Pastoring Women: Understanding and Honoring Distinctness

Why Complementarianism Is Crucial to Discipleship
by Jonathan Leeman

Discipling Men vs. Discipling Women
by Deepak Reju

How Pastors Can Equip Women for Ministry
by Bob Johnson

The Genesis of Gender and Ecclesial Womanhood
by Owen Strachan

Women’s Ministry in the Local Church

Wanted: More Older Women Discipling Younger Women
by Susan Hunt

For the Young Mother: Ministry, Guilt, and Seasons of Life
by Jani Ortlund

May Women Serve as Pastors?
by Thomas R. Schreiner

Resources for Today’s Biblical Women

Book Review: Radical Womanhood, by Carolyn McCulley
by Kristin Jamieson

Book Review: Womanly Dominion: More Than a Gentle and Quiet Spirit, by Mark Chanski
by Owen Strachan

Editor’s Note:

There’s safety in homogenization. If you treat men and women as the same, you don’t risk offending anyone. Or limiting anyone. Or hindering anyone.

But what if God created men and women differently? What if it’s not a question of limitations but a matter of distinct divine purposes for different parts of the body? I guess you could say that the eye is limited because it cannot hear. Or that the ear is limited because it cannot see. But that would be missing the point, wouldn’t it?

The egalitarianism of Western culture, for all its good purposes, leads to the homogenization of men and women. To unisex clothes, colognes, roles, and lifestyles. The lovely and distinct color palettes of men and women mush together into a gray-brown muck.

You can have that if you want it. But we think God intends something better. That’s why this issue of the 9Marks eJournal is dedicated to how to distinctly pastor women. We want to reflect on what he uniquely and wonderfully intends for women in the life of the church, and how to specially pastor them.

—Jonathan Leeman