The Fire Has Not Left the Daughters

July 1, 2026

"This month’s blog post comes from one of my favorite mentees who is studying for their PhD. Ms. Felicia Cindyana writes an excellent treatise here, that you will find spiritually enlightening."- Dr. James Barber

The Fire Has Not Left the Daughters

The tension surrounding women’s full acceptance in ministry has been an ongoing discussion throughout church history, and remains a significant issue today. Some Christians quote Paul’s words about women being silent in 1 Corinthians 14:34–35 and 1 Timothy 2:11–12 without fully considering the context of the letters. It is like reading someone else’s text message without knowing the prior communication, judging only what is written, and applying it directly to church ministry without realizing how such reading can reinforce gender-based power. This issue is not only a historical debate about interpretation; recent research shows that gender-based discrimination continues to affect and wound women in ministry. Ríos and VerHage’s 2025 study of 610 women ministers across U.S. denominations found that 87 percent reported experiencing misogyny in their ministry contexts.[1] Pamela Cooper-White describes misogyny as hatred of women that is intensified by fear of women’s power or potential and sustained by cultural prejudice.[2] Oakley, Kinmond, and Humphreys’s research on spiritual abuse also shows that, out of 1,591 Christian respondents, 1,002 identified themselves as having personal experience of spiritual abuse, and 69 percent of the sample were women.[3] Scholars also mentions, single women often face restricted access to official ministerial recognition, especially where women’s leadership is more easily legitimized through marriage to ordained husbands or senior pastors.[4] These findings should lead churches to ask a serious theological question: if God promises, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,” including sons and daughters who will prophesy (Acts 2:17; cf. Joel 2:28), why do some church structures still restrict, silence, or wound women whom the Spirit is calling and empowering?

This reflection is not meant to criticize the Church as a whole, because not every church restricts women’s calling. I have experienced this through Dr. Barber, who is open to the view that God gives women the same opportunity to respond to God’s call. I am grateful for the opportunity to write this edition at his request. Dr. Barber has been my professor at ORU, one of the pastors I love at TCCM, and like a spiritual father figure for some ORU students. His encouragement, prayers, and support have strengthened us, including me, as I continue pursuing the study God has opened for me. Through this post, I want to encourage all who read this, especially women who have been hurt in ministry: you did not misunderstand the call of God that came into your life before. God has used women throughout Scripture and Pentecostal history as witnesses, leaders, and carriers of revival. Even when women have been wounded, silenced, or restricted by church systems; the Spirit’s call over their lives has not been erased. The same Holy Spirit who used women before still heals, restores, and sends women today.

Scripture shows evidence that God called and used women in ministry. Deborah served as a prophetess and judge in Israel when Barak was not ready to move forward in obedience to God’s command (Judg. 4:4–9). Mary responded to God’s call to bring Jesus Christ, the Savior, into the world (Luke 1:38). Mary Magdalene was the first witness of the resurrected Christ and was sent to announce the resurrection to the disciples (John 20:16–18). The Samaritan woman, though marginalized, became a witness to her city, and many believed through her testimony (John 4:28–30, 39). Paul also recognized and worked alongside women in ministry, including Phoebe, a deacon and benefactor; Priscilla, his co-worker who helped teach Apollos; Junia, who was noted among the apostles; and Euodia and Syntyche, who labored with Paul in the gospel (Rom. 16:1–7; Acts 18:26; Phil. 4:2–3). These examples show that women were included as leaders, witnesses, teachers, and partners in God’s mission. 

The evidence that God calls and uses women continues from Scripture to the renewal of the Pentecostal movement. For example, speaking in tongues appears in Acts and is discussed by Paul in 1 Corinthians. After that, tongues became less visible in much of the historical record, but in modern Pentecostal history they re-emerged as a central sign of renewal when Agnes Ozman, a woman student at Charles Parham’s Bethel Bible School, was the first of Parham’s students to speak in tongues at Topeka in 1901.[5] This moment became one influential stream within the wider global renewal of Pentecostal experience.[6] Ozman’s story is significant because a woman stood at one of the key moments that helped shape global Pentecostalism. This pattern of women’s involvement also appears at the Azusa Street Revival, women were not only present; they played active roles in prayer ministry, preaching, leadership, publishing, evangelism, and missions. Lucy Farrow, Jennie Evans Moore Seymour, Clara Lum, and Florence Crawford show that women helped sustain and spread the Azusa revival.[7] The wider Pentecostal story also includes women such as Maria Woodworth-Etter and Aimee Semple McPherson, who became important in preaching, healing ministry, church planting, missions, and revival work.[8] Women were not merely participants in Pentecostal renewal; many led, preached, planted, and pioneered the movement. Another inspiring example comes from the early growth of Yoido Full Gospel Church in South Korea. In Yonggi Cho’s cell-group ministry, when many men were reluctant to lead house cells, Cho trained women to lead, teach, care for people, and evangelize. These women became central to the church’s growth and showed that women could carry significant leadership in Spirit-empowered ministry.[9] Yet this history also carries an irony: scholars observe that as movements become more institutionalized, women who helped carry the revival are often given less space to exercise their calling.[10] This raises an important question today: What if God wants to use marginalized women again to help carry the next movement of the Spirit? We do not know exactly how God will move, but Scripture and history invite us to remain open.

One short experience that I want to share: one day, I had an in-person conversation with some women ministers. Right in front of me, they said to me that I might be too naive for expecting great things to happen in ministry, and that I needed to examine whether this desire came from my own ambition or truly from God’s call. They commented that I was still a newbie, not yet seasoned by the painful experiences of church ministry compared with them, who had sacrificed a lot and were almost burned out. I heard their pain, and I believe what they said was true. However, they might have lost sight of the fact that the painful journey in ministry does not have to stop there. That pain can become another door that leads into another vision God shows us for breakthrough. Women who have been wounded or silenced should not bury their calling. God was not mistaken in choosing you, and you were not mistaken in hearing the voice of the Spirit who once called you to step into the work of His kingdom. Why give up too soon? Is the fire still burning inside of you, even if it is only a small flame? If it is still there, guard it and ask the Spirit to make it burn again. I hope this message brings fresh oil to your heart so that fire can burn again. The same Spirit who used women in Scripture, Pentecostal revival, and global church growth is still working today; He heals, restores, and sends women again.

Felicia Cindyana

PhD Student and Dean’s Fellow Graduate, College of Theology and Ministry,

Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA

fcindyana@oru.edu

_______________________

[1] Elizabeth Ríos and Elizabeth Mosbo VerHage, Empowering Resilient Women Ministers: Unveiling the Fuel to Serve Amidst Misogyny (Pastoral Study Project, Louisville Institute, 2025), reported in Adelle M. Banks, “Women Ministers Resist Misogyny with Mentors, Training, Resilience, Study Finds,” Religion News Service, September 3, 2025.

[2] Pamela Cooper-White, The Cry of Tamar: Violence against Women and the Church’s Response, 2nd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 66.

[3] Lisa Oakley and Justin Humphreys, Understanding Spiritual Abuse in Christian Communities (CCPAS, 2018), 3; Lisa Oakley, Kathryn Kinmond, and Peter Blundell, “Responding Well to Spiritual Abuse: Practice Implications for Counselling and Psychotherapy,” British Journal of Guidance & Counselling 52, no. 2 (2024): 193. Lisa Oakley, “Understanding Spiritual Abuse,” Church Times, February 16, 2018. Oakley defines spiritual abuse as “a form of emotional and psychological abuse” marked by “a systematic pattern of coercive and controlling behaviour in a religious context,” and identifies behaviors such as manipulation, enforced accountability, secrecy, pressure to conform, misuse of Scripture or teaching, claims of divine authority, isolation, and elitism.

[4] Tito Madrazo, “Profeta Ana Maldonado: Pushing the Boundaries of Paradoxical Domesticity,” Perspectivas 14 (Spring 2017): 145; Selina Rachel Stone, Holy Spirit, Holy Bodies? Pentecostal Spirituality, Pneumatology and the Politics of Embodiment (PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2021), 232–33.

[5] Agnes N. Ozman LaBerge, “My Personal Testimony,” Apostolic Archives International, accessed June 29, 2026. Ozman writes, “I was the first one to speak in tongues in the bible school.”

[6] Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), front matter; see also chapters 4–7 on Pentecostalism in Latin America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific.

[7] Estrelda Y. Alexander, The Women of Azusa Street (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim Press, 2005); Barbara Cavaness, “Spiritual Chain Reactions: Women Used of God,” AG Heritage 25, no. 4 (Winter 2005–06): 24–29.

[8] Cavaness, “Spiritual Chain Reactions,” 24–29; The Foursquare Church, “Aimee Semple McPherson,” accessed June 29, 2026.

[9] Paul Yonggi Cho, “God Gave Me a Dream,” Pentecostal Evangel, November 4, 1979, 9–10; Darrin J. Rodgers, “This Week in AG History—November 4, 1979,” Assemblies of God News, November 2, 2017.

[10] Charles H. Barfoot and Gerald T. Sheppard, “Prophetic vs. Priestly Religion: The Changing Role of Women Clergy in Classical Pentecostal Churches,” Review of Religious Research 22, no. 1 (September 1980): 2–17; Lisa P. Stephenson, “Prophesying Women and Ruling Men: Women’s Religious Authority in North American Pentecostalism,” Religions 2, no. 3 (2011): 410–26.