Ministering Together Magazine

Welcome to Ministering Together, a brief snapshot of how men and women are using their gifts in the ministry of the Presbyterian Church.

Click here to view individual articles from our Ministering Together series.

Or click here to download the whole magazine.

In 2023, the General Assembly of Australia encouraged churches to examine and clarify the place of women in our church. In this magazine we wish to support that request with stories from across the country highlighting the different ways men and women serve God’s people together in churches big and small, metro and regional. While we understand that not every example will work in every context, we hope that the stories contained in these pages might get every church thinking more deeply about how women and men can best serve alongside one another.

In thinking about how we work together in this way then, it is important to begin with the Scriptures, the Supreme Standard of our church. To this end the Women’s Ministry Committee of the PCA have written a paper outlining the biblical case for seeing men and women work well together. This led to the development of ten biblical principles for thinking about men and women in ministry together that were commended by the General Assembly of Australia (GAA) in 2023. These principles are spread throughout this booklet for your consideration.

If you would like to read the paper that went to the GAA, you can find it at https://www.wmpca.org.au/2023-gaa-paper. We trust these principles will provide sound guidance for local sessions as they seek to think about how men and women can serve and lead together in their local churches.

We have also included insights from complementarian scholar Dr Clare Deeves, whose 2023 PhD Working Together explored how women serving in word-based ministries within complementarian Australian churches experience their working relationships with their pastors. Her research — the first of its kind — highlights both positive and negative experiences and identifies key factors that shape healthy ministry partnerships. Deeves’ goal is to strengthen collaboration between female associates and their senior ministers, and several of her findings and participant reflections appear throughout this magazine.

As you leaf through the pages of this magazine, we hope it will give you cause to celebrate, to thank God, and to strive to use the gifts he has given to all his people for appropriate service to him.

Rev. Dr. James Snare
Convener, Women’s Ministry Committee of the PCA