The practice of churches having “shepherdesses” violates Scripture, violates the PCA’s constitution, and goes against one of the very reasons the PCA was founded in 1973—which was opposition to feminism and women’s ordination.It is, therefore, a flagrant practice that must be driven from the PCA. The question is whether the God-fearing churches and elders in the PCA have the will to do it.

I have written against deaconesses because I don’t think they have a basis in Scripture. And I certainly think the practice of “commissioning deaconesses” violates the PCA’s constitution, which only allows for men to be elders and deacons. However, there is some complexity to the issue of deaconesses because of the historical precedence in the early church and Calvin’s Geneva. Calvin had widow-deaconesses that he based on 1 Timothy 5, though they were servant-deaconesses and not the administrative office of male deacons in 1 Timothy 3.

However, there is no such basis for the practice of “shepherdesses,” which we are now seeing in the PCA. Some of the more progressive churches in the PCA have begun to appoint shepherdesses for various tasks. Churches use different names for this group, such as “shepherdesses,” “women shepherds,” or a “women’s council.”

Practitioners generally portray this group as women appointed to minister to other women—what was traditionally called a “women’s ministry” or “women’s fellowship,” and possibly had a “women’s coordinator” who organized events. However, these new “shepherdesses” do not appear to be focused on the Titus 2 model of women’s ministry—“older women” training “the young women to love their husbands, to love their children,” be “workers at home” and be “subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be dishonored” (Titus 2:3-5, NASB 1995).

Many of the shepherdesses at PCA churches have even led public worship, which is a task typically done by pastors and elders. One PCA church even had a woman identified as a “shepherdess” leading what they called the “pastoral prayer.” Another PCA church even has a “Board of Women,” who did the same officer training as elders, took the same vows as elders, and served on the same committees as the elders.

Now this is clearly an innovation to accommodate the feminism of our age, and to circumvent the PCA’s rules against female elders. The PCUSA, ECO, and EPC don’t have unordained “shepherdesses” because those denominations just openly ordain women as elders (which is blatantly unbiblical). If they have “shepherdesses,” it’s because they are ordained female pastors and elders.

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