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Citation: Fitzpatrick, Ian. “Theology versus Practice of Women in Ministry: A Denominational 
Leader’s Perspective.” April 26, 2022, Toronto, Ontario: MPEG-3, 34:30 min.

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Alright, well, it's good to see you this afternoon. I try to shed some light on this denominational perspective. 
Church of the Nazarene, how many of you have heard of it? Know of it? OK. You know, we are a denomination made-up 
of about 5000 congregations in this Region, USA, Canada region. Probably 100 and 6000 and 70 of those congregations 
right here in Canada. So that gives you some little idea of who we are. I just got some statistics sent to me this 
morning. On the number of women. Clergy on the district on the region. And so I thought it was better than this. But 
here we are, so on the region made-up of those 5002 congregations. There are of 11,600 ordained elders, ordained 
ministers. There are 2082 women. 18%. District licensed personnel. That is the step prior to ordination on the region. 
There are 2281 and 887 women, 39% for a combined total of 21%. Women in ministry. Now that's from a denomination that 
really does celebrate action of a General Assembly a few years ago. To ordain women. And it's not that it it took that 
long. Well, I suppose it did take that long to formalize it. I think what I want to say at the outset is that even though 
this is a denominational leaders perspective. It does come at a price and the price is fought not on the General Assembly 
floor where legislation is passed. But it's fought in the local church. Congregation by congregation, that if they're given 
their choice as to who. They would want to invite to be their their pastor will probably still default to a male. So that's 
what we need to address today now. I was district Superintendent for 13 years on this district, and the guy who's sorting out 
all the mess that I made is over here, Pastor Steve and I. If I run into trouble with this this here state, you're going to 
have to help me, OK? And then you see it's already happened. How do I move this forward? Back up, forward working. Hang on, 
now it's not working. Change. Sorry. At least I can't get it to work. If you would, that would be terrific. That's fine. Let's 
say let's have a prayer before we start. Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for what we've already heard. Thank you, 
Lord, for the conversation that has stimulated thought that perhaps provoked some things within us. And I pray that long after 
the event is over that your spirit would continue to speak to us and that you would continue to talk to us so that we can be 
part of a combined effort to bring people who you've already called into the mainstream. Of ministry. And we ask that you would 
guide our thoughts today and give you glory and praise for all things. Amen. It's not an easy topic, even even though, even though 
we might think in some areas it is. November 2014 BBC article written by name by Trevor Timpson. He asked a question, what did Saint 
Paul say about women? And one of his opening lines in that commentary was this can two sides in a debate, both composed of sincere 
and intelligent people, look at precisely the same set of evidence and reach precisely opposite verdicts? The answer to that is yes, 
of course. Because that not only, not, not only happens in the area that we're dealing with today, that is the role of women in ministry 
and and how we can make it actually happen. And we as a collective, we, it's not the males who need to make it happen, it's all of us who 
need to make it happen. The presentation hopefully will examine the apparent disconnect between what we say we believe regarding women in 
ministry and the actual desire of a congregation to call. I would rather use the word invite. It's God who calls, it's congregations who 
invite. And that is not always a distinction that is clearly made in fact. I didn't always make that distinction. But in preparing for 
this event today, I I I was confronted by the need to make that distinction. Because there are a number of women who have been called by 
God and they are still sitting on the sidelines because they haven't been invited into the work of the one who called them. And surely 
that's got to be a conundrum. Surely that's got to be something that. We need to at least tackle. And so there are maybe three ways to 
approach this, at least from my perspective. And that is looking at Scripture, which trump's everything in it is what guides our thinking, 
looking at the Church of the Nazarene, because that's the group that I represent, and then the broader Wesleyan perspective and there are 
probably others more efficiently equipped to deal with the broader. Lastly in perspective than I am, but I'll, I'll take a, I'll take a stab 
at it. I grew up as a Methodist before becoming a Nazareth back in Northern Ireland. I grew up at High Street Methodist Church in Lurgan. So 
I've got a little bit of broader history, some searching questions then for today. Why do we have confidence in placing children into the 
care of women Sunday school teachers and have little or no confidence calling women to pulpit? Better. Why do we have confidence in placing 
seminary students? Into the care of wonderful women professors and little confidence calling women diploma and Pastoral ministry. Why do we 
have confidence in sending women missionaries to all parts of the earth and little or no confidence in inviting them into Pulpit Ministry? 
What do we have to do to align our? Holiness ethos. With. The almost unstable condition of pastoral ministry today. And what? When I say 
unstable, I I mean within the Church of the Nazarene. Pastor Steve could attest to this. There there is a horizon that is rapidly moving 
towards us and it's called retirement. And with that, it has a certain reality, whatever percentage you want to put on it in your denomination, 
but 50 to 60%, perhaps 70% turnover because of that line in the sand that we reach, it's either called retirement or death, I'm not sure which 
or attrition. And God has already raised up a people who are ready to step into those roles. And so I I think we need to address that. I think 
it's important for us not to, perhaps not even to identify or certainly not vilify those who interpret Scripture differently. It's not an attempt 
this afternoon to point the finger at those who. Have strongly held convictions. That would be the perhaps exact opposite of ours. It is an attempt, 
though, to get Scripture right. And then to live with it. And the bar interpretation of what we live with is wrong. We'll plead forgiveness at the 
mercy seat. And if we're right, we will not celebrate that over those who've got it wrong. So let me just let me just use that as our MO for this 
afternoon. Let's look at Scripture. Also, Paul is a confusing figure to me. I I I'm not sure if he's the first one I want to talk to when I get to 
heaven. Trusting I will and trusting he's there. I don't. I don't think he's the first one. I want to talk to you because he just confuses me to 
know that, you know, you can look at all of the Pauline expressions about what happens and what he feels should be the order of the day for the 
church. You can look at First Corinthians, you know, where he reminds us in Chapter 11, verse three. And I certainly don't want to go through all 
of these. I would invite you to read them for yourself. I want you to realize that. The head of every man is Christ, and the head of every woman is 
mine, and the head of Christ is God. So we'll just let that settle for a moment. But then go to chapter 14 in first Corinthians 33 to 35 and here 
these words, and you know them, and you probably read them before you came to this this event. For God is not a God of disorder, but of peace. As in 
all the congregations of the Saints, women should remain silent in the churches. They're not allowed to speak, but they have to be in submission. As 
the law says, if they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home. For it's downright disgraceful that he didn't say 
downright I just put that in there is it's disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. That the word of God originate with you, or are you the 
only people it has reached? If anybody thinks he is a prophet or spiritually gifted, let him acknowledge that what I am writing to you is the Lord's 
command. If he ignores this, he himself will be ignored. And then on over in his letter to Timothy. There's a sort of an underscoring of that sentiment. 
First Timothy Chapter 2, beginning at verse 9. I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer without anger and disputing. I also want women to 
dress modestly with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds appropriate for women who 
profess to worship God. A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man. She 
just must be silent. For Adam was formed first that Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived, it was the woman who was deceived and became a Sinner. But 
women will be saved through childbearing if they continue in faith, love, and holiness with propriety. Now I'd like to think that anybody reading 
Scripture. Should start with a problem with it. But it's not enough to just jump in and embrace it and say that's all there is there. There needs to 
be some inquiry. There needs to be the opportunity to look at it and say, well, OK, women will be saved through childbearing, but does that mean if a 
woman can't bear a child, she's not safe? So you don't want to take a line of a scripture out of context, nor do you want to take a scripture out of 
context, because that is not the Wesleyan way to simply look at one scripture and then build a theology on it. That's not what we do. We build our 
theology on the collection of scriptures, which doesn't make this any easier because Paul's letter to the Corinthians, the one I cited, and his words 
to Timothy, the one I just read. Are a devolution of thought if you look at the chronological order of the letters of Paul. Because when he wrote his 
letter to the Galatians, that was either the second or in some camps. The third piece of writing attributed to Paul, what I just read to you came after 
that. And what did he say to the Galatians? Wouldn't it be great if we were able to say, would it be great if we're able to say that this was an evolution 
of his thoughts? Excuse me? No, it's not Galatians 328. Here's what he said at the beginning. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed 
yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female, where you were all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, 
then you are Abraham, seed and heirs according to the promise. Now with the chronological order, I wish this would have come at the very end because 
then it would have been easier for us to say, well, that was Paul in the early days of his ministry, not unlike all of us when we've preached sermons 
that we wish we had. And you look at them 20 years later and you say, I need to do that one over again. But no. He had presented a banner statement 
about equality with God at the very beginning of his writing. Namely, to the Galatians. So I wish I could stand here and give you a definitive answer 
with regard to his fairly judgmental comments. In Corinthians and Timothy, I could tell you what you already know, that it was probably a specific case 
that there was probably problems with women at the Corinthian Church and therefore he was just narrowing down on this one area. You already know that you 
already done your research on that, otherwise you wouldn't be attending the symposium. So the bad news, slash maybe even good news is I've known you like 
to share on this for you. Except one big massive? But the light that I would check on, it is not a light that comes from Paul. Now don't put me into the 
Paul or Jesus cap because I'll always come out with Jesus. But I think you know what I mean. We look at the collective words of scripture, we look at what 
Paul said at times, and then the general. This is my understanding going into these specific cases. And then we read what happened to the apostle Paul when 
he set out on his journeys. And he began to meet all of the people that we are debating today in Romans 16. One I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a 
servant, interpreted Deacon of the church in Cancun area. I ask you to receive her in the Lord. Listen in a way that's worthy of the Saints. Receive 
her and the Lord in a way that's worthy of the Saints and to give her any help she may need from you, for she has been a great help to me. And the ministry. 
Well. Now, a lot of what, in fact, nearly all of what I'm sharing today is from somebody else. This is just a compilation of thoughts from people who have 
researched this. And in his book Slavery, Sabbath, War, and women, Willard Swartley cites Don Williams, who had written a book entitled The Apostle Paul and 
Women in the church as follows verbatim. Paul here in his Galatians address. It's now declaring that the barriers due to race, social status and sex have been 
broken down. Paul takes a radical step beyond the old order. Redemption does not merely restore God's intention and creation. Redemption brings into being a 
whole new world, a whole new order. Male dominance, egotism, patriarchal power, and preferential priority is at an end. No longer can Genesis 2 and three. Be 
employed to reduce women to an inferior position or state if redemption is real. If redemption is real, the warfare between the sexes is over. At the same time, 
female seduction, manipulation, and domineering is also over, for you are all one in Christ Jesus now. Well, I read the words of the apostle Paul to the 
Galatians it, and the commentary on that from Swartley who cites Williams. It makes perfect sense to me how the apostle Paul could then involved in his 
understanding and his treatment of those great women of the church, or let's just say great people of the church who are women. Because we don't want to 
create, while we're on the defence for women, the great people of great leaders of the church who are women cited over and over and over again trying to 
move as quickly through this as I I can. So scripture, Paul. Scripture. Jesus. John 427 the disciples returned and were surprised to see him talking with 
a woman. You you know that story. Leaving the water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, come see a man who told me everything 
I ever did. Could this be the Christ? They came out of the time and made their way toward him. The woman of Samaria. One of the early missionaries of the 
church dispatched by the Lord of the church. Hard to argue with that use. Of a story in our gospels. Look Chapter 8, verses one to three. After this Jesus 
traveled about from 1 town and village to another proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. The 12 were with him and also. Some women who have been 
cured of evil spirits and diseases, and then he goes on to actually name those women. Then you have the Easter story. You have the week prior to the 
crucifixion and then the resurrection. It's interesting preaching on Easter Sunday. You know, you, you know the stories and you know the story of of 
Mary discovering that the stone is rolled away and you have Peter. And John running to the tub and and and one stops at the door or the other one goes 
right in. There's there's nothing to see here. It's an empty tube. And then the narrative says those two, Peter and John went home. They went all but 
the woman. She went back and told the rest of the disciples everything that she had seen. Well, their scripture, now Church of the Nazarene, our own 
people, we have a very, very strong statement on what we believe about the theology of ministry, but also the theology of women in ministry. The 
Church of the Nazarene supports the right of women. To use their God-given spiritual gifts within the church and affirms the historic right of women 
to be elected and appointed to places of leadership within the Church of the Nazarene, including the offices of Elder and Deacon. There are a number of 
scriptural references in that manual statement. One of them being this from the Old Testament in the last days God says, I will pour out my spirit on 
all people. Your sons and daughters will prophecy, your sons and daughters will prophecy. Your young men will see visions and your old men will dream 
dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women. I will pour out my spirit in those days and they. Will prophecy. You know, there's, there's there's 
little argument against our position, the denominational leaders perspective on what we believe about women in ministry and women in ordained ministry 
and licensed ministry. It hasn't always been that way. We have a category of ministry called Deaconess. In fact, it might even still be individual. I'm 
not sure, but Deacon has seemed to refer always to the female of the species, that that's where you should go and served, and LED enough boards of ministry 
to be able to just slot people who didn't quite fit the Deacon role. And they were usually female into the deaconess role, because at least we had that 
provision. That's gone, or at least it's not used in the same way that it was used before, because now Open Access to ordination for women in the church. 
Even though I gave you those statistics at the beginning of the session, I wish those numbers were a lot higher, but I can't say that on the district 
that the province of Ontario, Canada, Central District. A high proportion of our churches are either LED or staffed. By women lead pastors and I I just, 
I just think that is tremendous. I I wish I didn't even have to say that. I wish I didn't have to say that, but for the purposes of being here. We do 
have to say now there's a lot of things that that are here, but I really like to get into some of back and forth and I'll go back to to some of these. 
So we've got Scripture, we've got the Nazarene position, which is clear. I will say this that at that General Assembly where implementing legislation 
was passed, there's a big difference between what 1500 delegates do at a General Assembly and the grassroots. Movement, the grassroots of the church, 
when you do have female candidates with all, all of the qualities of the male candidate and, you know, by and large there's still a lot of lay people, 
still a lot of people in the local church who could care less about the implementing legislation of a General Assembly would never come out. Say it, 
but they will say it by their actions and therefore our task. Is to be the foot soldiers, if you like, to to educate our local contexts of ministry as 
as to what we really know or what the scripture says and about what our denomination says. So this is not, well, Scripture says this, but our church 
says this. No, they're not happy with either. Some people they're not happy with either. And that's, you know, part of what we do. So Methodist history, 
if you like, or the broader. Spectrum. And there's a lot more than just Nazarene and Methodist. I get it. I understand that. But it is interesting to me 
that John Wesley himself struggled for a long time with women ministers. In fact, in that struggle, he he dared to not dare he, he walked a fine line. 
He would never say that he changed his mind with regard to women preachers and and and that but he would prefer to call them women speakers. There was 
it was funny and the research that that that I did. And again I lean heavily on this John C English and a paper called Dear Sister John Wesley and the 
women of Early Methodism. He used the term sister again and again. He really did want to emphasize that women had as much a role in the church as men. 
They could teach classes. It would be better if the classes were primarily made-up of women. We could then just pop the woman, teach that. But there 
were occasions whenever he got surprised, as we heard about that, I think in a session this morning where large numbers of people showed up to hear 
the woman leader, but in 18th century England. Siblings were not equals. And that's the context of the Ministry of Wesley, that not all. Like the 
Middle Eastern context, siblings were not equals. Males always had the role ranked above the females. The brothers were better than the sisters as far 
as the line of authority in in in the household. So what's the who's dealing with this? Because in ministry you deal with households. In ministry you 
deal with people where they are. And so he had to deal with it. And as I read through some of the research, it was interesting that in a step with 
Sarah Crosby, we heard about her. I'm not sure what session it was this morning, but we heard. She said to be the first woman preacher in Methodism, but 
Wesley didn't describe her that way for for a long time and maybe if ever I I'd have to research that more. In 1761, Mrs. Crosby was inspired to address 
a crowd of 200 persons in Derbyshire. I'm reading verbatim. Then she thought herself to secure Wesley's authorization for this irregular step, and Wesley 
allowed Sarah to testify concerning her religious experience and to read to the congregation and to comment on a sermon or a passage from his own notes. 
That was as far as he was prepared to let it go. Then in 1769, he went a little further. He permitted same Sarah to exhort the congregation, but he warned 
her to keep as far away from preaching as you can by not taking a text, by not speaking in a just a continuing discourse, but to have a break every now and 
again, so so that it couldn't be seen as a servant. He went further. Still in 1771. He allowed her to use a scripture passage on the basis of her address, b
ut he still wouldn't want to call it preaching. He called it speaking. Now, I'm not here to blame Paul. Certainly not here to blame Jesus. I'm not here to 
blame Wesley. I'm not here to blame those churches or anybody. I'm here to be enlightened myself. And to wonder what is going on in our world because. As 
we move into the future that's coming at us, we'll not only be dealing with the male female divide. We're going to be dealing with more complex issues, 
and that's for another symposium. Perhaps there's a couple of realities or four of them concluding thoughts. The realities are acknowledge that there will 
always be opposing positions on this issue. Just acknowledge it #2 don't expect implemented legislation to be actually implemented #3. The trench work is 
always dangerous. Always. It's lonely, it's contentious. And #4 everybody has an opinion, whether you want to hear it or not, whether we want it or not. 
Everybody has an opinion. Those are the realities. What are the responsibilities 1? Live out your belief or your conviction on this issue or on any issue 
with grace and mercy. #2 don't become an agenda driven campaigner. The woman's side. That will isolate your cause quicker than anything else. Will. Don't 
become a campaigner, placard carrier. But speak the truth and love. #3 allow God, the one who has called you, to make a way where there seems to be no way. 
And #4 be patient. Allow room for people to evolve. A lot of room for people to come to the party with an understanding and an open mind to the possibility 
that oht why, yes, a woman could actually be my shepherd. True. My prayer. What is your prayer? At the conclusion of all of this, and you may not be 
ready to write it out now. But based on what you can actually do to change the climate? To turn the direction of where we're going, which could actually 
be nowhere if we don't get this right. What would your prayer be before God? What would you present to him every day as you desire to see people come to 
understand what I think we have already embraced? And if you're here today and you haven't embraced it, well, then you will deal with that reality too. 
I need to acknowledge the sources because this material, like in many cases, there's not belong to us. Dear sister by John English. John Wesley and 
women, the Christian History Institute, the ordination of women to ministry in the Church of the Nazarene, Paul Bassett, the role of women within 
Methodism, the John Rylands Research Institute at the University of Manchester. Slavery, Sabbath, Warren women, William Swartley and women in Ministry 
of Biblical and pastoral position. Paper adopted by the International Pentecostal Holiness Church Council. Bishops.



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