In the same way, the women are to be worthy of respect, not malicious talkers but temperate and trustworthy in everything. (1 Tim. 3:11)
Expanded Passage: 1 Timothy 3:11
Sabotaged in St. Louis! Iva Durham Vennard returned from maternity leave to find that the institute she’d founded to train more Methodist deaconesses and evangelists like herself had suffered a hostile takeover by disapproving men. Undaunted, she and her supportive husband started Chicago Evangelistic Institute the next year: 1910. By the time I taught there (2000–2008), the school had been relocated and renamed in her honor.
Advance in Appalachia! In 1924, Methodist evangelist and one-time assistant pastor Lela McConnell started what became the Kentucky Mountain Holiness Association, which included educational institutions, radio ministry, and churches—many of them pastored by women—and among those female pastors was my grandmother.
Amid instructions on deacons, Paul mentioned “the women.” Paul recommended at least one female deacon (Rom. 16:1). Around AD 110, the Roman governor Pliny reported that he’d tortured two Christian deaconesses. Centuries later, John Wesley allowed women to preach and run discipleship groups (his example was his mother Susanna, who led community worship in her ordained husband’s absence). Spiritual heirs include female evangelists, pastors, and denominational leaders (like The Wesleyan Church’s General Superintendent Emerita, Jo Anne Lyon). Whatever the identity of “the women” Paul recognized them as influential in the church. That influence has deepened and widened between his day and ours.
Determine to help advance—not sabotage—the ministry of women.
Jerome Van Kuiken is professor of Christian thought at Oklahoma Wesleyan University (OK) and author of The Creed We Need (Amazon) and The Judas We Never Knew (Seedbed).
© 2026 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
