In Favor of Allowing Women to Be Deacons in the PCA—Jeffrey Choi

by Jeffrey Choi

The Complicated Question Before Us

Should women be ordained as deacons? The question has stirred genuine disagreement among faithful Christians. The PCA has not allowed the practice. But what if the biblical evidence is not as settled as that position assumes?

Part of the difficulty lies in the concept of ordination itself. The early church did not possess a uniform view — what it meant to be set apart for ministry developed over time, becoming a more rigid sacramental and juridical category. The Reformers themselves debated ordination’s meaning and scope. That history matters here because the PCA’s current framework imports assumptions from this development, and is not simply a straight reading of the New Testament.

Complicating matters further, the church has never fully resolved how to recognize women serving in diaconal roles. While our BCO speaks of the value of assistants to deacons (9-7), its restriction of ordination to only two offices results in the question becoming binary in a way it has not always been: either women are ordained as deacons, or they hold no official standing. This article argues that the PCA’s structure forces a binary choice the biblical evidence does not require. The key texts—Romans 16:1, 1 Timothy 3:8–12, and Acts 6—admit more than one reasonable interpretation, and the church has not reached a consensus on their meaning. When the evidence is this contested, a binding prohibition is difficult to defend. In such cases, the PCA has typically allowed local discretion.

1 Timothy 2:11 — A Commonly Cited Text That Does Not Settle the Question

Before turning to the texts most directly relevant to the diaconate, it is necessary to address a passage frequently introduced as decisive: 1 Timothy 2:11–12. There Paul writes that he does not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man. This passage is often cited as a blanket prohibition on women holding any church office, and thus grounds for excluding women from the diaconate. The argument is understandable, but conflates two distinct offices with different functions.

The prohibition in 1 Timothy 2:11–12 concerns teaching and exercising authority. These are the defining functions of the elder, not the deacon. Elders teach, preach, and rule. Deacons may exercise a type of authority, but not the ruling authority Paul references. The PCA’s own Book of Church Order is explicit on this distinction: the office of deacon “is not one of rule, but rather of service.” If the diaconate does not entail teaching or ruling authority, then 1 Timothy 2:11–12 does not address whether women may serve as deacons. To apply 1 Timothy 2 to the diaconate is to import a restriction from one office into another.

This is not a minor exegetical quibble, but a categorical distinction the New Testament itself makes. In 1 Timothy 3, Paul discusses the qualifications for elders and deacons together, yet treats them as distinct offices with distinct functions. The elder oversees and teaches; the deacon serves. The restriction in chapter 2 belongs to the former. To let it govern the latter collapses a distinction Paul maintains. The question of women in the diaconate must therefore be decided on the basis of texts that actually address the diaconate — Romans 16:1, 1 Timothy 3:8–12, and Acts 6.

Romans 16:1 — What the Greek Text Requires

Romans 16:1 describes Phoebe with the word diakonos — the same word used elsewhere for the office of deacon. The question is whether Paul uses it here to describe her official position or her general service. When the Greek text is dealt with plainly, the evidence points consistently toward the former.

According to Dr. Jimmy Agan, determining the lexical nature of diakonos requires careful attention to the context surrounding its use. He identifies four possibilities for what diakonos can mean in Greco-Roman usage: (i) a table attendant, (ii) a domestic attendant, (iii) a communicant or deliverer, or (iv) an agent or instrument. Agan eliminates the first two immediately in the case of Romans 16:1 — for diakonos to carry the meaning of table or domestic attendant, there must be a key semantic component present in the text, namely an association with food or drink. No such association exists in Romans 16:1. What remains are the more technical, representative meanings of the word — meanings that point toward a recognized role rather than informal helpfulness. The text itself, read on its own lexical terms, narrows the options toward an official designation.

The grammatical structure of the verse confirms what the lexical analysis suggests. The word diakonos is attached to the genitive phrase “of the church at Cenchreae” — linking Phoebe’s title to a specific congregation rather than describing a general disposition toward service. As Robert Strimple observed in the 1988 OPC minority report, this genitive construction, combined with the syntactical pattern of a present participle followed by a substantive noun, indicates an official role. This same pattern appears elsewhere in the New Testament for recognized official titles — the High Priest in John 11:49, the Proconsul in Acts 18:12, the Judge in Acts 24:10. Paul was not describing Phoebe’s character. He was designating her official standing. What is particularly striking is that this conclusion has been reached by those who would not advocate for the ordination of women — John Calvin, John Chrysostom, B.B. Warfield, and Kevin DeYoung among them. When faced with the Greek text directly, even those most cautious about expanding women’s roles in church offices found themselves unable to read diakonos in Romans 16:1 as a merely general term. The Greek text demanded a reckoning, and the honest answer pointed toward an official designation. Perhaps the clearest corporate witness to this is the Eastern church itself — worshipping, theologizing, and ordering its life directly from the Greek text — which broadly recognized an order of women deacons well into the Byzantine period. The Greek text did not merely press individual scholars toward an official reading of diakonos — the Eastern church, living and worshipping in that same Greek text, reflected this reading in its ecclesial practice for centuries.

1 Timothy 3:8–12 — Women, Not Wives

The debate in 1 Timothy 3:8–12 centers on verse 11 and the Greek word gynaikas, which can mean either “women” or “wives.” Those who argue against women deacons favor reading verse 11 as a reference to the wives of male deacons. But this reading is less probable than its proponents suggest.

In the New Testament, when gynaikas means “wives,” it is typically paired with anēr — husband. The two words function together. When Paul says an elder must be “the husband of one wife” (3:2), anēr and gynaikas appear together, making the relational meaning unmistakable. The same pairing appears in verse 3:12 for deacons. The reader knows gynaikas means “wives” in those verses because a husband is present to anchor the term.

In 3:11, no such anchor exists. No husband is mentioned. Proponents of the “wives” interpretation appeal to context, but the surrounding passage is about the office of deacon, not the households of deacons. A sudden reference to deacons’ wives is therefore awkward rather than natural. Further, no possessive construction ties gynaikas to the male deacons. To read “wives” here requires importing a relational meaning without the grammatical marker that normally signals it. In its absence, “women” becomes the more natural reading.

The adverb hōsautōs (”likewise”) that introduces verse 11 reinforces this conclusion. Paul uses hōsautōs twice in this passage: in verse 8 to transition from elders to deacons, and again in verse 11. The first instance clearly introduces qualifications for a different group of officers. The most natural reading is that verse 11 does the same by introducing women as a parallel category alongside male deacons. The “wives” reading requires hōsautōs to function differently here than it does just three verses earlier, without any textual signal.

Finally, the “wife of officer” reading lacks parallel elsewhere in Scripture. There is no Old Testament pattern that ties a wife to her husband’s office in this way, and no New Testament example of wives defined in relation to a church office. Paul sets extensive qualifications for elders in verses 3:1–7 but says nothing about an elder’s wife. Thus the far more probable reading of gynaikas in 1 Timothy 3:11 is “women” — a distinct group Paul addresses alongside male deacons, most likely envisioning women serving in some official diaconal capacity.

Acts 6 — A Text Often Cited, But Not Conclusive

Acts 6 is frequently invoked by those who argue the diaconate is reserved for men. The passage describes seven men appointed to oversee the distribution of food to widows, and because these seven are almost universally identified as the first deacons, the argument follows that the office was established as male from the beginning. This is a serious argument that deserves acknowledgment. However, a closer look at the text reveals that it is more complicated than is often assumed.

First, the word used in Acts 6:2 is not diakonos but diakonein — to serve or wait on tables. The text does not use the technical office language that appears in Philippians 1:1 or 1 Timothy 3. If Luke intended to formally establish the office of deacon, the absence of the technical term is noteworthy. Second, two of the seven — Stephen and Philip — go on to preach the gospel and baptize, activities that exceed the scope of diaconate as later defined. This raises the question of whether the seven represent a settled, final form of the diaconate, or whether Acts 6 captures an office still in the process of formation.

To build a definitive case for male-only deacons on a passage that does not use the technical term, features officeholders whose activities blur diaconal boundaries, and offers no explicit gender rationale is to ask more of the text than it can bear. Acts 6 may reflect the beginning of what becomes the diaconate, but it does not settle the office’s permanent form.

The Bigger Picture: PCA Wisdom

Taken together, what do these texts show? The most commonly cited objection — 1 Timothy 2:11 — does not apply to the diaconate because the office does not entail teaching or ruling authority. Romans 16:1, read in light of the historic church and its grammar, points toward Phoebe holding an official role. 1 Timothy 3:11, on its own terms, more naturally refers to women than wives. Acts 6, while often cited as decisive, reflects an office still developing rather than a permanent, gender-specific template. A careful reading of these texts does not support a blanket prohibition against women serving in the diaconate, though it does leave open questions about the precise nature of that service.

The PCA has always recognized that the Scripture does not dictate a single uniform practice. Local sessions are best positioned to make pastoral judgments. This is not doctrinal relativism. It is Presbyterian wisdom. Women in the diaconate fit in that category. Local sessions, knowing their congregations and wrestling carefully with Scripture, should be trusted to navigate that space.

Conclusion

The goal of this article is not to mandate that every PCA church ordain women as deacons. It is to argue that the biblical witness, rightly read and historically understood, does not permit a confident prohibition — and that the remaining questions are best answered at the local level.

Where the Bible is clear, we must be clear. Where it points in a direction without dictating every particular, we would do well to trust our elders, extend grace to one another, and let the wisdom of local sessions lead the way.

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Jeffrey Choi is the Lead Pastor of Orchard Church. Raised in the San Fernando Valley, he studied at UC Irvine and Westminster Seminary California before spending a decade serving in a local church in New York City. After returning to California, Jeffrey partnered with Alex McKee to plant Orchard Church and now lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children. He is passionate about helping people see how the kingdom of God shapes everyday life—and unwinds by running, CrossFit, and enduring life as a New York Jets fan.