Editor’s Note: This is Part II of the series “Priscilla and the Explosion of Women Church Planters Today,” based on Terran Williams’s keynote address at CBE’s 2024 Tell Her Story conference. You can read Part I here or listen to the address in full here.
I’d like to share a bit of context about Priscilla, in case her story is unfamiliar to you. People familiar with her story may say that what makes Priscilla noteworthy is that she taught theology to a man, Apollos. While this is correct, when you piece all of the biblical data together, we can see that she didn’t just teach in an isolated manner but that her teaching was part of a larger ministry that I describe as “pastor-teaching.” Scripture begins to describe the contours of this ministry when Paul goes to Corinth and meets Priscilla and Aquila, who open their home to him. They’re tent-makers like Paul, and they probably either come to faith under Paul or were Jewish Christians in the Roman church who got kicked out of the city.
For a year and a half, the couple supports Paul so faithfully that when he embarks towards Syria via Ephesus, he opts to take Priscilla and Aquila with him rather than Timothy and Silas. He lands in Ephesus and preaches the gospel on the Sabbath, and Scripture attests that people in the city want him to stay and continue teaching. While Paul can’t guarantee his return to Ephesus, he does leave Priscilla and Aquila in his stead. They don’t volunteer for this; it is an apostolic direction from Paul. He trusts Priscilla and Aquila with the fledgling church at Ephesus.
Acts 18:27 fills us in on what the couple do in Ephesus. It references brothers and sisters in the city of Ephesus that are evidently these new converts under their care, and we read in the verse before that Apollos, who has come upon some Christian doctrine yet has got some big gaps in his understanding, is taking his partial understanding of the gospel to the Jews in the synagogue. In response, Priscilla and Aquila welcome him in and “teach him the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18:26). Now, there is some debate about the translation: Is the “teaching” a quick aside, or does the couple welcome Apollos into their lives, home, and doctrine? I’d opt for the latter.1
Pieces of a Puzzle
Before addressing Priscilla and Aquila’s missionary work, we should note that of the six places where Priscilla and Aquila are mentioned, her name is usually mentioned first. In ancient tradition, a man’s name was always mentioned first. But remember that Luke, in his Gospel and the book of Acts, tends to put the name of the most prominent person in the group first. So, the fact that Priscilla’s name is typically mentioned before Aquila is probably a sign that her ministry was more apparent—maybe she was more publicly gifted in her teaching or in her leadership gifts.
With that context in mind, we can look to their specific work. Priscilla and Aquila stay in the Ephesian church for at least two to three years before Paul comes back, and of course things really pick up. There’s a revival; there is also persecution. Near the end of Paul’s tenure in the Ephesian church, he writes a letter to the Corinthian church in which he sends greetings from Priscilla and Aquila, who have a church meeting in their house. So, Priscilla and Aquila cared for that body of believers in Ephesus.
What else do we know about that body of believers mentioned in Acts 18:27? Well, in Acts 20:17, there’s a tantalizing detail when Paul calls the elders of the Ephesian church together. Paul reminds the elders that his way of life was apparent from the first day he set foot in Asia (Acts 20:18), which points back to when he first came to Ephesus and got that initial harvest, alongside Priscilla and Aquila. These elders are evidence that Priscilla and Aquila did not only pastor this church in Ephesus; they were leaders that made leaders. The elders in Ephesus are their legacy.
After pastor-teaching in Ephesus for several years, Priscilla and Aquila go to the church in Rome. When Paul writes to the Roman church, he lists twenty-seven people in Romans 16, but the first person he greets is Priscilla, followed by Aquila (verse 3). Again, we must remember why Paul would list this couple first: He is lending recognition to the prominent role that they played as his coworkers for the gospel. Paul also acknowledges that Priscilla and Aquila risked their lives by publicly, prominently, standing with him (Rom. 16:4). They were not just members on the side quietly attending meetings—they must’ve played a public role. Their fame had spread to Gentile churches beyond Asia according to Romans 16:3–4.
Now, why would the book of Acts even mention that detail about Priscilla and Aquila? Well, from Acts 16 to the end of the letter, the emphasis is entirely on the ministry of Paul—with one deviation. Paul leaves Ephesus, yet Luke still finds that he needs to focus on what’s happening in Ephesus in Paul’s absence. There is some internal evidence in the New Testament that the early churches began to see Apollos as Paul’s rival (1 Cor. 1:12). Well, what Luke shows in his detailed story is that Priscilla and Aquila, who’ve been authorized by Paul to enforce that doctrinal teaching, pass what they have learned on to Apollos. In other words, Luke is making it clear that Apollos has been trained by Paul’s trainees. Apollos is not Paul’s rival; he’s Paul’s disciple. So he shouldn’t be seen as being in any way incompatible with Paul.
Our final piece is found in 2 Timothy, which Paul writes years later. He addresses Timothy, Priscilla, and Aquila, who have since moved back to Ephesus. According to 1 Timothy, there were many women who had gone awry,2 so thank goodness Priscilla and Aquila arrive to help with this difficult situation at the church they had helped plant and tend.
A More Complete Picture
If you compile these bits of data, what you’ll see are a couple that have helped plant a thriving church. They were tried and tested under Paul’s training. And he selected them for a missionary task. They weren’t itinerant ministers, frequently moving from place to place. They stayed in one place, with a group of people, for several years, caring for that community of believers. This makes them more like the pastor-teacher role, since they were also authoritative in their teaching.
Complementarians emphasize, according to their interpretation of 1 Timothy 2:12, that a woman shouldn’t teach with authority. I don’t know of a more authoritative kind of teaching than training theologically one of the great teachers of the churches in a corrective manner, like Priscilla and Aquila did for Apollos. Then, by the time they go to the Roman church, it appears they’re playing a prominent role there because they have a house church again—as they had had in Ephesus and (likely) Corinth.
Fascinatingly, there are three places where Paul emphasizes spiritual gifts as the determinant for who does what in a local church: 1 Corinthians, Romans, and Ephesians. Well, it turns out that Priscilla was involved in all three of those churches. The evidence seems to show that she had been liberated and freed up to use the gifts that God had given her—evidently, pastoral gifts, perhaps leadership gifts, teaching gifts. Although the Bible doesn’t literally say, “Priscilla, the pastor-teacher . . .” these are the functions ascribed to her. Complementarians argue, “Well, scripture doesn’t say that she was a pastor-teacher.” The counter-argument is Scripture doesn’t say that about anyone, anywhere. There are no named pastor-teachers, with the exception of Peter, who describes himself as a fellow elder in the local church.3
For whatever reason, the New Testament doesn’t ascribe labels when it’s describing functions. Even Ephesians 4:11, which speaks about the fivefold ministry, including pastor and teacher—there’s nothing in that passage to suggest that it excludes women. Therefore, I propose that Priscilla and Aquila are some of the finest examples we have in the New Testament of people that planted churches, cared for disciples, gathered them into community, and taught and trained them in apostolic doctrine.
Readers, I present to you Priscilla, the pastor-teacher, whom I believe to be a front runner of the many amazing women that were discussed in Part I who are pastor-teaching in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. And I’m not even thinking of the roughly 30,000 evangelical churches in the U.S. that are pastored by women clergy.
In Part III, we will conclude this series by discussing woman pastor-teachers in my region and the implications of welcoming women and men as full partners in the Great Commission.
[1] You can watch the video of the full address for more on why I make this argument.
[2] The infamous verses in 1 Timothy 2:11–15.
[3] John also, in writing to a church, speaks of himself as an elder, but probably that refers not to his role, but to his age.
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