2/20/2007

Spiritual Headship

For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. -Eph 5:23

This weekend the Lord revealed a great truth about leadership. Learning biblical headship and bodyship is the responsibility of both the husband and wife. I have often felt that women say they want men to lead, but then they take the reins themselves and don't give men that opportunity. It's as though they want men to lead them...but only if they're being led exactly as they want to go themselves, so there's really no leading going on. OK, that rant is completely irrelevant to this post...

Anyway, I've had a struggle as spiritual leader. For example, when we have people over for dinner, I typically wait for our guests to finish their sentence before interjecting that it's time to pray. Frequently, on the other hand, my wife will lean over and say "should we pray?" So now, she's undermined my leadership by not waiting to let me lead. What should I do? I figure there are a few options. I can say "yes," not helping the cause at all but unfortunately is my most common response. I can say "of course, I was waiting till the conversation had a lull," which is a little better but when I say it over and over it just sounds like I'm making excuses.

Or I can preempt her question. This is the path the Lord just revealed to me. In order for me to get her to stop trying to lead, I need to show her I'm clearly leading. If she's a worrier, then I need to let her know I'm taking care of things before she has a chance to worry about them. If she is in a bigger hurry for things than I am, I need to be in more of a hurry to act--even if it's a hurry to say let's be patient.

Hopefully, catering my leadership style to her following style will be effective. Hopefully, she'll learn to trust my leadership so completely that I can eventually lead in my style.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

If I read this post leaving out the sentence about prayer at dinner, I get where you are coming from and it sounds like you are on the right track with your thinking. Maybe you were just reaching for an example, but the issue about prayer at dinnertime seems less like a spiritual leadership issue and more like a personality difference where the two of you may be clashing somewhat. Worrying about this kind of exchange under the category of spiritual leadership seems akin to micromanaging that role as far as I'm concerned. If it bothers you that she interjects in that kind of situation I think you should talk about it, but if you approach it as "I should be leading in this situation as the spiritual leader," you may be blowing the issue out of proportion. Just my $0.02. I enjoy reading your thoughts.