead, where the Father is first among equals.
Modesty in church allows a woman to remain “covered” by authority—not as a form of domination, but protection.
And the result? A woman who is covered may prophesy.
So the next question becomes: What does prophecy actually look like in Corinth? Are there any examples? Thankfully, 1 Corinthians 14 gives us explicit ones—and guess what? It looks exactly like a Pentecostal homily: edification, consolation, and comfort. This isn’t doctrine-laying—that’s the work of an elder. Prophecy in Corinth was an encouraging and stirring work.
So can women be pastors? Well… define pastor. If by “pastor” you mean a facilitator of worship—like a campus pastor who runs operations and shepherds people day-to-day—I can see that in the New Testament. Chloe appears to have facilitated a house church (1 Cor. 1:11), and John writes to “the elect lady” (2 John 1).
But then there’s the work of an elder—rebuke, exhort, and teach. That’s different. Paul flat-out says in 1 Timothy that women are not to have authority over men. That’s because eldership is a fathering role—and women can’t father. They can mother, though. They can nurture and strengthen men—edify, console, and comfort—but they aren’t called to lay doctrinal foundations or rebuke, which is what Paul charges elders with in his letters to Timothy and Titus.
If a woman is facilitating a campus, she would need a senior pastor or male elder to lay those foundations and exercise correction over the men in that congregation. Why? Because Paul’s descriptors of elders place that responsibility squarely on the shoulders of men.
My baseline understanding always comes back to 1 Corinthians 11: as long as there is clear male headship, women can function in a pastoral role. Read 1 Corinthians 11 carefully and try to come to a different conclusion—it’s a theological rock that won’t budge.
Now, most Pentecostal scholars—and there are some exceptions—are Egalitarian. Meaning, they believe a woman can be a senior pastor or apostle without the aid of a husband—no male headship required. My pushback is twofold: (1) we have no record of this in 1,900 years of Church history, and (2) it clearly violates Paul’s hierarchy structure as outlined in Corinthians and Timothy—not to mention the family hierarchy we see in Galatians and Titus. And let’s not forget Peter, who is the most patriarchal of the bunch. He says women ought to call their husbands “lord.”
See, this is the stuff people love to dismiss out of hand. But you can’t do that. You’ve got to hold it in tension and balance it out honestly.
The most respectable Egalitarians, in my view, are the Anglicans like James Dunn and N.T. Wright. They argue women can be apostles or senior pastors because all of these “hierarchy passages” in Paul were added later in the 2nd century by patriarchal leaders. They’re saying, “Yes, hierarchy is definitely there—but it’s not Paul. It’s an interpolation.”
I can respect that.
What I can’t respect is someone who says it isn’t there at all and casually dismisses it.
Here’s the video of Pentecostal professor Allen Tennyson explaining—from his purview—why Pentecostals are Egalitarians, and my pushbacks:
