Mike Winger’s Part 13 video in his Women in Ministry series is truly an eye-opener into the pitfalls of Mike’s “complementarian” interpretations of Scripture.

By Andrew Bartlett (author of Men and Women in Christ: Fresh Light from the Biblical Texts (2019)) and Terran Williams (author of How God Sees Women: The End of Patriarchy (2022))

August 2024

This article responds to Mike Winger’s video ‘Everything Women Can and Can’t Do According to the Bible: Women in Ministry part 13’¹

Here is a pdf of this full article, or here is a summary.

You can see our articles on previous videos by Mike on women in ministry at https://terranwilliams.com/articles/. Or use these links:

Part 2 (Genesis 1–3) — www.bit.ly/40lo9oh
Part 3 (OT Women) — www.bit.ly/3jAjCNX
Part 4 (NT Women) part A — www.bit.ly/3JDVRiB
Part 4 (NT Women) part B — www.bit.ly/3X08GXx
Part 5 (Women Apostles) — www.bit.ly/3mMssJV
Part 7 (Galatians 3:28) — www.rb.gy/2qoig3
Part 8 (Meaning of Head) — www.bit.ly/3RwliET
Part 9 (“Wives submit”) — www.bit.ly/3l8CmVv
Part 10 (Head Covering, 1 Cor 11) — www.bit.ly/3JV6kpD
Part 11 (“Women be silent,” 1 Cor 14) — www.bit.ly/3naLVUL
Part 12 special (Meaning of authenteō, 1 Tim 2:12) — www.terranwilliams.com/why-mike-winger-is-wrong-about-authenteo-in-1-timothy-212-and-why-it-matters-2/
Part 12 (The Debates Over 1 Timothy 2) – https://terranwilliams.com/the-debates-over-1-timothy-2/
Part 13 (What Women Can’t Do) – https://terranwilliams.com/what-mike-winger-gets-wrong-on-what-women-cant-do/
Part 1–13 (Where Mike Winger Went Wrong With Women) – https://terranwilliams.com/where-mike-winger-went-wrong-on-women/

What is this about?
Mike’s three pillars
Mike’s attacks on egalitarian scholarship
A new Leviticus for women
The modern anachronism of “roles”
The lack of an explanatory justification for Mike’s rules
Complexity and uncertainty in application
WHY is Mike’s new Leviticus so complicated and uncertain?
His application and his interpretation cannot stand together
Which view is harmful when applied?
Should egalitarians repent?
The outcome

What is this about?

In this article, we examine what Mike Winger says about the application of the teaching in his Women in Ministry series. We explain why it is alarming.

Mike believes in Jesus as Lord and Savior and desires to follow him in a way that accords with Scripture. So do we. We’re writing this response because we believe that in this series he has gone off track. This is not an attack on Mike, who is a brother in Christ. It is a critique of his mistaken teaching on this important subject.

Both so-called “complementarians” and so-called “egalitarians” (also called “mutualists”) believe that men and women are complementary to each other – equally made in the image of God, and the same in some ways, yet different in other ways, so that men and women together can do what neither can do alone. Yet between the two sides of the debate there are some big differences in how the Bible’s teaching is understood.

Mike’s Part 13 video is nearly 4½ hours long. The descriptive title is: “Everything Women Can and Can’t Do According to the Bible”. It is about where to draw lines placing restrictions on women – restrictions which do not apply to men.

If the Bible, rightly understood, placed restrictions on women and not on men, then our duty would be to obey what God has revealed. But in our responses to earlier videos, we have shown that this is not a faithful understanding.

Mike summarizes his complementarian interpretations of the Bible’s teaching on men and women as three pillars and then lays out his views on how they should be applied in practice today.

What comes across strongly in the video is the complexity, uncertainty, and one-sidedness of the restrictions that he describes. These are red flags.

Mike’s three pillars

In his own words, the three pillars are:

#1: Male headship and female submission in marriage.

#2: Elders’ positions and functions are for men only.

#3: Women’s status as image bearers and sons of God is inviolable.

Pillar #3 points to women’s equality with men. This was controversial through most of church history, but is mostly uncontroversial today.

Pillar #2 is a matter of disagreement among Christians who try to follow the Bible. Gifts of leadership and teaching are given to both men and women, and there is no Scripture which clearly says that the positions and functions of elders must be fulfilled only by men.²

Pillar #1 is also in dispute among Christians who try to follow the Bible, because of what Mike means by it. He understands “head” as a metaphor which means “authority over”. But in the relevant passage, the apostle Paul explains this metaphor as “savior”, referring to a husband’s self-sacrificial love and care for his wife, like the self-sacrificial love and care of Christ for the Church (Ephesians 5:23, 25). Mike’s view of a wife’s submission is that it is a one-way submission to the higher authority of a husband. But Paul explicitly sets it in a context where he describes Christian submission as mutual (Ephesians 5:21-22).

We have addressed those topics in other responses to Mike (see the list above). We have noted that Mike’s interpretations often ignore express words of Scripture or depend on things supposedly implied though not actually stated in the inspired text.

Mike is very concerned about erroneous thinking about men and women in secular culture – specifically, the way it tends to see men and women as the same.³ We understand that concern, and to an extent we share it. Our responses are not based on secular culture. We have written them because we believe that Mike’s interpretations are not faithful to Scripture.

Before examining what Mike says about the application of his teaching, we must first say something about his attacks on egalitarian scholarship.

Mike’s attacks on egalitarian scholarship

Mike offers an intriguing heading for one of the sections of the video: “What surprised me the most about this research project” (0hr18mins).

What was it that surprised him the most? He says it was:

how bad egalitarian arguments are …

… I was shocked at how bad the arguments were (0hr19mins)

He talks about this for some time in the video, with great emphasis.

We acknowledge that egalitarian scholars are fallible, just as complementarian scholars are, and so they make mistakes. But what Mike says is partisan and disturbing.

A partisan mindset minimizes the errors on its own side and magnifies those on the other side. Mike does not speak in the same way about errors made by complementarian scholars.

What makes Mike’s attacks disturbing is that a large proportion of his criticisms of egalitarian scholars are due to his own misunderstandings.

In our detailed responses we have shown, time after time, that Mike has radically misread what they have written, has wrongly criticized it, and/or has failed to engage with their real point.⁴ Sometimes his misreading is so far off track that he attributes to them the exact opposite of their actual views.

In several videos, Mike invited feedback on his series. We have sent Mike all of our responses. In those responses we have explained how he has misrepresented egalitarian scholars. He often portrays them as writing foolishly, when the error is in fact his own misreading. Others have also pointed out many of his errors of understanding. But he has taken no notice. As far as we know he has not admitted any specific mistakes or issued any corrections to his Women in Ministry series.

Does he think it is acceptable for a Christian brother to continue to publicly misrepresent what others have written, even after corrections have been supplied to him? We hope not.

If you find that we have made any errors or misrepresentations of our own in this response, please write and tell us, so that we can promptly make any needed corrections. You can email us at terranwill -at- gmail.com.⁵

A new Leviticus for women

Mike’s Part 13 video contains the applications of Mike’s teaching on men and women. It lays bare the practical outworking of his interpretations, as applied to real-life situations.

Whether intentionally or unintentionally, the video shows the reality of complementarianism:

It has little to do with men and women being complementary. It is mainly about trying to define restrictions on women. It’s about a bundle of rules that apply to women and not to men.

Mike’s teaching is a new Leviticus, but for women only. In the whole 4½ hours, Mike says nothing about any complementary restriction on what men may do.

The modern anachronism of “roles”

In communicating his views on the application of his teaching, Mike talks a lot about “roles”. We will explain why his use of this modern term should be recognized as a red flag.

In the latter part of the twentieth century, there was widespread rejection of the Church Fathers’ traditional and unbiblical view of women – that they were inherently inferior to men – lower in status, less intelligent, less rational, less capable, more prone to sin and deception. If the subordination of women to men was to be continued, new reasons had to be found.

In complementarianism, the new reasoning was constructed by placing alongside the idea of equal personhood the idea of differing “roles”. Mike summarizes his view as:

… equal in nature, different in role. (1hr05mins)

Before the twentieth century, this term was never used for explaining the teaching of the Bible. It was imported from secular sociology by George Knight and popularized in a book that he wrote in 1977.⁶

The use of this term makes complementarianism sound more attractive. After all, people can have different roles, depending on what they are called to do. Having different roles need not imply any superiority or inferiority as human beings.

This sociological term became a central tenet of complementarianism. It is such an essential part of complementarian thinking, that in this one video Mike uses it about 150 times.

And it is worth noticing how he uses it.

First, in the applications of Mike’s teaching, it is only women who have restrictions placed on their “roles”. There are no restrictions on men’s “roles”. So, the application of this idea is not that men and women are complementary; it is that women must be restricted to subordinate roles, while men are unrestricted.

Second, the way the term is used in relation to women is not like the secular use of it. In ordinary use, a role is an assignment that may change and may come to an end. But Mike’s usage in regard to women refers to an unchangeable set of power-relations between women and men in this present world:

In marriage, the wife always has less authority than her husband.
In the church, women are always excluded from eldership.

In light of the above, more accurate names for Mike’s position would be “hierarchist”, “restrictivist” or “masculinist”. But we will use the popular misnomer “complementarian”, because that is Mike’s chosen terminology.

So, what does the Bible say about men’s “roles” and women’s “roles”? The answer is: zero, zilch, nil, nothing, nada. “Role” is not a word found in the Bible, nor does it express a concept that is attached to a specific gender in the Bible.⁷

In another video, apparently without awareness of the irony, Mike criticizes some egalitarian scholars for the anachronism of interpreting the Bible using modern concepts that Paul didn’t know about and wasn’t thinking about.⁸ But that is what Mike himself has done.

Even though Mike uses this new analysis, constructed with language borrowed from secular sociology, and adopts new reasoning for restricting women, he is reluctant to admit its newness. He presents his view as if it had been held for centuries. In his closing prayer at the end of the video, he prays:

Help your church to be reminded of what it, it has in many ways known for 2,000 years and recently forgotten. (4hr19mins)

As we explained in our response to Mike’s Part 12 video, this is a false perspective.

Certainly, we should “contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people” (Jude 3, NIV). But we must also make space for Jesus’s beautifying of his bride – removing her besetting sins and errors of understanding of Scripture, sins and errors fueled by a long history of infiltration of pagan culture.

Mike knows this, for he comprehensively rejects the Church Fathers’ distorted and unbiblical view of women, which owed more to Aristotle than to Jesus, and which was the majority view until the second half of the twentieth century.⁹ He rejects their faulty reasoning. But by inappropriately importing and misapplying the modern language of gender roles he seeks to maintain the same one-sided restrictions on women which the Church Fathers supported with their faulty reasons.

The lack of an explanatory justification for Mike’s rules

If, like the Church Fathers, Mike believed that women were less intelligent, less rational, incapable of leadership, and more prone to sin and deception, then maintaining the old restrictions would make sense.

But he doesn’t. He believes that women are fully human, in the image of God, just as men are. That is his Pillar #3.

Mike even expressly confirms, referring to Romans 12, that God gives spiritual gifts of teaching and leadership to women (3hr58mins).

In regard to his new Leviticus, he says plainly:

These rules are NOT based on women being less capable. (4hr0mins)

So, despite the confusing title of the video, he is not talking about what women can’t do. He is talking about what God supposedly prohibits them from doing, even when God has given them the ability to do it.

We can see, therefore, that Mike’s view contains these elements:

God chose to create women fully human and fully in his image, just as men are.
Women are not less capable than men.
God gives spiritual gifts of leadership and teaching to women as to men.
Nonetheless, God has imposed special restrictions on women, which do not apply to men.

It would be interesting to know Mike’s thoughts on why, in his view, God has imposed those restrictions. As far as we can tell, in over 43 hours of teaching in this series, Mike has not ventured an answer to that question.

It doesn’t seem to make any sense. God has made men and women equal and complementary, therefore the wife is placed under her husband’s higher authority and the important marital decisions are made by the man? God has made men and women equal and complementary, therefore only men must lead the church and important decisions must be made without the benefit of women’s wisdom and viewpoints?

Why is it supposedly good in God’s eyes to restrict women whom God has made equally capable and equally gifted? Why does the complementarity of men and women stop outside the elders’ door?

What exactly is the ill effect, if wives are invited to make decisions for the family in partnership with their husbands? What is damaged when women serve alongside men in leadership and teaching teams of local churches? What is the practical reason for excluding women from these functions?

The lack of an explanation is a hole in the heart of Mike’s complementarianism.

Complexity and uncertainty in application

Complementarianism was first formulated in the 1970s and 1980s. One of its chief architects was Wayne Grudem. About 20 years ago, he published a list of 83 activities that in his opinion could or could not be done by a woman, in faithfulness to his interpretation of God’s word.¹⁰

Mike’s Part 13 video reminds us strongly of Grudem’s list. In some respects, it is less detailed than Grudem’s list, but in other ways it ranges further. Grudem’s list was only of church-related activities, whereas Mike’s video also has some things to say about activities in wider society.

It ought to be a source of amazement that it takes a video of 4½ hours to justify and explain his practical guidance on what a woman is or is not permitted to do, as compared with a man.

The Psalmist declared that God’s word was a lamp for his feet and a light for his path (Psalm 119:105). But if complementarianism is true, God’s word shines rather faintly in this area of women’s ministry and conduct. The rules of right conduct for women are complex and uncertain.

For example, research carried out at the Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting in 2014 found:

Complementarians in this study differed widely on their restrictions for women. Some complementarians supported women teaching Bible and theology in colleges or seminaries, but observed restrictions focused on church preaching positions or pastoral leadership (such as elders). Others believe that women may serve communion, baptize, and be ordained, but should be restricted from preaching or pastoral leadership. Some believed that women may teach a Bible or theology Sunday school class as long as the church leadership (“headship”) remains within the domain of male elders or pastors. Others did not think women should teach a Sunday school class to adult men (but could teach Bible in college or seminary). The four Southern Baptist affiliated participants in this study saw restrictions on women teaching any adult male any amount of Bible or theology, in any setting—the church, colleges, or seminaries. They also restricted women’s leadership/pastoral roles (often using the term “male teacher” to indicate that men alone must teach Bible or theology to men, but women may teach Bible or theology to women).¹¹

So, in his video Mike addresses questions such as:

Is it OK for a woman to teach theology in a seminary or a podcast, or to write books about it? Does it make a difference if the books will be read by men?
Are there any circumstances where a woman may teach men in the church and if so, what are they?
What about teaching boys? For the purposes of the rules, do boys count as men and, if so, at what age?
Can a woman speak at a worship service held on a Wednesday evening?
Can she do the announcements on a Sunday?
Is it OK for women to have the vote?
Is it acceptable for a woman to be a candidate for President of the United States?
Can women be business owners?

And so on, and so on.

In Mike’s world, a woman often cannot know with confidence whether she is sinning or not, when she exercises the gifts and abilities that God has given her.

In a recent book which attempts to depict complementarianism in a positive light, the learned, complementarian authors cannot agree – even with each other – on whether women may lead public church services.¹²

And even if we try to follow only the guidance of one man – Mike Winger – we find that it is unhelpfully vague.

For example, what is Mike’s own view on the contested question whether a woman may lead public worship?

Here is his vague answer:

It depends. Are you leading worship in a way that is pastoral in function and teaching authority, that kind of thing, um, or are you doing it in some other fashion? That’s how I would answer …

… So in other words the answer, I guess, would be ‘Yes’ – as long as you’re not becoming that sort of pastoral thing on stage while you’re, while you’re doing your thing. I think that that would be the answer.(3hr49mins – 3hr50mins)

With guidance as vague as this, it is impossible for a woman leading worship to know whether she is serving God faithfully or sinfully. We cannot think of any comparable example, away from the area from women’s ministry, where the boundaries of supposedly obedient or disobedient conduct are so uncertain.

The uncertainty is equally acute when we review his guidance on whether a woman may teach at a Bible conference.

First, he indicates that he personally would permit it on the basis that it is not an elder-like role, but he realistically acknowledges that there is “room for disagreement” over his view (3hr35mins). In other words, other complementarians would forbid it.

Then he purports to give practical guidance:

My recommendation would be … to think what steps are you taking to ensure this doesn’t become an elder-like role? Because you’re on the stage, you could do anything you want with that microphone. Do you do any steps, are there things, maybe “oh, I’m not going to share that” or “I’m not going to step over here on to this”, “I’m not going to say it in this way”. I think that that’s wisdom, to do that. … It should flavor what you do on certain issues. For instance, you could refer a question or a student or, or a topic – you could say, “You know what? On this issue, I’m going to refer you back to your local church pastor.” … (3hr35mins – 3hr36mins)

But this guidance is not useful, because it does not define what Mike means by “an elder-like role” on stage, and it does not say how to decide whether a question should be referred to the local pastor rather than answered.

Then he adds an extraordinary further explanation:

Don’t posture around on stage like some super-spiritual authority for all of Christianity. Um, that happens a lot, especially to be honest in Pentecostal circles. I’m just being real with you guys. Uh, just be a Christian who’s there to minister to or help or, or educate other believers. (3hr36mins – 3hr37mins)

Here, Mike seems to have in mind some Pentecostal women whom he regards as posturing like a super-spiritual authority. This raises the question: Are we supposed to think that posturing like a super-spiritual authority would be OK for a man, while not for a woman?

We hope not. And we hope there is no connection with the so-called “Moses model” of pastoral leadership which is promoted in Calvary Chapel churches, in which the male senior pastor, like Moses, delivers God’s instructions to the people.¹³

Mike’s chosen title for his video certainly does not lack ambition: “Everything Women Can and Can’t Do According to the Bible”. But the contents do not match the title. Given the vagueness of his guidance, and the extent of disagreement among complementarians, a more accurate title would be “Things Women More or Less May or May Not Do According to Mike Winger”.

When the application of complementarian interpretations of Scripture is so complex and so uncertain, we are driven to ask, why is that so? This is what we will consider next.

WHY is Mike’s new Leviticus so complicated and uncertain?

Why are Mike’s restrictions on women’s ministry are so complicated and uncertain? We can give a short answer and a fuller explanation.

The short answer is: it’s because his position relies centrally on his controversial interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:12 – an interpretation which is in conflict with Paul’s actual words in their context. For details on that, see our response to Mike’s part 12 video, https://terranwilliams.com/the-debates-over-1-timothy-2/. Since so much depends on an interpretation which misreads a single passage of Scripture out of context, it is unsurprising that there is uncertainty in its application.

Now for the fuller explanation.

Imagine a building with cracks in the upper floors. A building inspector comes to search for the cause of the cracks. The inspector diagnoses defects in the foundation, which induce stresses that the building cannot withstand.

In the same way, the cause of the problems in the upper floors of Mike’s application is not to be found on those floors; the cause is the presence of stress-inducing defects in the foundation. His foundational position contains stress-inducing conflicts, which lead to instabilities in application.

The uncertainties in Mike’s new Leviticus for women are inevitable, because he is trying to juggle and reconcile conflicting rationales which point to different answers when applied.

Mike holds in tension two beliefs about new creation and life in the Spirit:

God has given spiritual gifts of leadership and teaching to both men and women, without distinction; this is a foretaste of the age to come, in which women will not be under men’s authority.¹⁴
Nonetheless, in the church, though it is God’s pilot project of the new creation, only men may lead and teach with authority.

Mike also holds in tension three beliefs about the first creation:

God has chosen to make men and women in his image, without differentiating them in status as persons, in wisdom, in capacity to lead, or in capacity to love and serve.
Nonetheless, God has also made men and women so that men have authority over women, as (supposedly) shown in the story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 2 and confirmed in the New Testament.
Nonetheless, this supposed creation ordinance of men’s authority somehow only applies in a definite way in marriage and church, and not in wider society.

This last point of tension is so severe that the building cannot stand. It creates a fatal difficulty, which we will explain next.¹⁵

His application and his interpretation cannot stand together

Genesis 3:16 depicts men’s rule over women as an adverse consequence of humanity’s disobedience to God.

But Mike’s interpretation of Genesis is quite different from that.

According to Mike, male authority over women is not the result of the disobedience, but is God’s original design. In his view, the story of Adam and Eve, and Paul’s reference to it 1 Timothy 2, shows that God has ordained male authority as a creation principle. This view of creation undergirds what he understands to be Paul’s teaching on male leadership in marriage and in the church.

But this interpretation produces a fatal difficulty for Mike:

A creation principle about men being created to have authority over women would apply to all aspects of human life and society. As patriarchists point out, it cannot be limited to church or home. If God has established a creation principle of men’s authority over women, then it follows that women should not exercise authority over men in civil society, politics, business, or anywhere else.
Thus, as Mike acknowledges several times, it seems “artificial” or “arbitrary” to limit the creation principle of male rule (which he calls “headship”) to marriage and church and not to apply it to wider society. (1hr32mins, 1hr34mins)
But applying the supposed creation principle to wider society would be inconsistent with Scripture, as Mike also acknowledges.

For example, God called the prophet Deborah to be the leader of God’s people, Israel. In Mike’s own words:

Deborah had genuine political power over men at God’s instigation. (1hr47mins)

As we wrote before:¹⁶

If Paul is really putting forward an argument from a creation ordinance of men’s authority over women, then Paul is a patriarchist, and Mike Winger should be one too. But Mike knows that an insistence on patriarchal rule of wider society cannot be squared with Scripture; there are just too many strikes against it.

So, this is his dilemma:

If he is right to interpret Genesis 2 and 1 Timothy 2 as teaching a creation principle of male rule, then it ought to apply across all of human society. It would be artificial and arbitrary to limit it to marriage and eldership.
But he can see that Scripture does not show that there should be male rule across all of human society. The application in Scripture does not match Mike’s interpretation.

This dilemma shows us that Mike has not correctly interpreted Genesis 2 or 1 Timothy 2. If Scripture were being correctly interpreted, the interpretation and the application would match.

In previous videos, Mike offered no answer to this dilemma. He ignored it. Now, in Part 13, he makes a weak and unsuccessful attempt to resolve it.

He employs a flurry of negatives. He is not saying that there is no application of male headship outside the areas of marriage and eldership. But outside those two areas he says that there are no “hard and fast rules” about it. Thus-

In society in general it seems there’s less application to the male headship stuff than there is in marriage and church.

And here is his remarkable explanation:

Maybe societal roles outside of marriage just aren’t that important. That’s my thesis … that these other things, bosses and presidents and professors, it’s just not as important as eldership and marriage.(2hr11mins – 2hr12mins)

You may think the people of ancient Israel – or of any nation, past or present – would be surprised to hear that it was relatively unimportant who led them!

But even if leadership in wider society were unimportant, Mike’s thesis would still not resolve his dilemma. If God has instituted a creation principle of male authority, it should be faithfully obeyed in all spheres and at all levels of leadership, whether important or unimportant. And God would not break the principle himself, by putting Deborah in charge of Israel.

In sum, Mike’s interpretation is about male authority as a normative creation principle. But in Mike’s application there are no hard and fast rules for society. So, it is not normative after all.

This lack of coherence between interpretation and application tells us that Mike has latched onto a principle of male authority that is in conflict with what God has revealed in the Bible.

Which view is harmful when applied?

Near the end of the video, Mike speaks under the heading “A warning about egalitarians” (4hr10mins).

According to him, egalitarians “are doing great harm to the church”.

That is a serious charge.

What are the particular harms that he alleges? There are three.

His first allegation is that egalitarians are harming the reputation of the Christian faith. He says:

They’re harming our reputation with propaganda, because egalitarians almost without fail will … vilify as immoral and oppressive the biblical teaching on men and women. … They do this in public; they’ll tell everybody … Basically … what the world will hear is … the egalitarian saying: “Don’t worry. I’m not like all those other Christians for the past 2,000 years, who are oppressive and abusive”, and this, and this, and this. And they’re confirming the narrative that, that Christianity is in fact a problem. (4hr10mins-4hr11mins)

We do not know why he makes this allegation, for it is transparently false.

Mike does not cite any Bible-believing egalitarian scholar who states that the biblical teaching on men and women is immoral and oppressive. The message from egalitarian scholars we have read is that the biblical teaching on men and women is life-giving and liberating because, properly interpreted, it treats women as fully in God’s image and places no special restrictions on their use of their gifts and abilities. This is what egalitarian scholars proclaim to the world.

As regards oppression in Church history, most Christians today – including Mike – distance themselves from the traditional, so-called ‘Christian’ teachings which denigrated women as inferior to men, more prone to sin, less rational, and less capable. He is himself a mover in this modern reformation. His Pillar #3 is a public rejection of the traditional, unbiblical view of women, promoted in the church as the majority view for nearly 2,000 years. It makes no sense that he criticizes others for rejecting it as he does himself.

Verdict? Not guilty.

Mike’s second allegation is that egalitarians are harming the ministries of the Church by upsetting God’s ordained order for leadership. He says:

They’re also harming our ministries and upsetting God’s ordained order for leadership in … churches by saying we ought to not only open the door to women in ministry but pursue and push … for more and more and more of them, and celebrate them, and protect them. And all this sort of thing is actually causing harm, because God has specifically said: “don’t do that.” (4hr11mins)

It is notable here that Mike does not identify what the actual harm is, which he imagines is caused by allowing women to use the spiritual gifts that the Lord has given them to use.

In contrast, we can cite abundant examples of the good that is done, when women are allowed to use their leadership gifts, as Priscilla and Junia did in New Testament times. If you have any doubt of that, we recommend that you read Terran’s article: “The Women Who Are Reaching the World for Christ: The Rise of Women Church Planters”, https://terranwilliams.com/women-who-are-taking-the-world-for-christ/. Here is a brief extract:

Dr. Leslie Segraves, a mission leader of Serving Shoulder to Shoulder, shared with me what is happening in Asia. In South Asia, a movement of over 4,000 women equipped as disciple-makers have planted churches in no less than 20,000 villages! With a strong DNA of multiplication, many of these house churches have reached up to the 12^th generation of church plants.

The harmfulness of complementarian teaching is clear: it obstructs the fulfilment of Jesus’s Great Commission. For example, in missiological circles, the revivals in China and Iran are celebrated as a wonderful fulfilment of his Great Commission. What seems to be less known is that about half of all the new churches have been led and taught by women. If complementarian teaching were implemented in China and Iran, it would cut the number of new churches in half.

In addition, the complexities and uncertainties of complementarian teaching harm gifted women, when they try to navigate the vague and shifting boundaries of what they supposedly may or may not do.

In an interview, leadership consultant Kadi Cole explained:¹⁷

I think most guys would be surprised to know how much energy and effort Christian, godly women put into wondering if they’re doing too much, wondering if they’re usurping authority, wondering if they’re overstepping. And so godly women are very sensitive that there’s probably a line somewhere that they should live under. And the problem is, if your line is out like a seven, most godly women are going to live it around a four, so that they don’t accidentally trip over it. … … For women … the big sin is overstepping their authority, and so we live way far away from that line …

A woman wrote to Andrew about her experiences on returning to the USA:

I quickly found myself at odds with the church as while I was able to teach, preach, etc. overseas on the mission field, I was not able to do so within my home country. This stood in stark contrast to my desire to follow Christ’s command to go into the world and make disciples and to be like Jesus.

I’ve sat in rooms full of women like myself who question their calling because of their gender. Where they constantly struggle to stand behind the complementarian red line while the Holy Spirit calls them into positions beyond it.

Women children’s directors teach the children while their male parents learn alongside them. Complementarianism begs them to question if they should continue to teach while the men are present.

And then there is the gifted woman preacher. Whose preaching brings women and men to their knees before Christ. Should she not continue to preach the word of God when a man is present, even if it means he comes to know Jesus as a result?

Here is her devastating description of the outcome:

This question of ‘when am I overstepping?’ weighs on gifted women in complementarian congregations until they make themselves smaller and smaller. Until they no longer listen to that still small voice that first called them into ministry. Until they become shells of who God originally called them to be.

Those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

Mike shows no real insight into these impacts of complementarian teachings – even though he has observed them himself. In his Part 4 video, he said:

… women who have something wonderful to share – wonderful to say, important to communicate – will hold back because they’re … worried about how it’ll be taken. This is a problem. This is a present issue … in many complementarian churches, and it’s something I’ve seen. I’ve seen women who I thought were gifted, who … … wouldn’t step into serving in some way, because they just weren’t sure that they could.(Part 4, 1hr28mins – 1hr29mins)

Mike tries to distance himself from these problems by attributing them to something which he sees in the teaching of John Piper and which he calls “paranoid masculinity”, where –

people are overly concerned about checking every scenario to see if women are in submission to men in each situation … (Part 4, 1hr26mins).

While he is right to disagree with Piper, he is missing the bigger point. He does not perceive how women are harmed by the very nature of complementarianism, because of the vagueness and uncertainties of the rules about what women may or may not do. Because the height of the stained-glass ceiling is uncertain, women habitually stoop, which causes pain. This diminishes the contribution of gifted women and weakens the churches that their gifts are given to edify.

In our view, Mike would do well to listen more attentively to what gifted women say about their actual experiences in complementarian churches.

By its very nature, complementarianism has no remedy for its shriveling effect on gifted women. Devout complementarians have always disagreed among themselves on where the lines of restriction should be drawn, and for as long as complementarianism lasts, they will continue to do so.

For more on the harms of complementarian teaching in the church, see chapter 17 of Terran’s book.¹⁸

Verdict on Mike’s second allegation? Not guilty. But complementarianism visibly harms God’s church.

Mike’s third allegation is that egalitarians are harming marriages. He says:

This should shock you. This should bother you. This should make you sick to your stomach, that this is happening. (4hr12mins)

But what is his evidence for this serious allegation? He does not provide any.

In fact, the evidence points the other way.¹⁹ In our response to his Part 8 video on Male Headship, we referred to the recent research published by Sheila Gregoire, which shows that complementarianism is harmful to marriages if the belief is put into practice by the man taking responsibility for decision-making. In The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended (2021), this is the conclusion of her study:

What happens to couples when one spouse makes the decisions … even if they talk their decisions over with their spouse first and seek their input? They are 7.4 times more likely to be divorced than couples who share decision-making power.

This corresponds to the similar findings cited by Nancy Pearcey in chapters 2 and 3 of her book The Toxic War on Masculinity (2023). According to the research which she cites, the happiest and most satisfactory marriages are those where in practice men do not exercise authority over their wives and instead decisions are taken jointly.

Those results are what we should expect. Why? Because this joint-decision-making approach is exactly in line with Paul’s explicit teaching about how a husband and wife should take decisions on sexual intercourse and joint prayer – that is, by mutual consent (1 Corinthians 7:5). But that approach is in stark contrast to Mike’s complementarian teaching, in which the so-called “headship” authority structure, husband over wife, is “super important”, as Mike states in his Lesson Overview for his Part 8 video.

In that Overview, he says he “can’t overstate the practical impact of getting this topic wrong”. Indeed. That is true, in view of the divorce statistics. But it is Mike who is getting it wrong. He is on the wrong side of the facts. The facts are that putting complementarian beliefs into practice makes marriages much more likely to fail. If anything should “shock” us, it is this.

Verdict on Mike’s third allegation? Not guilty. But research shows that complementarianism harms marriages, if it is put into practice by the husband taking responsibility for decision-making.

Should egalitarians repent?

Mike says:

If you’re an egalitarian, … … if you come to this part of the video and you haven’t … changed your mind yet, you probably won’t now. But … the right thing to do would be to repent of those issues and to publicly go out and be, like, “how do I undo some of the damage I’ve caused?” (4hr12mins)

As biblical mutualists, we take this call to be directed at us, just as much as to those who call themselves egalitarians.

We do not imagine for a moment that we have understood everything in the Bible correctly. We are keen to carry on learning. But it is important to say why Mike’s call for repentance is a non-starter.

Most people who listen to Mike’s videos probably assume that he has carried out thorough research into the debate, that in 43 hours he has presented both sides, and that he has given sufficient reasons for preferring the side which he promotes. But to anyone who has studied the debate for themselves, that is plainly not the case.

It is right to say that he has offered some sound observations on some side issues. But when it comes to the points that really matter, we have found elementary mistakes, much strawmanning of egalitarian arguments, and repeated avoidance. He cannot realistically call for a change of mind, when he has not addressed central objections to the controversial views that he has put forward. We have lost count of the number of times in our responses we have written something on the lines of: “What is Mike’s answer to this? He does not say.”

Nor has he provided any evidence of devout women, freed from the restrictions of complementarianism, causing harm. But, as we have indicated, there is ample evidence of serious harm caused by the unbiblical views which Mike mistakenly promotes.

The outcome

The result of Mike’s teaching is that women are kept under restriction, but to an uncertain extent, which complementarians are unable to define or to agree upon among themselves.

This is a recipe for harm, heartache and conflict.

The harms and heartaches are not the results of God’s word, which is sweet to the taste, sweeter than honey to the mouth, and which gives us delight, and enables us to walk about in freedom (Psalm 119: 43, 45, 103, 174).

Marriages are put under pressure. Women’s wisdom is sidelined. Women are prevented from playing their full part in serving God, the Church and the world, in obedience to the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). This is where Mike’s faulty interpretations lead.

The apostle Paul contrasts life in the Spirit with life under the burden of the regulations of the old covenant. We wonder how Paul would respond to Mike’s teaching. We imagine he would protest with vigor:

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1, NIV)

Jesus himself says:

If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:36, ESV, NIV)

Amen! May it be so!

What Mike Winger Gets Wrong on What Women Can’t Do

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