Jenn and I (Steven) leading together got off to a rough start.
One of the first things we did as a couple in ministry, before we were even married, was attend a support raising bootcamp with our Thailand team members. At the time, our team was both of us, four of my best friends growing up, and one single gal from Alabama who went through the same pre-field goer training as us and had a heart to serve in Thailand.
We had all just quit our jobs and were ready to start support raising – our launch to Thailand was about one year out. I borrowed my parent’s minivan and drove our team up from Austin, Texas to Dallas where the boot camp was being held. We were picking up our new teammate Kate* (name changed for security purposes) from the airport before heading to the support raising training. As we were entering the airport, I said, “Hey guys, this is our first time meeting Kate in person. Let’s try to keep the inside jokes to a minimum and make her feel as welcome as possible.” Everyone nodded their heads in agreement.
Before we had even left the airport, two of my friends had started to record a homemade rap video while wearing Jenn’s leopard-print jacket for no particular reason. Leader instruction #1 – failed.
Later that day, as we were getting settled in a friend’s house, Jenn and I started to argue about something. Kate and Jenn were sharing a room since Jenn and I weren’t married yet, and as our argument escalated, I could feel Kate continually shrinking into the corner, trying her best not to be noticed.
As the conflict was rising to a climax, an intrusive thought popped into my head that I knew would really send Jenn over the edge. Unfortunately, but hilariously, it made its way through my brain filter and out of my mouth.
“Just remember who your boss is,” I quipped at Jenn. I closed the door behind me smiling to myself and knowing that I would pay for that comment later.
I learned later that I narrowly avoided the pair of pants that were hurtling towards my head.
“Men! Can you believe him?!” Jenn said to Kate, who was now almost merged with the wall.
Welcome to the team, Kate.
And welcome to co-leadership, Jenn and Steven.
When we tell you that it’s a miracle that God has brought us this far in our marriage and co-leadership, it’s stories like this that affirm that reality! And Kate ended up marrying one of my friends on the team and they are still serving on the field today.
In our previous posts, we covered why it’s important that men and women lead together on missions teams, and some of thepractical guidelines for how they can do that effectively. We kept those more general towards men and women because we believe men and women leadership teams don’t have to be exclusively between husbands and wives. However, many of those co-leadership teams will end up being married couples. If that’s your situation, then this post is for you!
The story above is meant to illustrate how confusing, convoluted, and contentious co-leadership on missions teams can be for husbands and wives and also for their teams, organizations, and ministry partners. But if it can be done well, it can be a rich reflection of Christ and the church, as a husband and wife walk together in leadership and ministry.
Why It Makes Sense for Husbands and Wives to Serve and Lead Together
In our experience, a calling overseas is different from most ministry callings in your home context. When Jenn and I lived in the U.S., we had separate ministries. We invested in different people, rarely overlapped, and were supportive of one another without being directly involved in each other’s work.
Overseas, we’ve found that both husband and wife need to share the same level of calling and commitment to the vision, regardless of their specific role or ministry activity. It’s much harder for one spouse to say, “This is my spouse’s calling, and I’ll just support them,” because simply living cross-culturally requires significant sacrifice. Even when one spouse is primarily focused on the home or family, their commitment to the vision needs to be just as strong in order to persevere through the challenges of life on the field.
Ministry overseas – especially movement-focused ministry – can also be all-encompassing. It’s not a typical 9–5 job that you can leave behind when you go home. If you’re focused on multiplying disciples, you may have people in your home regularly or a demanding travel schedule to visit key partners. Because the boundaries between work and home are less clear, husbands and wives need to have clarity and be aligned around both life and ministry.
When we’ve seen unequal commitment between spouses, it often leads to disunity, competition between family and ministry, and potentially resentment that results in leaving the field.
When both spouses share the same calling and level of commitment, working together toward the vision can make a lot of sense. It requires a lot of communication and figuring things out, some of which we laid out in our previous post about men and women and some other things for husbands and wives in this post.
Our recommendation for married couples overseas is that both spouses should have the same level of calling and commitment to the vision, regardless of role. If that shared vision is present, then we’d encourage husbands and wives to discuss what it looks like to work together if both desire to have a role in ministry.
The last category is for husbands and wives that are interested in leading together. We’d give a strong exhortation that couples should only lead together in a ministry setting or missions team if both spouses are genuinely called and gifted for leadership. We define a leader as “a man or woman who receives vision from God to influence the people of God towards the purposes of God.”
Elevating a spouse into co-leadership without a leadership calling and gifting can undermine the other spouse’s credibility and place unnecessary pressure on the one who isn’t called to lead. A non-leader spouse can still play a powerful role as a supporter and sounding board. But when both spouses are truly called to leadership and find healthy ways to lead together, it can be a beautiful and effective partnership.
Best Practices for Husbands and Wives Leading Together
We’d highly recommend that married couples that want to lead together overseas work through the 5 categories in our last post – commitment, communication, conflict, clearing the path, and collaborative giftings. These are critical components for any men/women co-leaders but especially for husbands and wives. Below we have a few additional best practices specific to married couples.
We don’t yet have children and won’t try to speak on that dynamic, though we understand it adds complexity and challenge for husbands and wives that desire to lead together. However, we have seen married couples on the field learn to lead together in the ministry and the home simultaneously. Jenn recently recorded a podcast with Jesse and Shanee Snodgrass who host the Coworkers Podcast on this topic and we’ll link it here when it’s live!
Working Styles
Married couples leading together should learn to understand each other’s working styles. When we first started working and leading together, Jenn frequently thought that I (Steven) was frustrated with her or thought that I was unhappy with her work. One day she asked me, “Am I doing something wrong?”
“No – why would you think that?” I asked.
“Because whenever we’re talking about ministry or team things, you seem to be a lot more stern or short with me.”
We realized that Jenn had not really encountered “working mode” Steven before. I had to apologize and explain that when I’m working, I can be more intense and move faster out of a desire to focus and get things done. She had been used to me more in dating / companionship mode where I was a lot more attentive in listening, gentler, and more laid-back. I had to be more cognizant of being gentler with my words and overall attitude, and Jenn had to learn not to take my intensity personally.
There were several other aspects of our working styles that came up that we had to discuss and pursue clarity on. For example, I was much more detailed and more of a planner, and Jenn was less-detailed and prioritized finishing things quickly. We also had to be careful to understand that our working styles didn’t necessarily translate over to our relationship dynamics. Just because I preferred to plan in ministry and working topics didn’t mean that I wanted to plan every aspect of our date nights or household chores.
We learned to either offer or ask, “what hat are you wearing right now?” For example, I might be talking about our schedule for the week, but Jenn would be unclear if it was Steven the team and ministry leader talking, or Steven her husband talking. I would need to clarify that we were planning for the ministry schedule for the week, and after that was cleared we could set aside time to discuss personal things. Of course, it’s not always that clear and people are complicated, but pursuing clarity in your working styles can help husband and wife teams operate more smoothly.
Boundaries
For couples working and leading together, setting some boundaries will be helpful in preserving both your working relationship and marriage relationship. Some couples may have very integrated personal and working lives, whereas others might have stronger boundaries and more organization. Find out what works for you! Jenn and I (Steven) tend to be pretty interwoven in how we interact, but we did set some boundaries like not talking about work on date nights, or not talking about work 30 minutes before bedtime or after waking up. Some couples we know will have very clear delineations about not talking through personal issues during the workday, and not talking about work things during personal times. Others may set a weekly check-in to talk through work logistics.
Another boundary that we set early on was to not have conflict in front of team members when possible, and to speak as highly of each other as we could even if we were having a conflict. During our first year on the field, it felt like every time right before we would lead a team meeting, we would enter into a conflict without fail. But as we arrived at the meeting, we would say, “let’s put a pin in this.” It was our way of agreeing that the conflict was not resolved yet but we were both committed to discussing it later, and that we both needed to take a moment to let our emotions die down and focus on the current priority of leading the meeting or ministry activity.
It will take some time and trial to figure out what dynamic works for both the husband and wife. It’s important to be honest about your needs and preferences, but also to try your best to take on a Philippians 2 posture of putting others higher than ourselves. At some times, one or both of you might feel like you want to give up, that it’s too hard to figure it out. Our encouragement is that if this is something you’ve felt the Lord guiding you towards and something you both desire, it is worth the hard work of wading through the mess to learn how to work together with your best friend and lifetime companion!
Pursuing Clarity
While it can be a joy to lead with your spouse, adding another role into an already existing dynamic of husband and wife brings up a lot of questions. While some of these questions may feel uncomfortable, we encourage you to engage wholeheartedly with all of them until you reach a point of clarity and agreement. Otherwise, your working together will be seeped in conflict and misunderstanding. Based on our experience, here are some areas where couples who work and lead together need to be on the same page.
Theological Clarity – Early in our marriage, I (Jenn) had a deep fear of being the type of domineering woman Paul calls out in 1 Timothy 2. We had learned about marriage roles where the husband is the head of the family and wives were called to submit. But how did the husband’s headship over the family apply to our dynamic of working and leading together? We had to do the work of searching the scriptures, praying, seeking counsel from wise voices, and dialoguing with one another to figure out what we truly believed.
Reaching theological clarity together is critical to ensuring that your marriage and ministry are in line with what God is calling you to do. Some questions to consider are:
- What does the Bible say about the role of husbands and wives? How are they to relate to one another? How are they to relate to people in ministry?
- What does the Bible say about men and women in leadership? What leadership roles are available to women and to men?
- What does the Bible say about men and women working together in ministry?
After studying the Word and discussing with Steven, I felt freedom and confidence that I could step into a role of leadership without fear of disobeying the Bible.
Role Clarity – Once you are clear on your theological stance, you can begin to discuss roles and responsibilities in both your marriage, your ministry, and in leadership together. Both husband and wife bring their own unique spiritual gifts, strengths, and weaknesses into both marriage and ministry. This is a wonderful thing! Seek to build out your roles in a way that lines up with what you’ve discussed. Both spouses don’t have to do the exact same things, but can divide and conquer based on giftings and strengths and season of life. The goal is to be on the same page about what each person is expected to do and be accountable for in any given situation.
Clarity for Outside Stakeholders – Husbands and wives are not the only ones who need clarity. If you are working in ministry or leading together, there are other stakeholders who are impacted by your dynamic like your team, national partners, church, and organization. When I (Jenn) was elevated to a leadership role with Steven, it was important that I received a leadership title so that our teammates and organization knew that my decisions carried leadership weight. Teammates needed to understand me and Steven’s unique responsibilities in the leadership dynamic, so that they knew which of us they could bring certain issues or questions to. It’s especially important for husbands and wives to speak well of each other publicly as a way to create a united front, show mutual respect in your co-leadership and co-working, and to help those you lead and interact with to have confidence in your dynamic.
Similarly, your ministry partners will also need clarity. Steven and I both work with our national partner, Mint. In most meetings, I will initially connect relationally with Mint. I’ll ask her about her abiding, conflicts she’s having, how she’s feeling about any given topic. Mint knows those questions are coming from me and she’s become comfortable divulging more personal information to me. But she also knows Steven will ask her about her strategy, objectives, and goals. She also knows that she can ask us for almost anything and that Steven and I will be on the same page to try and help her.
Tools
Marriage Retreats – In the midst of cross-cultural living, ministry, and leadership, it can be hard to find a moment to communicate and connect with one another. Don’t forget, God is pleased when our marriages are healthy and centered on Him and on serving one another! We recommend setting at least an annual 2-3 day retreat to focus on your marriage. Objectives for this time would be for rest, deeper connection in your marriage, evaluating how your marriage and partnership is doing, and prayer and planning for the year. Calendar these retreats ahead of time and set them somewhere comfortable and outside of your context.
Husband-Wife MOU – A helpful tool to establish clarity of roles and responsibilities between husband and wife is to create a Husband-Wife MOU. Categorize all the activities you are responsible for as individuals and as a couple and demarcate who takes ownership for what. It’s helpful to revisit this document regularly, as seasons of life and ministry might shift these things. Below is the MOU we created for our team. Feel free to use our template and adapt it to your context.
Conclusion
When I (Steven) was first entering into a season of being newly married and preparing to lead a team and ministry in Thailand, I felt a tension rising about how to prioritize my focus and time. As we went through pre-marital counseling and read marriage books, the overwhelming message was that your focus should be God above everything, then your marriage and family, and then everything else like your ministry or job.
But life and ministry overseas would require significant sacrifice that would affect our marriage. It wouldn’t be comfortable, things wouldn’t be easy, and there would be considerable challenges for our relationship. How could I reconcile wanting to prioritize my marriage in the context of responding to the call of missions that God had given so clearly?
I posed this question to one of my mentors, Caleb. He said something that has proven true over the last decade of marriage, ministry, and leadership.
“It’s not always so simple to prioritize things as God > marriage > ministry. Those things are intertwined. Loving God is loving my marriage. Loving my ministry is loving God. Loving my marriage is loving ministry.”
His point was that all of those things – your relationship with God, relationship with your spouse, and your ministry calling – all affect each other. Of course, any idolatry in your marriage or ministry will cause unhealth in the other dynamics. And there will absolutely be times that you should take a step back from ministry to work on your marriage or your relationship with God.
We can see this interwoven framework in Genesis 2 when God takes Adam to oversee the Garden of Eden. “Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” It is within the context of pursuing his calling that God gives Adam a partner in Eve.
We believe that ministering and leading out of who you are as a married couple is a powerful witness that reflects God’s intention for marriage. Beyond being companions in life, you can also be partners in pursuing His calling. As you pursue clarity and learn how to lead together, we hope that your joy in marriage increases and reflects God’s glory to those around you!