Denominations do not wake up one morning debating monogamy by accident. The road from one compromise to another is not always straight and every church that stumbles in one place does not arrive at the same cliff by sundown. Still, the habit of compromise is real. Once a church learns to set aside Scripture in one place, it has practiced the very motion it will use in the next. The slope is spiritual. Obedience becomes negotiable.

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is now preparing to consider an overture known as CON-10, a proposal that would require ordained ministers, if they are in a sexual relationship, to live in a monogamous one. The fact that such a requirement is controversial inside a Christian denomination feels almost too strange to write.

Ruin often begins with a question: “Did God actually say?” That question has a hiss underneath it.

I am writing as a Southern Baptist pastor who supported Dr. Albert Mohler’s Truth and Unity Amendment at the SBC. My support rests on the conviction that the Bible speaks clearly about the office of pastor. I supported the amendment, but I did not feel victorious. I felt sober and a strange sadness of watching Christians vote on something our Bibles have already said. My concern reaches beyond one amendment, one denomination, and one convention vote. I am pleading with Christians because the same old question keeps returning.

Has God actually said a pastor must be a qualified man? Does Scripture really bind marriage to one man and one woman joined by Him? Must sexual holiness belong in the life of those who shepherd His people?

Genesis 3 is not a children’s tale with a moral at the end. It is history with blood in the roots. The world was still clean then. Shame had not entered the human face. Adam had no scars and Eve had no tears stored in memory. God had spoken, and His Word had given shape to the world. From dust He formed the man. Out of the man He made the woman. Into their hands He gave work, worship, marriage, rest and one clear command.

Then the serpent spoke. That should have ended the conversation. A creature speaking against the order of God should have sent holy alarm through the garden. Eve owed the serpent no hearing. Adam, standing with her, owed God his courage. The moment the enemy made God sound narrow, harsh and withholding, the man and the woman should have answered with the Word of the Lord and turned away.

Instead, they listened. Before the fruit touched the tongue, the heart had already leaned. Sin begins deeper than the hand. Hands reach because desire has already bowed. Through the serpent, the enemy questioned God’s Word, blackened God’s character and made obedience feel like captivity. This is why I cannot treat the debate over women pastors as a small thing.

I know some dear Christians feel tired of the subject. Others worry that holding the line will sound unkind to gifted women. A few speak as though the pastor’s office were only a ministry label that can be adjusted according to need, gifting or cultural pressure. Yet Scripture gives the church more than a staffing policy. It gives an order rooted in creation and carried into the household of God.

Paul writes, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man,” then reaches back to Eden: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve” (1 Timothy 2:12-13). When he describes an overseer, he says the man must be “above reproach, the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2). Titus says an elder must hold firm to the trustworthy word so he may teach sound doctrine and rebuke those who contradict it (Titus 1:9).

Read More