Pastor, “We co-pastor” is a hermeneutics question. Here’s my case.

“We co-pastor.” You’ve seen it on church websites and conference bios, and maybe you’ve been asked why your church doesn’t. Let me say up front: there are complementarian and egalitarian pastors I deeply respect, and this is a third-tier issue. But I think underneath some of this language is a sermon of the serpent, and it’s worth naming. I’m not going to make a gender argument here. I’m going to make a hermeneutics argument.

What hyper-feminism is

Hyper-feminism, as I use the word, is an ideology that rejects God’s created order and the God-given distinctions between men and women. It rejects gender roles. It rejects how God made you. In the church, it shows up as a reading imposed on the text, what we call eisegesis, to overturn the pattern of male pastoral leadership.

To be clear, not every co-pastoring arrangement comes from that place. There’s an egalitarian argument for it, made by people who love Jesus. My concern is what’s underneath when it becomes a movement.

The serpent’s question

The hiss here is “Did God really order His church this way, or was that just Paul?” It’s the garden’s first lie again, “Did God really say?”, applied to how God designed His church. And our culture has a big issue with rebellion against the created order.

Step 1 — Move the argument off Paul

A lot of people with an issue with complementarianism think their issue is with Paul, so they push an unusual reading onto what Paul wrote. But I’d gently shift it: you don’t actually have a problem with me, or with Paul. You have a problem with the created order, “male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27), and with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. When Jesus appointed His twelve apostles, He appointed men (Matthew 10:2–4). Paul then communicated the same created order to the churches, and the early church faithfully carried it out.

Christ’s appointments and church history make the stronger case. That’s why I don’t think you can get to the hyper-feminist position from an honest hermeneutic. It has to be imposed.

Step 2 — Answer the Junia question honestly

The usual counter is Junia, whom Paul describes as “outstanding among the apostles” (Romans 16:7). I think there are more than enough arguments around that phrase. Being noted among the apostles doesn’t necessarily make her one; the early fathers read it as assisting the apostles; and apostolos simply means a sent person. Whichever way you land, one verse doesn’t negate how Christ chose, how Paul instructed, and how the early church understood the role.

Step 3 — Guard the hermeneutic, because that’s where drift begins

Here’s the real reason I hit this one. Bad hermeneutics with Paul becomes bad hermeneutics with Christ, and that changes your authority. Once a movement disrupts the hermeneutic, it disrupts the authority. Once it disrupts the authority, it’s like dominoes falling, and a denomination eventually deconstructs.

Look at egalitarian movements over time. Maybe not the first generation, which is often functionally complementarian, but the second. So if you’re egalitarian and conservative, I respect you, and I’d say: be very careful. You may hold the line, but you’ve left an opening for wrong theology. “Do not give the devil a foothold” (Ephesians 4:27). Guard the hermeneutic, because a hundred years from now, that’s where the drift will have started.

Step 4 — Hold it on the right tier, with the right tone

Hold your position on hermeneutical grounds, and say plainly that it’s third-tier. Nobody’s salvation hangs on this. Respect both camps and welcome disagreement. My claim is about hermeneutical honesty and what we see in orthopraxy, not about anyone’s worth or gifting.

And celebrate the differences. God made man and woman differently, and those differences are wonderful, good design to be celebrated, not erased.

Is this a hill to die on? No. We can agree to disagree, argue for a while, and make memes about it. But disrupt the hermeneutic and you disrupt the authority. Then the dominoes start to fall. Stay honest to how the Lord Jesus did it, how Paul taught it, and how the early church lived it.