How can you be a woman pastor? Didn’t Paul say he forbade women to speak in church and that the man is the spiritual leader?
This question would take a long time to fully answer, so I’ll give you the short version. Paul and other New Testament letter writers did make some statements about women that suggest that they did not allow women in leadership in the early church. However, there are other passages in Paul’s letters in which he commends the women who are actually leading the churches (Rom 16:1)! It is easy to take a snippet of Paul and making sweeping generalizations that exclude people, but when you read the scope of Paul’s writing, it is obvious that his primary message is, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28) Besides, when God called me into ministry, I didn’t think it was a good idea to refuse.
