Notes of Faith March 30, 2025
Her Many and Marvelous Ministries
How Women Give Life to the Church
Article by Scott Hubbard
Managing Editor, Desiring God
Imagine a family that gathers on Sunday nights for a household meeting. They meet often in other ways throughout the week — for meals, devotions, outings. But on Sunday, the father calls everyone together to review the last week, look ahead to the next, and remember their family identity. The whole family takes part in the meeting, but the father clearly leads.
Now imagine that someone observes this meeting and says, “This father leaves no room for his family’s gifts. Why should he always lead the meeting? If his daughters don’t have a more prominent voice here, then where will they use the gifts God has given them?”
To any healthy family, such a question would seem silly. One of the daughters might well respond, “Where will we use our gifts? In any number of places. I play piano for our family devotions. I help prepare meals for my younger brothers. I put together care bags that our family hands out to the homeless. I mentor a middle-school girl from our church. I may not lead our family meetings, but the meeting is just one part of the family.”
You can probably see where I’m going. Every week, our churches gather to look back, look ahead, and remember our identity in Christ. And God has ordained that qualified men, spiritual fathers, lead these meetings. Now, some visitors may wonder why men hold the microphone most of the time; they may even take offense at that pattern. But the weekly gathering is just one part of the church, and much of the most important ministry happens all week.
Ministry Beyond Sunday
To be sure, in some churches, much of the most important ministry does not happen beyond Sunday. The members rarely meet throughout the week; their gifts lie largely dormant Monday through Saturday; they seldom venture forth on mission. In such a church, the person who holds the microphone matters tremendously because most of the ministry happens there.
But even a moderately healthy church is less like a weekly performance and more like a family. We are “the household of God” (1 Timothy 3:15), a fellowship of spiritual fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters (1 Timothy 5:1–2), able to “exhort one another every day” because we see one another so often (Hebrews 3:13). Ministry happens not just on Sunday mornings and not just in church buildings: it happens on Tuesday afternoons and Thursday nights in homes and parks and cafés and soup kitchens and neighborhood streets.
I have no wish to downplay the crucial importance of the weekly gathering or the preached word. But like a family meeting, the purpose of a church’s gathering is not simply to do ministry but also to equip and send out for ministry during the rest of the week (Ephesians 4:11–12). On Sunday, the church’s fathers take the lead in calling the whole family — women as much as fellow men — to engage in every-day ministry with the gifts God has given them.
And if we aim to grow up into “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” then we need every gift in full operation (Ephesians 4:13). A church can flourish without the gifts of women no more than a family can flourish without the gifts of women (a fact I appreciate more every time I am left alone for a while with my kids).
Church of Many Members
Nevertheless, even in a healthy church, we can sometimes forget that we are an all-of-life fellowship of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. Sunday morning can seem like the time to do ministry. And so we, both men and women, need help remembering what it might mean to be a church of many members, where ministry belongs to both men and women across all life stages.
To that end, consider four exhortations, two to my sisters in Christ and two to fellow brothers.
1. Dream of your many ministries.
Dear sisters, I know that we pastors sometimes fail to mention the many pivotal ministries beyond Sunday morning. But can I encourage you to dream about the dozens of ways our churches need your gifts beyond the gathering?
“Godly male leadership creates more space (not less) for women to use their gifts.”
The New Testament does not hesitate to mention the many ways God uses women to strengthen his church. It was a woman who prophesied over our infant Lord (Luke 2:36–38), women who funded much of Christ’s ministry (Luke 8:1–3), a woman who likely delivered the greatest letter in the world (Romans 16:1–2), and women whom Paul called “fellow workers” (Philippians 4:3). A woman welcomed Jesus out of the womb; more women welcomed him out of the tomb. The church in Philippi began in a woman’s home (Acts 16:14–15), and other churches went on meeting in women’s homes (Colossians 4:15).
Wherever the church takes root, women are there, watering and tending its young shoots. They counsel the weak and wandering. They tend to the sick and dying. They adopt the orphan, care for the widow, teach fellow sisters and little souls, and build homes where all these and more feel welcome. They pray like Anna, serve like Phoebe, host like Nympha, and minister alongside their husbands like Priscilla.
As John Piper writes, Christian women do not “measure [their] potential by the few roles withheld, but by the countless roles offered.” They “look to the loving God of Scripture and dream about the possibilities of [their] service to him” (What’s the Difference?, 79–80).
2. Mature the men among you.
Some of the ministry opportunities mentioned above are directed exclusively toward other women — and indeed, women can minister to other women in many ways that men cannot (Paul’s instructions in Titus 2:3–5 offer just one example). But let me also assure you that, in some ways, you can minister to men in ways that men cannot.
Paul drops a remarkable statement into his list of greetings in Romans 16: “Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord; also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well” (verse 13). Paul, the frontier missionary and church planter, the spiritual father of so many believers, found a mother in Rufus’s mother. He doesn’t mention specifics, but in some way, this woman loved him as a mother might — perhaps tending his wounds or offering a place for him to stay or speaking needed words of encouragement (or all of the above).
We might also consider how not only Aquila but also Priscilla “took [Apollos] aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18:26). As a sister might encourage a younger brother, she came alongside the powerful Apollos and helped him speak even more powerfully.
Rufus’s mother provided something for Paul that Rufus himself could not; likewise, Priscilla offered something crucial to Apollos. These men needed mothers and sisters in Christ — women not trying to act like men but eager to help men act like men.
Sister, you may not believe it, but there are brothers in your life who would stand a little taller by your word of encouragement, who would battle a little bolder at your suggestion. Speak prudently, of course, in ways befitting a sister or mother, but know that you have a role to play in maturing the men around you.
3. Give women’s gifts a home.
Brothers, when Eve awoke in the garden, she found herself paired to a man already on mission. This animal-naming, chaos-taming Adam had been given a charge, and it was a charge large enough that he required help — her help. Immediately, the full breadth of Eve’s womanhood was called forth by this man on mission.
This Edenic pattern offers a principle for us — one that speaks most directly to husbands but also to all the church’s men. The principle is this: in so many cases, godly male leadership creates more space (not less) for women to use their gifts. The women who served as patrons of the twelve (Luke 8:1–3), the women who labored alongside the apostles (Philippians 4:3), the women who hosted gatherings in the early church (Colossians 4:15) — they all found their ministries under the leadership of good men (Jesus, Paul, the church’s elders). The strong men around them called forth their own active help.
I’m not suggesting that women should never begin new ministry ventures themselves; many needs in the church and the world benefit from feminine initiation. But when a church’s men lead in creative, sacrificial ways, many feminine gifts finally find a home.
Brothers, if we rarely take the lead in prayer meetings, missions committees, small-group discussions, music ministries, or other areas of church life, then the sisters among us may find themselves forced to fill in for our passivity — or sit out altogether. How many of our sisters’ stunning gifts will lie dormant and dusty if we fail to lead?
4. Honor the women among you.
Beyond such leadership, one of the best steps we can take as men is to follow Jesus and Paul in gladly honoring the women around us. In Romans 16, Paul did not blush to name nine women among the twenty-six people he greeted, nor was he sparing in his commendations of them: Phoebe was the church’s servant and Paul’s patron; Prisca was a “fellow worker”; Mary “has worked hard for you”; both Tryphaena and Tryphosa are “workers in the Lord”; and as we saw, Rufus’s mother “has been a mother to me as well” (Romans 16:1–3, 6, 12–13).
And surely Paul honored them as he did because of the Lord he followed. In a world that so often discounted and denigrated women, Jesus saw women, conversed with women, dignified women, and rose up to honor the ministry of women in the face of those who ignored or despised it. No one regarded the widow and her two copper coins — but Jesus did (Mark 12:43–44). No one esteemed the astonishing “waste” of perfume poured from loving hands — but Jesus did (Mark 14:6–9). He knew how to honor women.
Do we? If we do, the mothers and sisters in our churches may not care very much who holds the microphone on Sundays. And they may return to their many ministries freshly feeling what they really are: indispensable.
Scott Hubbard is a teacher and the managing editor for Desiring God.
It is my understanding that God has called men to lead the spiritual life and maturity of those around him. Adam failed in the garden when he did not even attempt to stop Eve from partaking of the forbidden fruit. Instead, he followed her lead and the deception of Satan. Men today need to use the gifts that God has given them and lead their wives, their families, their churches, their communities, in spiritual truth. At the fall of man, part of the curse of God was that the woman would desire the man. Some of you started laughing already. The woman’s desire would be for the man’s role or position of leadership! And many of them do it well. It is not that they cannot lead. It is just not the “role” God called woman to fulfill. Man is the head of his wife and family as Christ is head of the church. As the church is to submit to the headship of Christ, so the woman and children are to submit to the “holy and righteous” headship of the husband/father. Men, we need to step up spiritually and lead, better than Adam. We need to listen to God, be obedient to His Word, protect our families from the evil one, and pursue knowing and being like Christ Jesus in every moment of life. The women of CGBC, our church, have proven to be greatly gifted and by God’s grace have blessed this community of believers with His glory and blessing without pursuing the microphone or pulpit. This is a submission of obedience to God.
I humbly admit to failure in leadership of this church, yet praise God for the congregation, men and women who support me and encourage me in the “role” God has called me to fill. Let us love our women as Christ loves the church and gave Himself for her. Let us lead our women, full of the Holy Spirit, making spiritually mature decisions that glorify God and encourage our women in mature faith through our words and deeds. Let us not fight for position and role. God made us to work together. It is the fall of mankind that brought sin and fighting over roles. Let us be pleasing to God and serve both God and one another as He designed! Love the women of the church and support them in their gifting by finding opportunity for their gifts to by greatly expressed.
Pastor Dale
