The Priesthood of ALL Believers and Its Radical Implications

Don Payne joins Jami and Amy for a conversation about priesthood, gender in ministry, and the biblical storyline from Genesis to Revelation. They trace how God's people are called to represent him, teach one another, and mediate grace in ways that are not gendered, but shared across the whole community.

In this episode, the big question is not who gets access, but how God has always been expanding access through Christ. The conversation moves from Old Testament priesthood to the church as God's temple, then into marriage, singleness, and why the New Testament family reshapes how believers relate to one another.

Key Topics

• In this episode, Don explains why Revelation 5:10 and Exodus 19:6 point to a shared priestly vocation for all of God's people, not a divided one.
• He unpacks priesthood as more than sacrifice. Priests also taught, preserved knowledge, and mediated for the people of God.
• Jami connects that theme to Genesis 1 and the expansion motif across Scripture, from the garden to the new heavens and new earth.
• The group discusses how Jesus fulfills and expands the tabernacle and temple pattern by bringing God's presence among his people.
• Don argues that the New Testament presents the church as the temple of the Holy Spirit, a stunning shift from restricted access to shared access.
• They revisit Paul's household codes and note how radical it was for him to open mutual responsibility in marriage and family life.
• Amy highlights the practical beauty of interdependence in church leadership, where women and men help one another teach, discern, and correct.
• The conversation keeps returning to the church as family, where sibling language matters and spiritual kinship outruns modern assumptions about the nuclear family.
• They connect this to the kingdom vocation given in Genesis and Exodus. God's people are called to be a sign to the nations, not just to themselves.
• The episode closes by pressing the question of whether women can contribute to the church's faithfulness in priestly, teaching, and mediating roles. The answer implied throughout is yes.