I'm a Horrible Spiritual Leader

I’ve always wanted to be a leader. From the time I was a kid I admired leadership. I wanted to be a leader at school. I wanted to be a leader on my teams. When I went to college, I learned that God placed a call in my life to be a leader in the Church. All of those leadership roles felt natural. All of those leadership roles were attractive. When Trisha and I got married, I remember hearing something that I had never heard before and it didn’t feel natural and it didn’t seem very attractive. I was told, “You are now the spiritual leader of your family.” Huh? What does that even mean?

As a newly married youth pastor, my leadership role in the church was well defined. There were books to guide me. There were conferences to grow me. There were others who had gone before me that I could watch and emulate. But when it came to leading my family spiritually, I had no clue what it meant; no clue where to start; and no clue where to go for help. Every time “being a spiritual leader of my home” would come up in conversation I would pretend I knew what that person was talking about, but I honestly had no idea. My pretending came to a halt in 2005.

When Trisha and I separated, one of the first things I began to realize was how easy it was for me to lead a growing church and how uncomfortable it was for me to lead my family. It was easy for me to pastor other people, just not my wife and kids. It felt natural to pray with a person after the service, just really awkward to pray with my wife before bed. Because it felt so weird, I just didn’t do it. Because I was so insecure as a spiritual leader, I just ignored that call on my life. I was a horrible spiritual leader.

What I’ve come to realize is a lot of guys struggle with this. Most guys, if we’re honest, aren’t leading ourselves, our wives or our families well. Here are some reasons why I think we struggle with being spiritual leaders:

1. We are unsure of ourselves.

The truth is that most of us are intimidated by the term “spiritual leader.” We are afraid of messing up. We are afraid of getting it wrong. We are afraid of not meeting expectations. We aren’t even sure what expectations of a spiritual leader are. We have convinced ourselves that a good spiritual leader is a perfect spiritual leader and we know we aren’t perfect. Because of our insecurity we become paralyzed and choose not leading over leading imperfectly.

2. We have equated providing with leading.

As guys, most of us think that because we provide for our family, we are leading our family. We say things like, “I am providing you with this house; your mini-van; vacations in the summer; what more do you want from me?” We fail to lead the way that God intends when we equate our role as a provider with our call to be a leader. Providing is part of our job as a leader, but not all of it.

3. We manipulate instead of lead.

Out of our own misconception of leadership and our own insecurity in our ability to lead, we default to manipulate our family instead of authentically lead our family. I did this for years and it wasn’t out of malice. I didn’t realize I was manipulating Trish, I thought I was leading her. The difference lies in this question, “Is this decision what I want or is this decision what God wants?”

4. We’ve never seen it modeled or taught.

Most of our dads were sub par spiritual leaders. 50% of us grew up in homes where our dad wasn’t around or we only saw him every other weekend due to our parents divorce. There weren’t classes on spiritual leadership in college…if there were we wouldn’t have taken it. So we’ve rarely had someone to look to or to ask advice from in this area.

Tomorrow, I’ll share with you what God has taught me and continues to teach me about spiritual leadership. My prayer is that just starting the conversation would grow each of us.

What would you add to this list?