Unka Glen

elleinwonderland asked: I’ve encountered churches who feel that it’s not a woman’s place to lead anything other than possibly children’s ministry (because that’s safe and cute, right?) and Christian men who state ‘submissiveness’ as a quality they want in a woman. From what I’ve heard, the submission is meant to go both ways right? Husbands and wives are *both* supposed to serve and love and make sacrifices for each other. Here’s the thing - that word really riles me. I’m a career woman. I dream of running my own business. I’m the girl who will stand up and say what she thinks and asks for what she wants. I used to work for the church, I am *big* into mission among disengaged teenagers, and I have taught theology (and yes, shock horror, I have taught theology to guys). What’s the deal here? Does God really want me to sit down and shut up? And how should I respond to the people who tell me He does?

Unka Glen answered: Well, let’s start here, if men really cared about the influence of women preaching or teaching (as opposed to stealing their limelight), they would START with children’s ministry and missions. If you want to be an influence on the future of Christianity, that’s where you want to be today. Of course, the way the mainstream church is structured today, there is little money and no recognition in doing either of those jobs well, so both can certainly feel like an afterthought within the church.

I’m going to post a couple of links below that cover this subject both from a Biblical and a practical viewpoint, but you’re absolutely right. We’re all called to be servants, and we’re all called to serve one another. And you’re also right that spiritual leadership and “shot calling” are two massively different things (as I explore in one of those links).

When it comes to submission, you’re meant to submit to God. If God tells you to follow your husband’s lead, then you’re still submitting to God. And your husband is accountable to God to lead in exactly the way God would want that done. 

Maybe it’s because I was born and raised in Texas, the international and intergalactic capital of strong women, but I like both your attitude towards life and your career, and for sure I like your attitude towards serving the Lord. You sound, to me, like a Proverbs 31 woman all the way.

There’s nothing wrong with the woman being the glitter and the man being the glue. 

Some insecure men like the spotlight, and like the attention, and they like feeling like “big daddy”. Instead, find a man you can trust to only assert himself when it’s serving your need for rest, peace, or perspective. Only a weak and insecure man is intimidated by a strong woman.

A previous post on the Biblical background of this issue.

A post about servant leadership in marriage, and a brief video of me preaching on this subject.

theconvictionsofalionsheart asked: Unka Glen! I’ve been with my wonderful, God-seeking boyfriend for almost two years, but we keep coming back to the question time and time again: what does a Christ-centered relationship look like, in terms of dating/pre-marriage/etc? Whenever I’ve tried to consult any sermons online for help, all I get are sermons about how Christ-centered marriages. [edited for length]

Unka Glen answered: Well, there is a lot of overlap, with the exception of the bedroom stuff our British friends call “rumpy pumpy”. Otherwise, the goals are similar, if only because you’re potentially building towards marriage. But let’s create a guide just for Godly dating. And let’s start with a goal. Here’s what I would suggest…

Goal: to build a team that serves the Lord better together than you could separately.

In order to fulfill that goal, you’re going to need the following:

Communication: in order to work together to get anything done, you need to be able to coordinate. You have to figure out who is doing what in the relationship, and you have to figure out what to do when things go sideways (as they always do). This is where trust is built.

Prayer: as you learn to communicate with each other, you’ll want to learn to communicate as a team with the Lord in prayer. You’re focusing here on letting God call the shots, getting wisdom from Him, and going out in peace and unity.

Bible study: if you’re going to serve the Lord together as a team, you’re likely to be communicating some Bible to some people at some point. So it makes sense to work on learning it together, investigating and digging deep in the scriptures to work out the deeper meaning there. 

Mission: so now that you’ve got yourself spiritually equipped as a couple, you’re ready to choose a mission for this team. It can be literally anything, it can even be a series of short commitments. You’re just looking it get the ball rolling, and learn how to work together. It can be volunteering at a hospital or retirement home, starting a home Bible study for your friends, or working with the youth in your church.

Love: all this sounds time consuming, and it is. Quality Christian relationships are a serious time commitment, and learning how to make time and be efficient with your time is critical. But in the end, there will come a point where you’re driving each other nuts, and the pressures are rising, and in the end, it’s love that will see you through.

Yes, I’m talking about agape love, God’s love, but I’m also talking about romantic love. There needs to be passion, romance, and heat. Sure it’s possible to spend too much time playing kissey-face, but it’s just as possible to under-do the romantic and passionate side too. Don’t cheat yourself, all that passion is part of what you need to fulfill this mission together.

changedbecauseimsaved asked: Hey Unka Glen. As a young Christian woman, how do I shake the feeling of needing to be in love to be successful? I always feel the need to have a boyfriend to complete my christian “fairy tale”. You know the one where you are married by 21, have two kids, go to church on sundays etc. I want to be independent, but I feel pressured to conform to a scripted by Disney life, instead of a life perfectly tailored by God. Is it wrong for me to be single?

Unka Glen answered: You are in no way made complete by being in a relationship. You are complete in God. God completes you. He is the “wind beneath your wings”. No human person is meant to sit on that throne in your heart. Nobody but God can make you whole in that way, and if you don’t get that, you aren’t ready for any kind of healthy Christian relationship. 

Now, it is true that people will ask you about your dating life, and kind of root for you to find your Prince Charming, and there’s nothing wrong with that, their agenda doesn’t have to be yours. I think it’s important to be on your own for a season of your life, to have adventures and experiences without waiting for a partner to give you permission or encouragement. 

Being well rounded and self-sufficient is important (as long as your self-sufficiency in based on stuff you get from the Lord). Having that can-do, go-getter kind of personality is great for relationships, because it means others can rely on you to face challenges head on, and make things happen.

But the picture of marriage I see all too often in young people, is two independent people both doing their own thing, and not depending on each other for anything. This is not a good idea. It’s like “married with benefits” or something. Godly marriage is about building a team, and team members depend on each other. 

Sure, the other extreme is just as bad, where everyone is leaning on everyone else for everything, and we just enable each others weaknesses. But good teamwork is about bringing out the best in each other. It’s about doing what we do best, and blessing the other person with it. It’s about lifting each other up.

This kind of marriage teamwork is magic, in that you get more out of it that you put into it. It’s more than the sum of its parts. When you add the Lord to that mix, the sky is the limit. But rest assured, sometimes learning to be a bit independent today, can help you be a stronger and more dependable team member later on… especially when you meet that guy who looks like Ryan Gosling, and loves Jesus, and buys you adorable cupcakes, and likes puppies, and picks you up and carries you over the puddle so your feet won’t get wet… You know what I’m talkin’ bout.

aquilaseyrie asked: Hi Unka Glen! Things have changed recently and I’ve found a girl who is really awesome. Things are going well, the only question I ask is how to keep emotion in check? We’re both committed to God, praying for each other, talking out issues and being honest with each other. I don’t want to stifle emotion, I just want to know that what we do is driven by God’s love first, and that overflows into the affection we have for each other.

Unka Glen answered: You’re right that you don’t want to stifle emotion (you aren’t robots after all), and you’re right that it’s a good idea to make sure that emotion isn’t driving the bus, because that can lead to real disater. So let me give you two simple things to look at.

First: no fear. The more I talk to young people, the more I get a sense that they have an abiding fear that something awful will happen if they handle their dating relationships the wrong way. As if they might be ruining something or ending all chance at future happiness or whatever. But fear simply will not help you find the right kind of relationship that will give glory to the Lord.

Fear is irrational, it’s illogical, and it gives you all kinds of false information. Fear is a distraction. Consider living by Frank Hebert’s Litany Against Fear:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

The second thing is, I’d suggest you look at having a “Kingdom mentality” about your relationship. It’s nice to have passion, and to be crazy about each other, and be in love and all that, but if you sit there in Bible study holding hands and making cow eyes at each other, how might that make someone who is single and lonely feel?

But by contrast, if the intent of this relationship is to serve the Kingdom, then that takes you down a whole different path. Now you’re thinking: how can we work together as a team to help encourage the people at this Bible study? Maybe you end up baking cookies for the group, maybe you help a struggling couple by listening to them and praying for them. The possibilities are endless.

When you focus on what might be going wrong, you find that anything and everything could be going wrong at any given time. But when you focus on the Godly places you want this relationship to go, suddenly you have a lot of useful information about what needs to change. 

And when you find that place of teamwork, where the smell of warm cookies fills the air, and you look over at your sweetheart, and she has a little smudge of flour on her cheek, and her hair is kinda flying out of the ponytail, and you see the total glow of joy in serving the Lord and bringing happiness to others by using her feminine gifts, and you sneak up and kiss her on the neck right behind her ear… well, it’s bound to get really emotional, but trust me, that’s the good kind of emotional.

Anonymous asked: I am in a relationship with a man who is called to preach. We both feel strongly and prayerfully like this is moving toward marriage. I am so so worried though. I don’t know anything about being a preacher’s wife. Can you do your best to describe what kind of undertaking this will be for me? I want to know how to begin preparing myself for the task set before me.

Unka Glen answered: Let’s start with some hard truths here, there’s a cultural stigma behind the idea of a woman serving a man. And if you feel the pull of pride telling you that you deserve better than to have to live your life in service to a man, then you need a total rethink, not on marriage, but on who you are as a Christian. 

Servanthood is what we’re ALL called to. Heck I’m called to a life of getting locked onto prison decks to be a servant to the spiritual needs of inmates. If you feel to high and mighty to make a brother a sandwich, then you need to know who you are in Christ, not just what kind of wife you want to be.

If you want to be the one in the spotlight, and you don’t want to be the “behind the scenes” person in your marriage, then you need to express that now. 

In most churches, let’s be honest, they expect the wife to essentially be the perfect example of a church member. The church expects her to be at every meeting, smiling and being charming, and they expect her to put in all this time without paying her a red cent. 

Meanwhile her husband is coming home and complaining about all the conflict and nonsense he deals with, and soon enough most pastor’s wives, far from being the model of decorum, are ready to come to church packing heat to take care of this church conflict once and for all. 

So that’s the problem, what’s the cure? First, it’s not pastor and pastor’s wife, it’s Team Pastor. It may have a one-man public face, but Team Pastor is an elaborately organized team effort to bring quality ministry to this church. And make no mistake, Team Pastor’s first ministry responsibility is to minister to the wife. Because if you go down, Team Pastor goes down. 

You should constantly serve as a sounding board to each other, He needs to trust that you will hear him, and help him, without losing a burden of love for the church. He needs to trust that you’ve prayed through what you’re telling him, and that you may be seeing something on this that he missed.

Finally, present a united front. Never let anyone, family, church, friends, you name it, come between you and your husband. You’ll hear the phrase, “why don’t you tell your husband…” And you need to cut them off right there with a simple response, “have the courage to tell him yourself, I think everything he does is just right.”

Otherwise, you actually have other people who have a problem with your husband getting you to fight their battles for them. Never, ever allow this to happen. Does that mean that you should agree with your husband on everything? By no means! You’re called to regularly tell him that he’s out of bounds somewhere, but you do that in private. 

Years ago my wife and I worked for the same ministry, and our boss thought that I had preached a bit long on a staff devotional, and told my wife, behind my back, that she should tell me to cut it short. My wife proceeded to chew on his narrow white butt until he was calling out to Jesus, repenting and promising to never say another bad word about me.

Then she came home and told me that I actually did preach too long.

In private, we may disagree, but in public, we are a united front. You mess with one of us, we all rise up. This of course goes both ways, if anyone, anywhere even hints that you need to be doing more, or better, or whatever, your husband better bring the fire, because he can find another job, but try finding another wife as awesome as you!

Bonus suggestion: start a ladies ministry and reverse the roles. Let him buy the refreshments and set them out, and then sit in the other room and babysit for the ladies while they have their meeting. Our ministry has a ladies meeting, and we husbands do exactly that. It’s good for reminding both sides what the other side deals with.