gengwall

This is what I believed for such a long time. I was taught in Evangelical circles that I was supposed to be the “spiritual leader” in my family, and that the pastor and elders were the “spiritual leaders” of the flock. It is so easy to believe because it sounds so good – who could argue that being a spiritual leader is a good thing. The blinders started to fall off when I began asking where my guide-book for being spiritual leader was in scripture. Moreover, I began wondering exactly how this “job” looked in the activities of daily living. When someone would propose that a certain function was the spiritual leader’s, I first turned to scripture to find where such a delegation of duties was outlined. I could never find any biblical teaching to coincide with the human claim. Moreover, every activity that was presented seemed to be universal for all humans, not just a unilaterally male activity. In fact, for many things, it seemed that women were often more gifted than men at doing “x”. At the very least, when I looked at individual marriages, there was no unilateral gender that was better at activity “x”, “y”, or “z”.

So, I have slowly abandoned any trust in the “spiritual leader” teaching. It has freed my wife and I to BOTH lead according to our gifts, and has greatly enhanced the “spiritual” dimension of our marriage and our connectedness to God.