When it comes to Christian marriage beliefs, the terms “complementarian” and “egalitarian” are problematic. They’re unclear, and they’ve become politicized.

Let’s be clear—let’s use “Jesus-centric marriage” or “husband-centric marriage.”
In a husband-centric marriage, a wife submits to her husband & follows him. She lets him make the final decisions, even if she disagrees with him or feels that God is telling her something else. She seeks 1st to please her husband, & she allows him to set the tone for the house.
She believes God calls wives to follow a husband’s will, & doing so means doing God’s will.

She believes that loving her husband is how she serves God. As she loves her husband and serves her husband, she shows her obedience to God, since her focus should be her husband.
However, that subordinates God’s will to a husband’s will. If a wife doing a husband’s will automatically=God’s will, then God is surrendering His will to the husband, which He would never do.

We are to pray "Thy will be done", not "husband's will be done."
In a Jesus-centric marriage, though, a wife pursues Jesus first, & loves & serves her husband through that lens. She believes she must listen to the Holy Spirit’s voice, and believes that she and her husband must obey God, not anyone else.
She endeavours to act as Jesus does, believing that loving her husband well means loving mercy, acting justly, and walking humbly before God, not just doing what her husband wants. She pursues her husband’s BEST, not necessarily her husband’s WANTS.
She is GOOD, not necessarily NICE, aiming to please God in all. She believes that her first calling is to listen to God and follow Him, and does not see her husband as her mediator between herself and God.

She knows that as she loves Jesus, she will also love her husband well.
We would do much better, and speak much more clearly, if we dropped the “academic” sounding labels and got to the point.

Should the wife follow the husband first and foremost, or Jesus?

Husband's will or God's will? Husband-centric or Jesus-centric?

The answer matters.

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More from @sheilagregoire

Apr 18
If a megachurch pastor is plagiarizing his sermons, then perhaps it's time to admit that churches are hiring performers and actors, not pastors.

A 🧵
In small churches, the pastor is often a jack-of-all-trades. The pastor has to write sermons; organize services; coordinate all the activities of the church; set the vision; plan extra events; counsel people; show up in emergencies; and more.
It's a big job, involving spiritual gifts like administration, reaching, teaching, encouragement, and discernment.
Read 13 tweets
Apr 11
Does sex for you have a start up cost or a major cost? And what is the difference? We talked about this on the Bare Marriage podcast recently, but I’d like to elaborate on part of it today. 🧵

1/7
I think we often get confused when people talk about this. They’ll say,

“Well, sometimes I have sex when I don’t really want it, and it’s really good for us. And it’s really good for our marriage."

And what she means is,

2/7
“Sometimes I would rather watch reruns of Criminal Minds, but then my husband wants to have sex. And I know it’s going to feel so good, and I’m going to feel great once I do it."

That’s the “start-up cost” problem of sex.

3/7
Read 7 tweets
Apr 10
Can we talk about how, when a pastor messes up (as Josh Howerton did with his horrendous wedding night "joke), other pastors often rush to his defence? I think there's something bigger going on here.

A 🧵
I've been just amazed at how the internet was pretty much universally appalled by Josh's words. The reason the clip went so viral is because people saw it and said, "Wow, that's bad." Atheists, SBC members, and everything in between saw it was bad.

But two groups defended him.
One was understandable--Lakepointe congregants rallying around a beloved pastor, even when he does the unthinkable.

(Note: You can support a pastor & still say he did something wrong. Blind devotion is not required. Your church would be stronger if you called him to account.)
Read 11 tweets
Apr 1
Over the weekend, a number of people fighting against misogyny in evangelicalism felt quite discouraged, as did I, when the conversation shifted from calling out bad behaviour to asking people to stop piling on pastors who did something wrong.

A few thoughts:
It is natural and good to feel sympathy when we see someone go through intense online criticism--even if we think the criticism is just. We simply must see the humanity in others.

But there is also a difference between being piled on unjustly and being piled on for being unjust.
From the outside it can look the same--someone's words are being disparaged, and their reputation is at risk. But not all disparagement is unwarranted. Suffering for doing good is one thing; reaping the consequences of bad behavior is another.
Read 16 tweets
Mar 30
Over the last two days it has ben so disheartening to have to convince multiple pastors, defending another pastor, that "jokes" from the pulpit about how women should essentially be sex blow up dolls for their husbands is not okay.
It has been AMAZING how many people have seen the problem. The fact that the video went so viral, and continues to be talked about, shows that most people see this as a huge, glaring issue.
And the fact that so many have seen it, and called it out themselves, has been so encouraging.

I've had so many notes from women who have been hurt by the church, feeling seen. To have that hurt validated is healing.
Read 7 tweets
Mar 29
Josh Howerton has made a statement saying I took him out of context and it was "just a joke."

I have no problem giving the whole context and talking about this more, so let's play the entire clip and break it down, shall we? Image
Here is the entire clip. I didn't play the whole thing yesterday for the sake of keeping things short and sweet, but on Instagram, so far about 90% of people are saying the whole clip makes things so much worse.
Here's the transcript. Let's note a few things: First, he framed this as "gold piece of marriage advice." He ends the session by saying that this was all free. It is not framed as a joke. Image
Read 20 tweets

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