Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 346 | Practically Defining Spiritual Leadership

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Ep. 346 | Practically Defining Spiritual Leadership · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:04
  What's up guys, welcome back to 5-Minute Fatherhood. So one of the questions that people ask a lot, fathers ask is, okay, we've heard this phrase, you should be a spiritual leader of your family. Spiritually lead your home. And when I hear that, I know that for a long time, that just sort of like, guys just started to squirm in their seats and feel defeated. And like, what does that even mean?
• 0:28
  How do I know when I've done that? Like, what is that about? And so I really, I don't like when we sort of foist abstract ideas on each other. And this, we expect the ambient feeling of guilt
• 0:43
  to lead us in the right direction. Like, that's not helpful. So let me try to define this, because I actually, I do believe that, you know, as fathers, we should be spiritual leaders in our homes. Absolutely. But I like to just try to define this very specifically, and that is a spiritual leader is someone who initiates spiritual rhythms in the home. They're the one who, they take responsibility
• 1:05
  for initiating spiritual rhythms. If you're doing that, you are spiritually leading your family. If you are inspiring and unfolding your children into spiritual rhythms, and there's lots, and we talked about many, many, many rhythms in these different segments, but I just like to talk about this at a high level. Spiritual leadership is like, if you look back on the last seven days of your family's life,
• 1:26
  Did you initiate any spiritual rhythms in the home, whether that's prayer, time of the word, a Sabbath, you know, whatever? Did you initiate, did you lead your family to think about, consider, and experience things of the spirit, right? Our mind is set on things above, not on earthly things. And so is that something you're leading in, and are you doing it rhythmically? And we could tell, you know, we like to define that in, have you done it in the last seven days? Yeah.
• 1:51
  Every one of you guys listening to this can do that. And many of you are doing that. But I think that it's really good just to say, okay, well, then you are spiritually leading your family. You are exerting spiritual leadership in the home. And so you can increase, of course, your skill in that. You could increase the frequency of that. But I like to just maybe make a narrow definition. Okay, every seven days, are you initiating a spiritual rhythm? How is that going? And let's continue to consider and improve that. But yeah, Jeff, what are your thoughts about this kind of general concept?
• 2:19
  Yeah, I love that one. And I think it just, it takes off all the pressure because, yeah, when something's less defined, it tends to be more pressure. Our brains tend to always think heavier than lighter, if that makes sense. So that's a big one. And then I think, yeah, I mean, I immediately think of even Alyssa too, you know, and I think that's something to take into account too is I think there should be dynamic leadership from both husband and wife. And I think utilizing that actually feels like it kind of –
• 2:41
  is a little bit stronger dance of teamwork, right? Because if you're always feeling like, I have to be the spiritual leader, I have to be the spiritual leader, I think it takes on a lot of pressure when it's like, you know, you can kind of lean into each other's strengths. And I think of Elissa right now, specifically in like spiritual rhythms, I loved your definition because it made me think of her even more than me, way faster because, let me pull it back up.
• 2:58
  Because, yeah, basically that phrase where you said, gently but persistently push through all resistance. And so she's been, you know, we're always in the word and we're always kind of like reading and doing stuff and doing thankfulness, etc. But we've just recently tried to be really consistent with like mourning, like mourning devotional time. Like we want to, we really want to, we feel like they're at that age now where it can be a little bit more, you know, indoctrinating, you know, hilarious word from that last episode. And can just be a little bit more consistent, you know, when before it was kind of like popcorn style, you know, just to kind of pique their interest.
• 3:27
  And, you know, what's funny is like the last couple of weeks as we've leaned into that, there's been, it feels like pulling teeth a little bit, you know, they're always, they're wailing around and doing this and that. And, you know what I mean? And all of a sudden they don't want to be alive anymore. You know, it's craziness. And we're just like, geez guys. But, uh, but she's just done brilliant of like thinking of creative ideas to kind of hedge that rather than face on. Like, you know, I mentioned when it integrated the other day of like having the kids draw what they're listening, that helped a ton, et cetera. But, um,
• 3:51
  Yeah, just so many cool examples of like, yeah, and she's just pressed through firmly and gently. And now it's kind of like, hey, this is just the way it's going to be, guys. And they start to fold one by one, you know? But yeah, so I love that. And I think that definition is perfect. And you guys, like Jeff is describing, when you do initiate spiritual rhythms and you get resistance—
• 4:10
  This is where the word leadership really matters. And that is this ability to gently kind of push through the resistance or to debrief with your wife and figure out, okay, what creative ideas can we come up with to help our kids engage in this practice? Are they ready for it? Are we shooting way over their head? But working through the resistance is what leadership's all about. And for a lot of guys, I even met a guy once who's like, I tried that once, my kids started rolling their eyes,
• 4:38
  That was the last time. I tried it once. It's like, okay, that's normal. Kids are going to resist. Yeah, try it 100 times. We got to help each other. But you do have to lead, and that means that you have to be willing to take those hits and keep persistently leading. And over time, I think you're going to really exert that leadership in a way that's going to be really fruitful for your family.