The Spirit The Law and Women in Leadership

The Spirit, Law, and Women in Leadership

“What the Spirit births cannot be reborn through law.”

That sentence is the centre of my conviction. Let me be direct, what God begins by His Spirit cannot be protected, sustained, or restored by human legalism.

This reflection is not the end of the conversation, it is an invitation to rethink how the Church approaches women in leadership and, more broadly, how we handle the things God has birthed by His Spirit.

Women in Leadership

When Law Replaces Life

Law almost always begins with good intentions. It is unlikely most Pharisees woke up plotting evil. Many simply wanted to honour God by keeping His commands. Their logic seemed sound. If breaking the law displeases God, then put a hedge around the law and no one will even get close.

This is the same logic behind much modern “self-care” culture. It is well intentioned, yet often motivated more by fear of burnout than faith for obedience. It offers measurable patterns, but sometimes these ironically become another metric of spiritual success or failure.

The tragedy is this, law-based spirituality reshapes the heart through restriction, not relationship.

The recent re-emphasis on Sabbath in many circles is a good example. Sabbath is a gift. However, in some circles it has become a new law, another bar we fail to reach, rather than a rhythm that forms us through knowing God. It fails to recognise that Jesus is our ultimate sabbath rest.

This dynamic, law attempting to correct what only the Spirit can be seen when we consider how the Church responds to the question of women in leadership.

WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP – Law and Life, not If  but How

Let me state plainly, Women should be able to serve in any position of leadership within the Church. I have long defended and supported women stepping into their God-given roles, and I believe many women can testify to that.

This piece is not about whether women can lead. It is about how leadership should emerge, and how it should not.

This blog is not the domain to debate this specifically, I have done so elsewhere however, my theological grounding is simple.

a)    The trajectory of Scripture reveals a restoration of original order as creation moves toward completion.

b)    The Spirit signals this dramatically in Acts 2, where old covenant boundaries give way to new covenant realities.

c)     Under the old covenant, only men were Priests, Prophets, and Kings, yet even then, God kept giving prophetic “breakout” moments through women (e.g., Miriam, Deborah, Huldah, Isaiah’s wife). These were signposts of the new age breaking in.

This movement toward restored partnership was birthed by the Spirit, not by policy.

Which is why I cannot accept the increasingly common idea that representation can be engineered into existence by law.

When Movements Become Machine

In the early Pentecostal movement in Australia, a movement both deeply conservative and radically Spirit-led, around half of all churches were planted and led by women.

However, as the movement institutionalised, men slowly took those roles. This shift wasn’t always sinister; there are real social, practical, and gifting-related reasons this happened.

However, the modern corrective has swung in the opposite direction, a legalism of representation, where proposals suggest women “must” fill certain percentages of leadership roles. Some circles even advocate a 50% quota.

Let me be very clear.

This approach is profoundly non-Pentecostal.

It prioritises corporate strategy over charismatic discernment. It trusts policy more than prophecy. It elevates social engineering above spiritual recognition.

What God restores by the Spirit cannot be re-engineered by a quota.

A Spirit-Led Alternative

If we reject law, what do we pursue? We pursue the same pathway the early church used, discernment through the Spirit.

Here are a couple key lenses.

1. Character - Christlikeness – the FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT (Galatians 5:22–23)

Is there fruit? Has it been tested? Does this person obey Scripture?Without Christlikeness, no amount of gifting qualifies a leader.

2. Charisma -  the GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT

(Acts 2; 1 Corinthians 12; Romans 12; Ephesians 4)

Are the gifts present, consistent, faithful, and selfless?

The Spirit distributes gifts “as He wills,” not according to gender.I am not talking about whether they have a theology or ministry degree. These matters should actually have no direct bearing on this discernment. These ‘may’ reflect a spiritual gifting or development but let us not confuse curriculum influenced by government legislation with a journey of discipleship in community on mission.

3. Capacity -  the Practical Realities of Servant Leadership

Leadership is sacrificial. It demands time, emotional resilience, and availability.

I believe this is particularly relevant when we consider women and men in leadership because there are seasons of life that shape capacity.

Childbearing and parenting place unique, God-designed demands on many women.

These seasons don’t diminish calling; they shape its expression.

Thus, leadership journeys often diverge.

• Unmarried women commonly rise faster.

• Mothers often experience a pause followed by a later surge or a more co-operative leadership style.

• Married women at later stages sometimes step into co-leadership style roles

None of this requires law, it requires wisdom.

Capacity is discerned, not legislated.

Let me briefly speak to women and then men in this and there is a lot more to say.

The best years, in general to have children according to God’s biological design is from late teens and in the 20’s. This is a clear primary window, not always attainable or practical but nonetheless birth in creation design. This will effect capacity and should influence decisional priorities.

A note particularly to the married.

Whilst men most certainly can take weight in this period, nurturing and caring for children, the biological and reflective realities of mother-child bond should be understood. Mothers need increased time and freedom to care for children. Don’t do such in isolation, don’t bow down to post industrial expectations of a house bound motherhood, but also don’t ignore the biological realities because of career, social or even financial goals or cultural pressure.

Men, you may briefly surge ahead during this period at times. Your testosterone is often higher. I believe you should be a tad more aggressive in your need to protect and provide but your journey will change. As you age and your wife is step by step more free time and capacity wise, it is your responsibility to promote, celebrate and spur your wife into the call of God on her life, whatever that shape.

Yes, your children will always need you both but the wider family of God also needs your wife’s presence and grace. Don’t steal such from either your children or God’s children in his church.

4. Community — Communal Spiritual discernment.

Does the Community Instinctively Recognise the Person?

True leadership carries weight that others feel before it is ever formalised. Do others sense grace on this person’s life? Are they already functioning as a shepherd? A Teacher? A Prophetic voice? And of course the list could continue.

5. Call — Affirmed by the Spirit and the Elders

Is there clear Spirit-led confirmation (Acts 13)?

Can the person teach sound doctrine and rebuke error (Titus 1:9)? This alone disqualifies many who currently carry titles.

Frankly, and I say this unapologetically, particularly in modern society elders are encouraged to be cowards, choosing peace-keeping over truth-telling. They maintain harmony rather than pursue the beautification of Christ’s bride. This isn’t harshness, it is grief. When elders avoid truth for the sake of harmony, the church loses the very guardians meant to protect her.

Now, don’t mishear me, truth telling can be done to the exclusion of the other roles of the Elder such as hospitality and shepherding. Many so called social media influencers embrace truth telling declaring truth without community context of credibility and never actually making disciples as they shout from a distance. (I will write a blog soon on influencers and disciplers.)

Biblical call requires the confirmation of the Eldership.

Call requires courage.

6. Co-operative Leadership

The Problem Behind the Problem - Our Leadership Model

Here is the crux of the matter practically

a)   The New Testament model is consistently co-operative, not hierarchical. It is also not an egalitarian democracy.

Scripture does not present a solitary hierarchical linear “Senior Pastor leading from the top” model. Rather, it consistently shows plural, shared, Spirit-led leadership structures that are neither democratic nor autocratic.

Acts 15 at the council of the Elders and Apostles is one of my favourite expressions of such, discussion, reflection however also a clear submission to the authority of James.

• A team of prophets and teachers sends Paul and Barnabas (Acts 13).

• A group of elders shepherds Ephesus (Acts 20).

• Priscilla and Aquila together teach Apollos (Acts 18).

• Nearly every New Testament letter addresses leaders (plural), not a single figure.

This is the biblical pattern. Leadership is shared, relational, and communal. Neither a linear hierarchy or a flat egalitarian democracy, rather a round table with final authority.

Our debates about women in ministry miss this entirely.

Almost all current discussions focus on how women can become Senior Pastors, as if the height of Christian leadership is a solitary executive office. Anecdotally this is also influenced by many key voices speaking into this actually coming from organisational structures such as Academic institutions or Social Justice focused organisations rather than the dynamic environment of the organic body of Christ.

This obsession echoes the disciples arguing about greatness in Matthew 20. Jesus rejects the entire paradigm. We must reject it too.

If this is the problem people are trying to solve, they should stop and change their theology.

b)   The “step aside and make room” approach misunderstands the kingdom.

In some discussions I hear calls for men to “step aside” or “make more room at the table.” This betrays a deeply limited view of the kingdom and the Spirit.

There is no scarcity at the kingdom table. If you want to use that analogy, then the answer is simple: build more tables or extend the present ones.

I live in a country with fifty provinces that have no stable church. Come and build a table here, then we can test your call, we can see if the call is genuine. Stop demanding others step aside and instead step into the countless opportunities to build new tables.

c)   Maybe the real issue isn’t women’s access to the ‘top seat’, it’s that the obsession with ‘top seat’ shouldn’t exist.

The Senior Pastor “position” in its modern corporate form is not a New Testament structure. It is a cultural invention, not a Spirit-birthed one.

Many women already lead with authority and grace but they do so collaboratively, relationally, often in a rounder-table fashion. In many ways, this is far closer to the Spirit-shaped leadership of the New Testament than the CEO-style model.

Conclusion

When the Spirit Leads, Daughters Rise

It has always been like this, movement of the Spirit gives room, monuments may make temporary room but that is just on the trajectory to becoming a mausoleum.

This tension, Spirit vs law, movement vs monument is not new. It has marked every era of the Church. However, whenever the Spirit moves, daughters rise; whenever we legislate solutions, the life fades as policies restrict rather than the prophetic propelling.

Let me land this where it began.

What the Spirit births cannot be reborn through law.

If we try to solve the representation of women in leadership through quotas, policies, and corporate frameworks, we will produce something tidy, measurable, and utterly lifeless.

Law can mandate opportunity, but it cannot create calling. Law can enforce structure, but it cannot impart anointing. Law can balance numbers, but it cannot release sons and daughters prophesying.

The Spirit can.

The Spirit raises leaders with fire in their bones, character in their souls, and gifts in their hands.

The Spirit knows no quotas, no ceilings, no political posturing.

When the Spirit restores women to their rightful place in the mission of God, as prophets, teachers, apostles, shepherds, and evangelists, he does so not through legislation but through breath.

So our task is not to legislate the future. Our task is to recognise what the Spirit has already birthed and refuse to settle for systems that cannot sustain what God has begun.

Where the Spirit is Lord, daughters rise.

Where the Spirit is Lord, sons and daughters prophesy.

Where the Spirit is Lord, leadership is shared, sacrificial, and saturated with grace.

What the Spirit births cannot be reborn through law, it is brought to life through the breath of the Spirit.