Personally, I think many of the errors today stem from women Sunday-school teachers. And they are not a good role model for young boys in that setting. Definitely no women pastors either.
Spurgeon called Mrs. Lavinia Bartlett his best deacon. Her ministry as described in
The Sword and the Trowel :
"Mrs. Bartlett is a remarkable woman. Converted with her whole heart to God before arriving at her teens, she early manifested an irrepressible desire to seek the soul-good of others. While
engaged at twelve years of age as a Sabbath-school teacher, her infantile exertions were marvellously seconded by God. She was a spiritual mother even then; and many souls were brought by her to the Saviour. . . . .
stimulated by her success in the school, [she] sought to enlarge her sphere of usefulness by journeying from village to village within easy distance of her parents' residence, where she might seek the salvation of neverdying souls. It was tough work
to exhort burly farmers and their still more boisterous sons to seek an emancipation from the tyranny of Satan; but is anything too difficult for even a timid damsel, filled with the sufficiency of Jesus Christ?"
"Mr. Thomas Olney, the venerable treasurer of the Church, invited Mrs. Bartlett to conduct the Bible class....it has increased its numbers, until the average attendance has now become seven hundred, which sometimes swells to an additional hundred or so."
"On a recent visit to the class, it seemed to me that there was an undefined something in the prayer alone which robbed one of that calmness of mind so requisite in joining in a public supplication, but filled the soul at the same time with a holy exhilaration and devout expectation which fully compensated for loss of calm. It was a simple, tender, earnest, powerful and prevailing address to a real present Father.
If woman can thus approach the Lord in supplication, how much do we not lose, my male friends, by not occasionally hearing her voice?"
"[Her teaching] was
doctrinal—founded on the eternal verities of the great I AM. It was chiefly
exhortative—recalling God's performances in bygone times of Christian experience, specifying the many sacred privileges of the present, painting bright pictures of coming joys and communions to be realised by faith in the far-stretched future. Better still—it was savoury, full of Jesus.
Peculiarly tender and eloquent was her appeal to the unconverted. Convince a sinner of your real anxiety for his eternal welfare, and you have opened a channel in his heart for further communications.
Few could resist admiring the exuberant and passionate utterances of this Bible-teacher."
