Here's an email from a listener who writes, "My name is Sarah and I admire your ministry. I'm 19 and have listened to your sermons off and on throughout the last two years and they have really helped me desire God more. I am learning what it means to delight in Jesus and I attend a Christian university and have felt called to do something in ministry or evangelism.

My question is how, as a woman, can I work in ministry and evangelism while abiding by biblical rules and instructions for women, i.e., not having authority over a man? Pastor John, I would love if you could answer this because I am confused." Amen, amen, amen that she feels called to ministry and evangelism or whatever.

I just want to so affirm that women and men are ministers. In no way does any biblical view of manhood and womanhood imply that men are out and about being active for Jesus and women are not out and about being active for Jesus or in and about being active for Jesus and their families.

So amen to the question. I would really encourage her or any of the other women who are asking questions, I've tried, along with Wayne Grudem, to ask 50 crucial questions. That's the booklet. You can get a free PDF of it at DesiringGod or you can buy the booklet at Amazon.

50 crucial questions in which I try to answer that question and 49 others. But here are just a few pointers. First, Sarah is right to care about both things, dreaming ministry and honoring God's pattern of how men and women relate to each other in all of life, both home and church and society.

And she's right that the Bible is not as unclear as some people think it is on 1 Timothy 2:13. "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over men. Rather, she is to remain in quietness as she learns." Those two things, teach and exercise authority, are the very two things that distinguish an elder from a deacon.

Elders are to exercise authority or govern and elders are to be the authoritative teachers in the church. So what Paul seems to be saying here is that there should be male elders in the church. But all teaching and not all authority are restricted from women in that verse. It's over men.

There's a kind of authoritative teaching over men that is referred to there and it compromises the way God has wired men and women when women over time become the authority in a man's spiritual life. I really believe that. I think that's why Paul put that there. It undermines something deep in both the man and the woman.

But there are endless possibilities for ministry for women in this world that do not put them under or into that position. I wrote another little booklet called "What's the Difference?" And at the end of that booklet, I put 80 kinds of ministries just to give women examples of what kinds of things are open to them.

Let me close with a story. As I've talked over the years in various places on manhood and womanhood issues, back in the 80s, I would get a lot more vicious negative flack than I do today. And one of the, I can remember one young woman really angry at me saying, "How dare you call my calling to ministry into question?" And instead of saying to her what I might have said, like, "I'm not calling it into question.

God is calling it into question." I didn't go there. I just said, "You know, it may be that you haven't misheard the voice of God, but that you've misapplied the voice that you heard. In other words, maybe God is saying to you, 'Follow me. Serve me. Give your whole self to me.

I'm going to use you mightily in my purposes on the earth to glorify myself and to save sinners and to build up saints. I'm going to use you for that.' And then you maybe took it and spun that out in terms of, 'Oh, I guess I'm supposed to be a pastor and have authority over men in that role.' And I just said, "Maybe not.

Maybe you've just misread the word." And then when they say, "Well, what are you saying we can do?" My answer is, "Seventy-five percent of the seven billion people in the world"—I just checked this to make sure this is a true statement—"Seventy-five percent of the seven billion people in the world are women or under the age of 15.

They have limitless needs of every kind, right? Physical needs and education needs and spiritual needs and relational needs and parenting needs and needs for rescue and endless needs that they have." And my response is, "Do anything you want. Care about them. Care about them physically and especially eternally, and minister in whatever way you can." Yes, thank you, Pastor John.

And once again, those books were titled "Fifty Crucial Questions About Manhood and Womanhood," and "What's the Difference?" The list of ministry opportunities for women can also be found in an article Pastor John wrote titled "A Challenge to Women." It was published on January 1, 1995. The two books in the article can all be found for free at DesiringGod.org.

I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.