Review: What to Say When She Thinks Her Husband Isn’t a Good Spiritual Leader

A compassionate, but firm, response from a mutualist’s perspective of Lauren Washer’s counsel in the booklet,What to Say When She Thinks Her Husband Isn’t a Good Spiritual Leader (P&R Publishing, 2025, 48 pages). My heart aches for the marriages tangled in the expectations this booklet attempts to manage. I grieve for the women who've compiled a checklist for an ideal "spiritual leader," only to face the inevitable disappointment and resentment when their husbands fall short. Likewise, I ache for the men who stagger under the immense, unfulfillable pressure of a calling defined by demanding, gender-specific "boxes" that breeds only guilt and inadequacy. The Muddy Waters of Complementarian Counsel Lauren Washer sets out to offer practical, realistic counsel, urging the couple toward an ideal of co-workers together, looking to all the “one another” passages in the New Testament—a surprisingly egalitarian-sounding aspiration. Unfortunately, this helpful impulse is ultimately undermined and the waters are muddied by the book's foundational framework. The counsel is crippled by the insistence on tight gendered expectations: the wife as a subordinate "helper" rather than a “necessary ally” or “co-regent” and the husband as the initiator with ultimate responsibility. Washer attempts to constructively supply questions a wife could use to gently prompt her husband into a position of leadership, but this strategy quickly devolves into a manual for spiritual manipulation—a burden for both parties. The Weight of John Piper's Ideal Washer correctly observes, when adopting frameworks like John Piper’s demanding definition of Spiritual Leadership, that the calling feels "completely inadequate to fulfill." Yet, the husband is told he must trust this is God’s will and a path to his sanctification. This creates a paradox: the burden is placed on the man as a mark of faithfulness, but the failure is then covered by reminding the couple that "Jesus is King." While the latter statement is true, it fails to relieve the original, unwarranted guilt. Instead of dismantling the unbiblical pressure, this counsel merely offers Jesus as a substitute leader when the husband fails, rather than as the only true and perfect Head of the home at all times—thereby freeing the couple from the imposed structure in the first place. The Gospel is Good News: You Are Free Brothers, be free. Sisters, be free. The overwhelming and ultimately crippling ideal of the husband as the ultimate, initiator leader who bears the final responsibility is a burden Christ never intended to place on a married man. It is a structure rooted in cultural tradition, not biblical mandate. "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery" (Galatians 5:1). The true Good News of the Gospel is that you don't have to carry this guilt or this impossible structure. From Creation (Genesis 1:26-28), where men and women were created to reflect God’s image together—as mutual partners and co-regents, to the New Creation (Galatians 3:28) —where there is no distinction of "male and female" in Christ—the pattern is mutuality and partnership. The buck stops with Jesus as the only true Leader and Head of the home (Ephesians 5:23). My counsel for a disappointed wife and a burdened husband? Strive for: • Mutuality: Wife and husband are free to outdo one another in honour and love (Romans 12:10). • Partnership: They are called to work together to cover one another’s shortcomings, mutually exhorting each other to godliness and love (Hebrews 10:24). They submit to one another out of reverence for Christ (Ephesians 5:21) both looking to God, in Christ, as their example (Ephesians 5:1-2). • Unity: They are united by a singular goal and identity—as heirs together of the grace of life (1 Peter 3:7), striving with one mind for the good of their family and the glory of God. • Giftedness: They are empowered to lead where God has gifted them, regardless of gender, using their spiritual gifts to serve each other and the body (1 Peter 4:10).

The gospel gives this couple freedom from the crushing weight of gendered performance, inviting them instead into a loving, dynamic partnership under the single, perfect authority of King Jesus.

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Christine Jolly is a part-time campus minister to university students in Tasmania. A former missionary kid (Germany) and current high school art and Christian Studies teacher, she describes her hobbies as theatre and “the internet”.