Recently, someone brought up the subject of "women preachers" that "started my wheels turning."
A fellow pastor told me this: "May I confess to you. As a young pastor I had never heard a women preach, and really didn't want to because I had read what St. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth and never had done depth research or study on the topic. I had a prejudice against the idea of women preachers. My ignorance may not have been 'bliss,' but I was content to live in my ignorance and prejudice.
"Then an interesting thing happened. There was a husband and wife who were co-pastors of a local church in the town I moved to. I heard the man preach and he rang the bell. 'Wow,' I thought, 'After excellent preaching like that, his wife's preaching, I'm afraid, will be a let-down.' It made me especially eager to hear her. Finally the opportunity came and I was shocked again."
"I kid you not," said he. "Her husband was an excellent preacher, but she was even better. I came to love and respect them both in the years I spent there. Since then I did Biblical research, and discovered some great women 'prophetesses' (along with one bad one, like Noadiah, who tried to intimidate Nehemiah). Familiar names came up like Miriam, Debora, Huldah, Anna and 'the daughters of Philip' who were not named. All these women were preachers. And like in our history, they were in the minority." (Anyone want to satisfy your curiosity?) Here are some starters: Ex. 15:20, Jdg. 4:4, 2 Ki. 22:14, St. Luke 2:36,, Acts 21:9.
So you can never say there were no women "preachers" or "prophetesses" in the Bible. Your ignorance is now "uncovered" before the whole Warsaw area.
And just because women heard the call of God to leadership in politics or religion, and "bucked the tide" to do it, we men should not criticize them, but thank God for them and pray for them - and be courageous enough to answer the call that comes to us men. I suspect that fewer women would aspire for leadership if we men would "get with it" and do a more courageous job of listening and obeying the call ourselves.
Yes, for every time "ignorance is bliss," there are many more times that it should be downright embarrassing.
