Women Deacons at the 2026 PCA General Assembly

At its 53rd General Assembly in Louisville in June, the Presbyterian Church in America considered Overture 37 from Pacific Presbytery, which would have amended Book of Church Order 9-3 to strike “men” from the qualifications for deacon, opening the office to women at each session’s discretion.

The Overtures Committee recommended rejection 115 to 14, finding the PCA’s constitutional documents a “sufficient expression of the Biblical warrant, nature, qualifications, and duties of Deacons.” The assembly agreed by voice vote on June 25.

Speaking for the overture, TE Jeffrey Choi argued from Romans 16:1, where Paul commends “our sister Phoebe, a servant [diakonos] of the church at Cenchreae.” The “humble servant” reading of diakonos, he said, is “no longer lexically viable”: a genitive paired with a named institution (“of the church at Cenchreae”) almost always marks an office, citing Robert Strimple’s minority report to the OPC’s 1988 study committee on women in office. He also argued that the “wives” reading of 1 Timothy 3:11 fails because gunaikas has no anchoring genitive or andros. Phoebe held a defined ecclesiastical office, he concluded, though perhaps not an ordained one.

David P. Barry, professor of New Testament at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, responded in “Possibility, Probability, or Certainty?” at Jude 3 & the PCA. The office reading is possible but not probable: diakonos usually means general service in the New Testament, the diaconate may not yet have existed when Paul wrote in the mid-50s, and the genitive is too flexible a construction to bear the weight placed on it.

Ryan Biese devoted episode 344 of the Westminster Standard podcast, “Was Phoebe a Deacon?”, to the debate with Barry and Ben Dunson, also professor of New Testament at Greenville. They replay Choi’s speech and push back: the cited parallels (judge, high priest, proconsul) point to office because those nouns are inherently official, and diakonos is not; of its 29 New Testament occurrences, only three clearly mean the office. Romans 16:1 cannot decide the question. For them, 1 Timothy 2–3 does: its frame of authority in the household of God restricts the office to men, while women assist the deacons, as BCO 9-7 provides.