Before We Change the Lock, We Should Build the Door

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The Presbyterian Church of NSW is consulting with its people about whether to remove women from the eldership. If you’re a member of a PCNSW church, you may have been pointed to a WHS survey asking you to assess the impact of the proposed change on wellbeing, culture, and safety. The survey is clear about what it’s doing: “The purpose of the survey is not to assess whether individuals agree or not with the proposed change but to assess the impact if all future elders are male.”

That’s the right question. And it’s a question the Assembly has asked through a Consultative Committee specifically established for this purpose. But outside the survey itself, I haven’t seen much public analysis of the evidence that bears on exactly these questions — the governance research, the Royal Commission findings, the experience of sister denominations, the state of our own safeguarding training. The survey asks whether the change could influence conflict, bullying, or harassment. It asks whether it could affect willingness to report. It asks what additional support would be needed. These are serious questions. They deserve serious answers grounded in evidence, not just feelings.

This post is my attempt to fill that gap — to lay out the evidence that bears on the questions the survey is asking — not to claim the answer is settled, but to argue the risks are serious enough that the Assembly should not proceed on trust alone. Not because the theological arguments don’t matter — they do — but because a church that changes its governance structure without counting the cost isn’t being faithful. It’s being reckless.

I should say plainly: I sit on the status quo side of this debate. I think the current arrangement — male ministers, male and female ruling elders — has served the PCNSW well, and I’m not persuaded that the case for change has been made. But this post isn’t primarily about which side is right on the exegesis. It’s about something I think both sides should care about: the consultation is asking people to assess impacts on safety, wellbeing, and culture, but it provides no evidence, no framework, and no guidance for thinking about those questions. People are being asked to answer a governance and safeguarding question armed with nothing but instinct. That’s not good enough for a decision this consequential.

I’m not an elder. I don’t have standing in the Assembly. I’m a member and lay leader in the PCNSW — someone who sits in the pew, serves where I can, and cares about what happens to the people around me. I’ve spent time working on child safety policy in community organisations, and that work has shaped how I think about governance, authority, and what happens when institutions get the structures wrong.

This post is long. The issue deserves it. I’ll try to lay out both sides of the argument fairly before explaining why I think the proposed change — even if you accept its theological premises — is being pursued in the wrong order and without the safeguards our people need.

Not all the evidence below carries the same weight. Royal Commission findings and Assembly documents are primary sources. Peer-reviewed research is stronger than commentary. I use overseas denominational examples and advocacy material to illustrate implementation risks, not to predict NSW outcomes.

What’s actually being proposed

The overture from the Special Committee on Elders and Deacons would insert a single word — “man” — into the PCNSW Code §4.02(c), so that the qualification for eldership reads: “be a mature Christian man, who demonstrates exemplary Christ-like character as defined by the Scriptures (1 Tim. 3:1–7; Tit. 1:5–9).”

Women currently serving as elders would be grandfathered. No new women could be ordained. Every church court in the denomination — session, presbytery, and Assembly — would become exclusively male. NSW is the last Australian state that permits women ruling elders. The other states moved to male-only eldership between the late 1990s and early 2000s, so the question isn’t hypothetical. We can look at what happened elsewhere.

This is not a debate about biblical authority

Both sides need to hear this, because both sides sometimes talk past it.

Craig Tucker’s paper, endorsed for wide distribution and discussion by more than thirty ministers and elders, puts it plainly: “The current debate in NSW is not a debate between those who believe in the authority of the Bible and those who do not.” Both sides affirm biblical authority. Both affirm complementarianism. Both agree that pastoral ministry should be restricted to men. Both agree that women may speak, argue from Scripture, and persuade at every level of church government.

The entire practical disagreement comes down to whether a woman may cast a vote in a session meeting.

That’s it. One vote in a committee. And yet this question has consumed years of denominational energy, generated thousands of pages of argument, and is now heading for a vote that will permanently reshape how the church governs itself.

The question everyone should be asking

The exegetical arguments on both sides are well-developed, and I’ll summarise them. But the question that determines everything is one of Presbyterian polity, not Greek vocabulary: which biblical texts define the ruling elder’s office?

The Smith/EDC position

Dr Murray Smith’s case for male-only eldership argues that PCNSW elders are biblical elders, defined by the overseer passages in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. The PCNSW Code already cites those passages. The Code already describes elders using the specific language of those passages — “shepherds” under “the Chief Shepherd,” exercising “oversight and government,” “competent to teach.” If those texts define the office, and those texts require the officeholder to be male, then the conclusion follows.

This is the overture’s most effective argument, because it turns the Code against the status quo. Code §4.02(c) says elders must demonstrate character “as defined by the Scriptures (1 Tim. 3:1–7; Tit. 1:5–9).” If you’ve already legislated that those texts define your elders, you’ve already accepted the premises. The overture just draws the conclusion.

Smith also argues that 1 Timothy 2:12 — Paul’s prohibition on women “teaching or exercising authority over men” — anticipates the elder qualifications in chapter 3, tying the two passages together. The prohibition is grounded in creation order (1 Tim. 2:13–14), not cultural circumstances, and therefore applies permanently. The complementarian scholarly consensus behind this reading is strong — Andreas Köstenberger’s syntactical analysis of the Greek, Thomas Schreiner’s work on the creation-order grounding, Wayne Grudem’s systematic case, Douglas Moo’s definitive statement that the restrictions are “permanent, authoritative for the church in all times and places.” These aren’t fringe voices. They represent the mainstream of evangelical complementarian scholarship.

The “husband of one wife” requirement (1 Tim. 3:2; Tit. 1:6) adds weight. Paul uses the ordinary Greek words for “man” and “woman,” and applies the female equivalent — “wife of one husband” — to enrolled widows in 1 Timothy 5:9, confirming that the male phrasing is gender-specific rather than generic.

The Tucker position

Tucker’s response isn’t egalitarian. It’s a polity argument. He contends that the Westminster Assembly in 1645, when it wrote the Form of Presbyterial Church Government, deliberately grounded its “Other Church-Governors” (ruling elders) in different texts from its pastors — specifically Romans 12:8 and 1 Corinthians 12:28, which describe a gift of governance, not the overseer passages of 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

George Gillespie, whose work shaped the Westminster Assembly’s thinking on this point, cited Titus 1:6–8 for the ruling elder’s character but deliberately left out verse 9 — the verse about teaching. He wasn’t being careless. He was making a distinction. The vote at the Assembly passed with only two dissenters, neither of whom wanted the overseer texts applied to governors.

Tucker documents that when the 1967 GAA opened eldership to women, the resolution explicitly cited this Westminster distinction: it “holds the doctrine of the Eldership as set forth in the Westminster Form of Presbyterian Church Government, under the heading ‘Other Church Governors'” and on that basis proposed that women could serve. The 1997 GAA confirmed this was a matter of government, not doctrine.

So when the overture is framed as “returning to our roots,” Tucker’s counter is that the roots being invoked aren’t Westminster’s 1645 settlement but Robert Dabney’s 1860 reinterpretation. Iain Murray, the respected Banner of Truth editor, acknowledged this: “My personal opinion is that the [Dabney Model] has often found acceptance among us because we assumed it was the position biblically established by the Westminster Assembly. The truth is that the assumption is wrong.”

There’s also a separate biblical case — not Tucker’s primary argument, but present in the “no change” paper circulating among members. It points to women exercising authority throughout Scripture: Deborah governing as prophet and judge (Judges 4–5), Huldah speaking God’s word to kings (2 Kings 22–23), Phoebe called diakonos — the same word Paul uses for himself (Romans 16:1), Junia called “outstanding among the apostles” (Romans 16:7), women as the first witnesses and proclaimers of the resurrection. The “husband of one wife” language, on this reading, is an idiom about marital fidelity, not gender exclusivity — just as “you shall not covet your neighbour’s wife” (Exodus 20:17) doesn’t condone women coveting their neighbour’s husband. I find some of these arguments more persuasive than others, but they’re made by people who take Scripture seriously, and dismissing them as liberal is lazy.

The Code catches both sides

Here’s what makes this genuinely hard. The Smith side has a strong textual argument from the Code as currently written. The Tucker side has a strong historical argument about legislative intent — what the Assembly meant when it wrote those words. The eight-year process (2015–2023) that produced the current Code language considered this question and chose not to insert “man.” That’s not an accident.

Both arguments have integrity. The question is what you weigh more: what the text says, or what the people who wrote it intended.

Even if Smith is right, the order is wrong

This is where I part company with the overture. Not on the exegesis — reasonable people disagree on that, and I respect the scholarship on both sides. But on the sequencing.

There’s a distinction worth naming first: most PCNSW congregations don’t currently have women elders. For many churches, the practical effect of the overture would be small. But there is a difference between a church that has chosen not to elect women elders and a church that is prohibited from doing so. The current Code preserves the freedom of each session to discern, under Scripture and the Spirit, whether women should serve. The proposed change removes that freedom permanently — not just for churches that have women elders now, but for every future congregation that might discern that call differently.

The overture proposes to make all church courts exclusively male without first establishing any concrete mechanism for women’s participation in governance. No alternative has been designed, consulted on, voted on, or tested. The Assembly is being asked to remove an existing structure and trust that something will replace it.

The experience of every other state that’s done this, and every comparable denomination overseas, says the replacement doesn’t come. Or it comes as what Lauren Riske called “shadow elders” in AP Magazine — women invited to attend but not vote, burdened with responsibility but stripped of standing. A two-tier system that satisfies nobody.

In 2020, the Women’s Ministry Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Australia — our own denomination — surveyed 484 people (324 women, 162 men) across the PCA and presented its findings to the 2023 General Assembly of Australia. More than 50% of all respondents — men and women — could not affirm that women trust the elders with issues specifically related to women such as domestic violence and sexism. Less than 50% of women believed they were consulted by elders regarding church direction. More than 30% of women felt limited in what they could do. On multiple questions, the gap between how female congregation members and male ministers perceived the same reality was statistically significant. This is not overseas data. It comes from our own churches, and it paints a picture of a communication gap that ministers and elders need to take seriously — the report’s own words.

Murray Capill, Dean of Ministry Development at the Reformed Theological College in Melbourne, acknowledged that “from my experience and observation, lots of us don’t do that well” at consulting women.

Overseas examples are suggestive, not dispositive. But the patterns are consistent enough to take seriously. The Save the PCA “Functional Female Officer Report” (2025) — published by a conservative advocacy group within the American Presbyterian Church in America, but documenting observable practices — found that numerous PCA (America) churches have created quasi-official workarounds: women leading worship elements, sitting in session meetings as “elder advisors,” going through officer training, being commissioned with public vows — all without formal office. Male-only eldership, in practice, generates constant pressure toward informal arrangements that satisfy nobody. The rules say one thing; the practice says another.

The Christian Reformed Church’s experience tells a different story. The CRC opened all offices to women on a local-option basis in 1995, and 36 complementarian churches with approximately 7,500 members left to form the United Reformed Churches in North America. The denomination never recovered those numbers. The lesson cuts both ways: this question is deeply divisive in either direction. But the PCNSW already has 35 years of settled practice. The disruption flows from changing that practice, not from maintaining it.

The Royal Commission said this, specifically

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013–2017) examined over 4,000 survivors’ accounts from religious institutions. Volume 16, devoted entirely to religious organisations, found — as a matter of evidence — that the absence or insufficient involvement of women in leadership and governance negatively affected decision-making, accountability, and may have contributed to inadequate institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

That’s not a recommendation. It’s a finding. Based on evidence. From the most significant institutional abuse inquiry in Australian history.

The Commission identified clericalism — the elevation of ordained or ministerial status above laity — as a significant contributing factor in some religious institutions. It found that insufficient involvement of women in leadership and governance negatively affected decision-making and accountability. Recommendation 16.37 called for child-safety advisory mechanisms that include lay men and women with relevant expertise. The Commission received allegations relating to 106 cases in Presbyterian Church institutions across Australia. We are not exempt.

A church that votes to make all its governance bodies exclusively male in 2026 — nine years after that Final Report — cannot claim it didn’t know.

The governance research raises a serious caution

Tucker’s paper notes that “it is acknowledged on all sides of the debate that governance bodies comprising men and women working together make better decisions and achieve better outcomes.” The Elders and Deacons Committee’s own 2021 report cited the same evidence. The academic literature is more cautious than either side acknowledges — an ANU review found that most studies do not convincingly isolate a causal effect of board diversity on overall organisational performance. But the evidence for narrower effects — improved monitoring, better attendance, stronger scrutiny, and greater sensitivity to ethical risk — is robust. The most that can responsibly be said is that removing women from governance may carry governance costs, especially around challenge and accountability. The research raises a serious caution. It does not settle the polity question by itself.

Adams and Ferreira’s 2009 study in the Journal of Financial Economics found that female directors have better attendance records, that male directors attend more reliably when boards are gender-diverse, that women are more likely to join monitoring committees, and that CEO accountability increases measurably. An important nuance: they also found that the effect depends on existing governance quality. In well-governed organisations with strong accountability already in place, adding diversity provides diminishing returns. But in poorly-governed organisations — where scrutiny is weak and challenge is absent — gender diversity adds significant value. The question for the PCNSW is whether all our sessions are in the well-governed category. The denomination has never measured this.

Irving Janis’s foundational work on groupthink identified homogeneity of membership as a key antecedent condition — the very thing that makes groups stop questioning themselves. Session meetings are governance meetings. They make decisions about people’s lives — pastoral care, discipline, complaints, child safety.

The proponents of male-only eldership would argue, fairly, that if Scripture requires it, then pragmatic research can’t override a clear biblical command. I agree with the principle. But it loops back to the polity question: if the Westminster model is correct and ruling elders are grounded in different texts, then there is no clear biblical command to override the research. The governance evidence becomes a relevant consideration in an area where Scripture gives the church freedom to order its government wisely.

Compliance is not comprehension

Someone will point out that we have Breaking the Silence. They’re right. BTS has been in place since 1997 — one of the earliest church safeguarding programs in Australia. It’s mandatory for elders, ministers, and anyone working with children or vulnerable people. It covers child protection, domestic violence, abuse of authority, mandatory reporting. It’s been updated regularly, expanded to cover DFV in 2020, and mapped to the Royal Commission’s Child Safe Standards. The Conduct Protocol Unit is professionally staffed. This is real work done by serious people.

BTS is more developed than many people realise. Foundations training runs on a three-year cycle with annual Read and Review refreshers for those working directly with children and young people. The CPU conducts compliance audits across churches. The online training requires an 80% quiz score for satisfactory completion, and reattempts are permitted. An independent contact person option exists for reporting abuse via the CPU, providing a pathway that does not run through the local session. This is a real and serious safeguarding architecture.

The harder question is not whether BTS exists, but what public evidence is available that it changes reporting behaviour and outcomes over time. The quiz tests knowledge — whether you know the right answer — but not competency: whether you can handle an actual disclosure, manage a conflict of interest, or respond appropriately to a vulnerable person in distress. After 28 years of operation, I have not found a public independent evaluation of BTS effectiveness or published outcome data that would let anyone assess whether the training changes behaviour. The system may well work. But we can’t currently demonstrate that it does, and that gap matters more if we’re about to remove another layer of structural accountability.

A 2025 peer-reviewed study in Child Abuse & Neglect (Hunt, Higgins & Willis, Australian Catholic University) interviewed 20 Christian leaders across denominations about safeguarding training and titled their findings “Just tick the box and move on.” It’s a small qualitative study — not a definitive evaluation of any one program, and not specific to BTS — but the patterns it identified are worth taking seriously: compliance-focused mentality rather than genuine culture change, cultural resistance from leaders who see safeguarding as unnecessary external regulation, and outright hostility from some volunteers. Those patterns describe a risk that any church safeguarding program needs to guard against.

The Anglican Diocese of Sydney enforces a hard rule: if your safeguarding training lapses and isn’t renewed within 30 days, you step down from ministry entirely. The Catholic Church runs formal external audits against national safeguarding standards with registered auditors. We have neither enforcement mechanism.

The WHS survey asks directly: “Do you believe that this could impact the willingness of staff or volunteers to report issues such as conflict, bullying, or harassment?” There is a reasonable concern, supported by governance and institutional abuse research, that when the people receiving complaints share the demographic profile of the people being complained about, reporting confidence is affected. Our own denomination’s 2020 WMPCA survey is consistent with this concern — even men in the PCA couldn’t affirm that women trust elders with issues like domestic violence. That wasn’t just a women’s perception. It was a denomination-wide finding. We don’t need to guess what the risks might be. We have data from our own churches.

Genesis 3:16 — the text complementarians should take most seriously

This argument doesn’t require an egalitarian theology. It requires taking Genesis 3 seriously within the complementarian framework.

“Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Both sides agree this describes a distortion — what sin does to the relationship between men and women, not what God designed.

John Piper, co-founder of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, calls this a description of the curse. He identifies what he calls “the essence of corrupted maleness” as the self-aggrandising effort to subdue and control and exploit women. Calvin read it as introducing a harsher subjection than existed before the Fall. Susan Foh, whose 1975 interpretation in the Westminster Theological Journal most complementarians follow, concluded that the rule of love founded in paradise is replaced by struggle, tyranny, and domination.

Even CBMW’s Jonathan Leeman conceded that views of male headship can contribute to partner violence. Al Mohler said complementarian theology “can be, and it sometimes is” used to abuse women.

So here’s the question we need to sit with: if you believe Genesis 3:16 predicts that male authority, post-Fall, will tend toward sinful domination — and you do believe that, it’s in your own literature — then what governance structures guard against that predictable distortion? The answer can’t be “godly men will lead like Christ.” That’s the aspiration. The question is what happens when they don’t. Because sometimes they don’t. The SBC’s 700-name database of accused abusers says they don’t. The Presbyterian Church in America’s 2023 General Assembly, where an all-male body voted down all four abuse-prevention proposals, says they don’t.

Removing women from governance concentrates authority in exactly the group most susceptible to the corruption Genesis 3 describes, while eliminating the structural accountability that diverse governance provides. That should bother every complementarian in the room.

What would need to be true before this change could responsibly be made

I’m not saying “never.” I’m saying “not yet.” And I’m saying the burden of proof is on those proposing the change to show that these conditions are met:

An alternative mechanism for women’s participation in governance has been designed, consulted on, and voted on by the Assembly — and published before the vote on the overture, not promised afterward. Not promised. Not recommended. Voted on, with specifics. What is it? How does it work? What standing do women have? Can they merely advise, or do they have constitutive power? These aren’t details to work out later. They’re the whole question.

Breaking the Silence has been independently evaluated for effectiveness. BTS has an 80% knowledge quiz, compliance audits, and a contact-person pathway — but after 28 years, the denomination should also be able to demonstrate publicly that its training changes behaviour and outcomes. Competency-based assessment, independent external evaluation, and published outcome data would allow the denomination to know — in a measurable sense — whether its safeguarding system works. If it does, prove it. If it doesn’t, fix it before you remove the structural safeguard that partly compensates for the gap.

An independent complaints mechanism, accessible to women and not solely administered by male office-bearers, has been established and resourced. The CPU and contact-person pathway already provide some independence from the local session. The live question is whether that pathway is sufficiently independent from the denomination itself, sufficiently visible to women and volunteers, and sufficiently trusted — particularly for complaints about male leaders heard by all-male bodies. Dealing with complaints by women against male leaders is, as Tucker’s paper notes, “particularly problematic when the case is heard by a group in which only men get a vote.”

The church has mapped which pathway handles which class of concern. The WHS survey asks about conflict, bullying, harassment, and willingness to report. BTS is designed for abuse, abuse of authority, and child safety — and it does that work seriously. But not every concern the survey names is a BTS matter. If the Assembly is asking members to assess broader risks, it should be able to show where a complaint about session conflict goes, where a bullying concern about a ministry leader is heard, and what independent options exist in each case. These pathways need to exist, be published, and be known — not assumed.

The Healthy Complementarianism resolutions adopted by the GAA have been implemented at session level across PCNSW presbyteries, with measurable outcomes reported annually to the Assembly. Dr Smith’s own framing: if we say ‘no’ to women in eldership without also saying ‘yes’ to all the ways men and women complement each other, we’ve only done half the job. The Other Cheek observed that the Healthy Complementarianism paper “is clear on how to change the church code to bring about male elders, but there are no worked-out solutions for the ideas to support women.” The ‘yes’ doesn’t exist yet. Build it before you legislate the ‘no.’

The deeper irony

Presbyterian governance was designed, from its inception, to prevent the concentration of power. Calvin insisted on lay participation alongside clergy. Knox built Scottish polity around elder parity and appeals to higher courts. The whole system exists because the Reformers understood — on the basis of total depravity — that unchecked authority corrupts.

The ruling elder exists as a representative of the congregation. Not an extension of the minister’s authority. A representative. If ruling elders represent the congregation, and the congregation includes women, then a governance body that systematically excludes women has a representational deficit built into its foundation.

Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 12 insists that the body cannot say to any member, “I have no need of you.” The ear cannot be told it has no place because it is not an eye.

The proposed change tells more than half the body of Christ that their voice has no formal standing in the governance of their own church. Not because they lack character, competence, or calling. Because of their sex. That should trouble us — not because complementarianism is wrong, but because this particular expression of it contradicts the very logic of the governance system we claim to value.

The evidence in this post has limits. Some of it is institutional and direct; some is comparative and indirect; some comes from advocacy sources I’ve used only as illustration. I’m not claiming the future can be read off a single dataset. I’m arguing that the risks are credible enough, and the safeguards underdeveloped enough, that the Assembly should not make this change on trust.

Where I land

I don’t think the exegetical question is as settled as either side claims. The meaning of authentein in 1 Timothy 2:12 is genuinely contested among serious scholars. The relationship between the overseer passages and the ruling elder’s office has been debated within Presbyterianism for centuries. Whether 1 Timothy 5:17’s malista identifies a subgroup of teaching elders or refers to all elders is unresolved. These are hard questions with honest disagreement on all sides.

But even if I’m wrong about the exegesis, I’m not wrong about the sequencing. You don’t remove a structural safeguard before you’ve built the replacement. You don’t tell women they’ll be looked after by the same system that, in denomination after denomination, has demonstrably failed to look after them. You don’t vote to concentrate authority in the hands of one sex while knowing what the Royal Commission found about what that does.

If we must change the lock, let’s first build the door. The people who will bear the cost of getting this wrong are the ones with the least power to do anything about it.

I’ve talked to women in our churches who accept complementarianism and still feel afraid of this change. Not because they think it’s theologically wrong — they’re genuinely uncertain about that — but because they’ve seen what happens when institutions consolidate male authority without structural accountability. Some of them have experienced it personally. When they hear “godly men will lead like Christ,” they hear a promise that has been broken before. Not by bad theology, but by bad men operating within good theology. And they wonder who will notice, and who will act, when the governance table has no one who shares their experience sitting at it.

That’s not an argument against complementarianism. It’s an argument for taking it seriously enough to do it carefully.

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Published by andrewyager

Andrew is the CEO of the Real World Group, a family of IT and telecommunications companies based in Sydney, Australia. Andrew loves Jesus, his wife Bess and his four awesome kids.

4 thoughts on “Before We Change the Lock, We Should Build the Door”

  1. I have updated to reflect that the 30 ministers and elders supported the distribution of Craig Tucker’s paper, rather than signed following comments from Andrew Mitchell pointing out that this is the correct phrasing of their words from the paper.

    Reply

    1. I have also updated the article to correct the incorrect reference to the Royal Commission findings, the pass mark required for BTS training, and the role of clericalism in the prevalence of child abuse. A few smaller edits have also been made to hopefully more accurately reflect the weight of certain sources.

      Reply

      1. I’ve continued working through the evidence for a companion piece to this post, and in doing so I’ve gone back and checked several of my original sources more carefully. I’ve also benefited from good friends who have pointed me to the primary data — including the WMPCA survey itself — which has let me verify claims I had confused while writing this. A few things needed fixing.

        The most significant: the 2020 survey I cited was conducted by the Women’s Ministry Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Australia — our own denomination — not by the American Presbyterian Church in America as I originally wrote. The findings (484 respondents, presented to the 2023 GAA) are from our own churches. That actually makes them more relevant, not less, but I should have got the attribution right the first time. American PCA references elsewhere in the post (the Save the PCA report, the 2023 GA abuse vote) are now clearly distinguished from Australian material.

        I’ve also tightened the Breaking the Silence section to better acknowledge what already exists — the three-year training cycle, annual refreshers, 80% quiz pass mark, CPU audits, and the contact-person pathway — before pressing on the question of whether we can demonstrate the system’s effectiveness publicly. The previous version didn’t give BTS enough credit.

        A few other adjustments: the governance research section now better reflects the academic nuance (the evidence for monitoring and accountability benefits is strong; the evidence for overall performance effects is more contested); and I’ve added a point about the difference between a church that has chosen not to elect women elders and one that is prohibited from doing so. Smaller wording fixes throughout for precision.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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