Thread by @thearmchaircom

Male pastors/Church leaders: I can tell a lot about your leadership based on how you treat your wife.

If you are kind, gentle, nurturing, and attentive, you will probably treat those you lead the same way.

If you are condescending, critical, put her down publicly, always have something demeaning or cutting to say, you will treat the people you lead that way.

If you gaslight her, belittle her feelings, make it hard for her to follow her dreams and ambitions, pick fights, and question her talents, you will treat the people you lead that way.

If you ignore her, make her responsible for things that you find inconvenient, don’t spend time with her, push responsibilities off on her, interrupt her when she tries to speak, put down her efforts to please you, you will treat the people you lead that way.

I could say more, but hopefully you get the message. I have known a lot of male leaders who were also husbands. I’ve seen a lot of good husbands who made crappy church leaders, but I’ve never seen a crappy husband be a good church leader. Ever.

And when I say crappy, I don’t mean imperfect. I mean that I’ve never seen a man who treated his wife like crap treat the people he was leading any better. I have seen so many unhealthy marriages and the leader carry his dysfunction into his leadership.

This applies in some measure to woman leaders, but it’s not as overt. Like women leaders can have unhealthy relational patterns that affect multiple areas of life, but she’s not often as obviously unhealthy as men are.

What I’m saying is that with men it is often a direct 1:1 correlation. If they treat their “smoking hot wife” like an object, they are going to treat those they lead like objects.

With woman leaders, it is more subtle. I want to give examples, but I’m afraid they will one off as stereotypical...the best I can put it is that with female leaders unhealthy patterns tend to emerge over time and are revealed more than they are easily seen.