20

WOMEN HOMEOWNERS

AS ELDERS?

Some evangelical feminists claim that women

homeowners were overseers (or elders) in early churches

Linda Belleville claims that “Mary (Acts 12:12), Lydia (16:15), Chloe

(1 Cor 1:11), and Nympha (Col 4:15)” were “overseers of house
churches,” and other egalitarians make similar claims.^1 The reason
Belleville gives for this is that “the homeowner in Greco-Roman times
was in charge of any and all groups that met under their roof.”^2 The
example she gives is Jason, who was responsible to “post bond” in
Acts 17:7-9.
The problem with this claim is that Belleville and others go beyond
the text of Scripture and claim far more than it actually says. Jason was
required by the city authorities to post some “money as security” (Acts
17:9), probably as a guarantee against any property damage or violence

(^1) Linda Belleville, “Women in Ministry,” in Two Views on Women in Ministry, ed. James Beck
and Craig Blomberg (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2001), 95. See also Judy L. Brown,
Women Ministers According to Scripture (Springfield, Ill.: Judy L. Brown, 1996), 170, 175;
and Cindy Jacobs, Women of Destiny (Ventura, Calif.: Regal, 1998), 200. Jacobs says that the
“presiding elder” of a house church “was also the head of the household where the church
met.” Therefore she concludes that “Lydia and Mary... and others very possibly functioned
as ‘presiding elders’ (or at least the deacons) of the churches in their houses. In fact, if this is
so, most of the house churches listed in Scripture were ‘pastored’ by women!” (200). A few
pages earlier she quotes with approval a comment of C. Peter Wagner that there were no church
buildings as we know them in the early church, and therefore meeting in private homes was
the “norm” (197). Thus, reasoning from one unsubstantiated assumption about the role of a
woman who owned a house, Jacobs suddenly has women pastors in most of the house churches
in the New Testament! And all of this without one shred of clear supportive evidence.
(^2) Ibid., 83; also 96.