Expert: Bruce Gourley - 8/25/2009

Question
May a woman speak at a church business meeting to ask a question or express a concern with regard to a matter before the Church and subject to a vote? I am a member of a Southern Missionary Baptist Church in which women are not allowed to speak at the monthly business meetings other than to ask for a prayer request. Women are allowed to teach Adult Mixed Sunday School classes as well as High School and College age young adult men. I have studied 1 Corinthians 14:34 and 1 Timothy 2:11 and understand that not all Baptist interpret those passages the same. I am struggling to understand how women are allowed to teach adult men but are not allowed to ask a question or voice a concern at a church business meeting.

Answer
To begin with, each local Baptist congregation decides (usually through democratic processes, although sometimes through a pastoral edict) what roles women can and cannot fulfill within that congregation. The answers to these questions vary greatly from congregation to congregation.

In the instance of your congregation, someone (or someones) decided at some point in the past that women would not be allowed to speak up (in terms of asking a question or voicing a concern) at church business meetings. Most likely, men made this decision.

Biblically speaking, and as you are aware, different Baptists arrive at differing conclusions concerning how women are to behave and participate within church. Whoever made the decision in your congregation to exclude women from having a voice at business meetings probably did so based on a particular interpretation of certain scriptural passages, but the only way to find this out is to talk to the persons who made that decision (personally, I do see how to rationalize such a decision). If it was a recent decision, you might be able to find out who is responsible for it; otherwise, you might be surprised to learn that no one remembers exactly how it came about. Regardless, you will have to do some investigating to get to the truth of this matter.

Best wishes,

Bruce Gourley
BaptistLife.Com
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