There are basically two questions:
Can women preach/teach/etc?
Can women be pastors?
This is an important distinction to make, because one does not need to be an ordained member of the clergy in order to preach and teach. And, in fact, all throughout the history of the Christian Church there have been valiant, brave women of faith who have defended the faith, proclaimed the faith, and taught the faith.
We have, for example, in St. Paul's epistle to the Romans the mention of several women who were at varying levels of ministry and work. The following is Romans 16:1-16
"I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a servant of the church at Cenchreae, that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints, and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a patron of many and of myself as well.
The ESV here translates the word used as "servant", but the Greek is quite less ambiguous. It calls her a διάκονον (diakonon), a deacon.
And yes, female deacons--sometimes called deaconesses--have been a thing in Christianity since antiquity. Though these things seem to have fluctuated a bit depending on time and place.
St. Phoebe the Deacon was, based on Paul's words here, a patron of the church. That is, she was probably a widow with some money, in the early days of Christianity wealthy widows often used their wealth to turn their villas and homes into places of worship. An example of this can be seen at the archeological site at Dura-Europa in Syria, in which a house had been modified for Christian worship, including a built-in baptismal font to conduct baptisms in, and a dedicated space for the Liturgy.
Whether or not St. Phoebe was a deacon in a more generalized sense, or in the more technical sense is open to debate. That women were called deacons is clear, what is less clear is exactly what sorts of ecclesiastical duties this would have encompassed.
Here, again, St. Paul mentions a woman, St. Prisca and her husband St. Aquila. And he calls this married couple his "fellow workers in Christ". And, again, we see that they were patrons of a church. What exactly was their work is probably unclear, but that Paul calls both of them "fellow workers" shouldn't be glossed over. Neither should it be glossed over that the Apostle names Prisca, the wife, before her husband Aquila.
The Apostle again mentions a woman, this time by the name of Mary. We know less about her than many others mentioned here. Attempts to identify her with other persons named Mary are tenuous at best. But yet, she was clearly very important for Paul to mention her here.
The ESV here renders the language as "well known to the apostles", but the Greek text says, οἵτινές εἰσιν ἐπίσημοι ἐν τοῖς ἀποστόλοις, "who are noteworthy among the apostles". In modern times some have attempted to downplay this, suggesting that they were simply well known to the apostles (hence the rendering by the ESV here); but according to the ancient fathers of the Church there was no confusion: Andronicus and Junia were apostles.
In fact St. John Chrysostom himself goes to great lengths to proclaim just how incredible and noteworthy it is, that a woman here is counted among the apostles--an honor that cannot be understated.
Sts. Andronicus and Junia were apostles. We should remember that in addition to the Twelve Apostles, and St. Paul, there were a large number of other apostles, some of whom Scripture mentions explicitly such as Barnabas, Apollos, Silas, Andronicus, and Junia; but tradition remembers the "Seventy Apostles" though exhaustive lists differ on names here.
Paul continues to list many both men and women as fellow workers, ministers in Christ, doing Christ's work in, through, and for the Church.
Here alone should give us all the indication we need that the Apostle never condemned women from holding a position to teach. And, in fact, Scripture explicitly speaks of a woman teacher of the faith. Specifically St. Priscilla and her husband Aquila (this is the same couple mentioned in Romans 16 above). They taught a student of John the Baptist, Apollos of Alexandria, in the way of Christ. This is the same Apollos the Apostle mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament.
So time and again St. Paul praises women for their work in ministry and the church, as teachers, preachers, fellow ministers.
And even outside of this, we have for example the tradition of St. Paul's missionary companion St. Thekla, who is not mentioned in the New Testament, but was well known from tradition since the earliest days of the Church. We have the stories of great women of faith, such as Sts. Felicity and Perpetua. We have the story of St. Felicitas of Rome, a mother of seven sons who worked together in preaching the Gospel right in the heart of the Roman Empire--and who were all arrested and eventually suffered a martyr's death. It was St. Felicitas' great courage and strength that held them together, and it held her together as she was forced to watch each of her children put to death for refusing to recant and renounce Christ. Until she too, in the end, received her crown.
So given the preponderance of biblical material, the idea that St. Paul forbid any woman from teaching any man, or forbid any woman from preaching or speaking in the context of worship (elsewhere St. Paul explicitly mentions women preaching in Church, see 1 Corinthians ch. 11) simply does not work.
This is the reason why arguably most exegetes today understand that what is being discussed in those passages in 1 Corinthians 14 and in 1 Timothy are very specific circumstances.
1 Corinthians 14 is talking about the need for order in worship, and likewise in 1 Timothy the Apostle seems to be speaking about a unique situation where certain women were trying to overthrow those already commissioned in the church. The word that is used in 1 Timothy 2:12 is αὐθεντεῖν (authentein), which gets translated variously as "have authority" or "usurp authority". It's a peculiar word, used only once in the entire New Testament, here in 1 Timothy 2:12. It very often means to take authority by force, even violently--such as when one kills a king and claims thekingdom for himself.
That's important, because Paul isn't saying, "Women can't have any authority over men", but that forcefully taking authority, making oneself the authority, trying to usurp authority is the problem. And just to be clear, this isn't a sex/gender issue; as though it's wrong for a woman to do that, but okay for a man. It would be just as wrong for a man to usurp and assert his own authority over and against the rightful authority and structure in the Church. Because the Church is supposed to have good order, there are processes and protocols and systems in place for how to have pastors, presbyters, bishops, etc.
If you were to proclaim yourself the new pastor of your church, trying to depose the current pastor--that would be a violation of the good order of the Church and the act of a schismatic. If there is a pastor who shouldn't be a pastor--through abuse, teaching false doctrine, etc, there are ways to go about disciplining and even removing offending clergy. Propping oneself up is wrong--pastors are not lords, but servants of the Church.
-CryptoLutheran
