Cheryl Schatz

Mark,
You said:

Now you seem to think that i believe there are 2 gifts of ‘teaching’, one manly and more important than another. This is not true. I do believe that there is a gift of teaching. I also believe that there is a gift of prophecy. The difference is i don’t believe that the gift of prophecy commended for women by Paul in 1 Cor 11 is the same gift as that of teaching in Eph 4:11.

So what you are saying is that the prophecy commended for women by Paul in 1 Cor. 11 is a non-gendered gift but the teaching in Ephesians 4:11 is only for men (gendered gift). Is this correct?

Paul numerously distinguishes between the 2 gifts which is all i am doing.

No, you are not distinguishing between the 2 different gifts. You are creating a teaching gift that disallows God the Sovereign choice to gift women. If I have misunderstood you, then you are going to have to explain why you list teaching in Ephesians 4:11 as somehow out of bounds for a woman.

I’d be interested to know if you distinguish aswell since i have heard it several times used on this blog in an attempt to prove that ‘prophecy’ is not different to teaching.

Actually this is not quite right. What has been said is that there is a teaching element that happens with prophecy. Paul himself said that all may prophesy so that all may learn. If one is learning then it is obvious that prophesying has a level of teaching that happens as an outworking of the gift. However the gift of teaching is not the same. Prophesying is more rightly aligned with preaching, while teaching is just teaching.

Now what is interesting is you think that i am saying that ‘teaching’ is higher than the prophecy. However does Paul not list prophecy before teaching and instruct us to desire the ‘higher’ gift.(1 Cor 12:27-31).

I don’t believe that any of the gifts is “higher” than the other. However since you seem to appeal to teaching as something that only one gender may do, it becomes quite obvious to me that “teaching” is a higher gift in your explanation because it is one of the two gifts you appear to reserve for males alone.

It seems that you feel that teaching is the higher gift and it is unfair if a woman is not aloud to be a pastor, when infact a woman with the gift of prophecy has a higher gift than that of a teacher.

Again, I don’t believe in a “higher” gift. I do believe that whatever gift we have, we need to use it for the benefit of all as the gifts that are the best ones are the ones which are given for the benefit of the whole body not just one individual.

As far as the gift of pastor, only God distributes the gifts and whoever He gifts should be allowed to exercise God’s gift. My point is that restricting people from benefiting the whole body with their whole-body-gifts is not a valid oversight. God has not gifted for the purpose of having us restrict His work. We are not to grieve the Holy Spirit and restricting the bodies access to body gifts hurts God and hurts the body.

There is nowhere in the Scripture where “pastor” or “teacher” is a gift withheld from women and distributed only to men. Not only is the restriction never listed in the lists of gifts, but the fact that we can identify gifted women as gifted as a pastor and gifted women as gifted as teacher proves that God has done His work and we need to allow Him to decide.