JAC Online

Who’s in Charge Here?
by Commissioner Ken Baillie
Territorial Commander, USA Central Territory

 Do you remember when President Ronald Reagan was shot? To calm jittery markets and anxious Americans Alexander Haig, White House chief of staff, stepped to the media microphones to famously pronounce "I'm in charge here.”  He wasn’t, of course, at least not under the United States Constitution.  He was just a White House staffer who seemed ridiculous for asserting an authority he did not have.

 

 “Who’s in charge here?”  Google that question and you will get 128,000 hits. It is a common phrase.  It is a subject of considerable interest to many people.

 

It is a subject of interest to spouses in an officer marriage. Both must consider who is in charge. So must the people in a corps regarding their officers. The answer given has immediate effect for practical issues like who chairs a corps council meeting or who carries the keys to the building. It has to do with power and privilege.

 

Consider a field appointment, a corps where an officer couple are appointed. “Who’s in charge here?”  At various times in our history we have given different answers, as evidenced by the titles assigned. In some old Dispos the husband is listed as the “commanding officer” with no title other than “Mrs.” Not long ago my wife had occasion to look up her officer career card and discovered that in one of our earliest appointments her card showed no title, only the place.  So she asked an employee at an Army archive to look up the Dispo of the time. There was no title at all for her. There was no mention of her on the page. One could conclude she didn’t exist!

 

But back to corps situations. In our long history the titles have changed repeatedly: “commanding officer” and “corps officer”; “corps officer” and “officer wife”; “corps officer” and “associate officer”; and even “commanding officer” and “assistant officer.”  More recently, at least in the USA Central territory, we have listed both identically. He is a “corps officer” and she is also a “corps officer”, and when listed together they are “corps officers.”

 

Consider the way couples are named. It used to be “Captain and Mrs. John Jones.”  The husband’s first name was listed but the woman’s was not. She was just an anonymous “Mrs.”  We tried to solve it with “Captains John and Jane Jones.”  But Jane comes before John in an alphabetical listing, so some said it should be “Captains Jane and John Jones.”  Placing the wife’s name first because of the alphabet made it sound as if Jane was in charge, or was more senior than John. So we separated the names and listed both “Captain John Jones” and “Captain Jane Jones”.  But that too became awkward in many settings. From the platform we couldn’t just say “Captain Jones” because no one knew which one of the two was intended. Some got into the awkwardness of saying “Captain Jane” without the last name, which is strange at best.  Recently I phoned an Army headquarters and without thinking asked for “Major _____” to which the receptionist replied: “Which one, Mr. or Mrs.?”

 

On reflection, why should the husband be listed first? Just because it feels right? Here we must admit that cultural expectations influence many of our Army practices. If we are to actualize our rhetoric of equality we will have to examine and change a number of cultural assumptions.

 

Back to the question “Who’s in charge here?”  These days we are likely to answer: both are.  But what does that mean?  How does that work out in practice?

 

Every officer couple works it out differently. Sometimes personality is the deciding influence.  If the wife is an outgoing, extroverted, friendly type she may be the one who works with the leaders on corps programming. Her husband may be in his study working on a sermon. It might seem as if the wife is the one in charge because she is more the ‘people person.’

 

The same couple might give a different signal on another day.  The husband has a mind for detail, for processes, for paperwork.  He is much better than she at finalizing the week’s bookkeeping, completing the report to headquarters, and signing the cheques. Who is in charge now? It must be the husband. He signs the cheques! (Hey, just kidding!)

 

Some would say that in the illustrations above we have given freedom for the couple to divide up the work according to their gifts.  She is good at greeting people and he is good at business details. Some people feel more comfortable with the man being viewed as ‘in charge’ when he is signing cheques but less comfortable with the wife being ‘in charge’ when she is greeting people.  Down deep we make a cultural distinction: “She’s being friendly, which is nice, but her husband should still be in charge.”

 

Why assume the married man officer is ‘in charge’? Some evangelical churches answer the “Who’s in charge?” question with the concept of “senior pastor.”  He (notice: he!) heads a team of other pastors and employees. He decides the preaching subjects and preachers, taking the majority of Sundays himself.  He may be hired by a church board but he becomes so influential that in reality he leads the board rather than the other way around. When pressed about “Who’s in charge?” he is likely to say that his biblical role is pastor/teacher and his practical role is servant leader.  But what about his wife?  Rarely is she ordained. She is not expected to do or be anything – other than present and pleasant. The Army is just about the only place where you will find both members of a marriage ordained and assigned to the same pastorate, so what other evangelicals say on this subject is not very helpful to us.

 

What is the answer to the question “Who’s in charge here?”  Turn the question into another question: “What is spiritual leadership?”  That is a more significant question. The ‘in-charge’ question smacks of power but the spiritual leadership question points to what is more important in the life of the church.

 

Does spiritual leadership mean a dynamic, forceful personality?  Some people seem to become the leader in any group.  They’ve been that way since they were children.  Active in school clubs and student government. Often being chosen not just to be on a committee but to be the chairperson, too.  At the training college elected by fellow cadets as the session president.  “A born leader.”  So, is this what constitutes ‘spiritual leadership’?

 

Or, do we think an outgoing, charming personality constitutes spiritual leadership?  Easily meeting and greeting the public. Joining the Rotary Club and soon asked to be next year’s club president.  Able to meet the city mayor and councilmen without feeling awkward or intimidated. Totally at ease hobnobbing with the rich and powerful.  After this corps appointment no doubt headed for divisional public relations officer!

 

Or, for spiritual leadership do we think engagement with people is most important?  The officer who remembers everyone’s name and whom everyone loves to be around.  Older people. Children. Local officers. The general public. It doesn’t seem to matter; everyone feels befriended by this cheerful, outgoing personality.

 

Or, for spiritual leadership do we think availability is most important? While the officer couple have children at home the husband will be more available for ministry than the wife, so he is ‘in charge.’  Right?  Not at all. Such a conclusion is another cultural assumption: a wife gives all the child care and the husband does not. But every couple should be free to divide the family care responsibilities as they choose. Some wives/mothers want to be more involved in child care than their husbands. And most couples find that family responsibilities change with the years; it is a whole lot easier to have a high schooler than a toddler!  On balance, most of us men would be better husbands and fathers if we shared home responsibilities more fully. And that would make our wives more available for ministry.

 

You might say the discussion above is more about personality leadership than spiritual leadership. Probably so.  Then how about servanthood? When an officer demonstrates this grace people are impressed and blessed. But people don’t usually equate servanthood with leadership. More often they see it only as caring concern.

 

What about the formal moments of corps life?  Is the one who conducts an enrolment, a wedding, a funeral, a baby dedication the “spiritual leader”?  No, that would be giving only a ceremonial meaning to “spiritual leader”.  Considering our non-observant sacramental stance we should not confuse ceremonial responsibilities with spiritual leadership.

 

What about teaching?  In some evangelical traditions the spiritual leader is the one who rightly divides the word of truth, who discerns the meaning of God’s word, who teaches how to apply scripture to modern daily life.  Yes, but when in the course of a week?  In the Wednesday night bible study group?  In the adult Sunday school class?  In the weekly morning service sermon?  Ah, the sermon!  Now there must be the spiritual leadership of the corps! It is weekly. It is public. It is central to our Protestant (implied) liturgy. This is the leadership role, some will say.

 

There are many roles and functions for a corps officer. Many years ago the USA Army published a book titled “The Role of the Corps Officer in the USA.”  It listed a dozen roles to be fulfilled by a corps officer. But it did not prioritize them, so it is no help answering the question posed here: what is the role which equates with spiritual leadership?

 

I don’t think a formal answer is to be found in our polity or theology. An informal, implied answer is provided by our culture. Our culture assigns a leader/dominant role to a husband, a follower/submissive role to a wife. It goes back centuries, maybe back to the dim mists of pre-history. That reality has been researched, analyzed and discussed at great length. Read Catherine Booth on the limited role available to women in her time due to lack of education. Consider the limited role in politics due to lack of the vote until comparatively recent times in history.  Enumerate the constraints on financial and property rights of women until recent decades.  Scan the bookshelves of gender discrimination studies published in the last three or four decades.  Indeed, it is an inescapable fact. Women have been consigned to a subservient role in history.

 

History shapes our culture, and culture shapes our theology.  While we once made a giant leap forward by asserting equality in ministry we have nevertheless struggled to make it a daily reality. And nowhere has this struggle been greater than in the way we assume roles for officer married couples. Women and men may be equal in rhetoric but they are still unequal in practice.

 

Some within our Army have been influenced by a fundamentalist subculture. Within our ranks some tolerate equality in ministry while holding to inequality in marriages.  The assumption is that a husband is God-ordained to be the leader of his wife. This idea has a long history in Christendom.  And truth be told, William and Catherine espoused this view. Though sometimes they made exceptions overall they held to conventional Victorian views about their marriage even while espousing equality in ministry.

 

In recent decades Bible-believing evangelicals have called into question longtime notions of headship and submission. They have reconsidered how to interpret rightly a few proof-text verses so often cited by patriarchalists. A faithful-to-Scripture view has emerged that sees Christian marriage as a partnership of equals who submit to each other.  The literature on this is extensive: hundreds of books, journal articles, conference tapes, etc. Not enough Salvationists have read this new material. But some still assert patriarchal headship/submission notions. If this is you, dear reader, it is time for you to consider another view, a biblical view, an evangelical view. (NB: Email me. I’ll send you a reading list if you’re interested.)

 

In a Christian marriage the question ‘Who’s in charge here?” should not even be asked because it is a question about assertion of power. There is no instance in the New Testament where Christian husbands are told to assert control over their wives.  To the contrary, husbands are told to be a servant, to submit, to yield.  The passage in Ephesians which some are keen to quote about “wives, submit to your husbands” is in fact preceded by “submit to one another.”  In fact, in the original language there is no word submit in the phrase translated “wives, submit to your husbands.”  It says only “wives, to your husbands.” The incomplete phrase harks back to the controlling prior verse, which says “submit to one another.” The New Testament never answers the question “Who’s in charge here?” because the question itself is inappropriate.  The right question is: How can I serve, and how can I submit to my spouse, my corps, my Lord?

 

This brings us back to the case of a married officer couple appointed to a corps.  Who’s in charge?  Both are. Equally. Fully. And they enjoy a wonderful freedom in dividing responsibilities not by gender but by gifts, graces, personalities and situations. What a blessing!  What a privilege!  We’ve got a good thing here.  We just need to work harder at fulfilling its potential.

 

We have made progress. For a long time we were guilty of assigning married women to roles based solely on their husband’s appointments.  A husband became a divisional secretary and his wife automatically became the divisional home league secretary.  A husband was appointed financial secretary and his wife appointed to League of Mercy.  Sometimes the wives were gifted for those roles, or began to love them in time.  But in many other instances that was not so. We made assumptions by gender rather than suiting gifts to roles.

 

But it is changing. Recently I counted every married couple in the USA Central Territory who are not in a corps, which basically means all the couples at headquarters, the training college and the various institutional ministries.  There were a total of 77 such couples.  I was surprised and pleased that the married women in more than half the cases -- 42, to be exact -- are not in traditional gender-prescribed appointments.  And a high percentage of the remaining chose to be in the traditional appointments because they love the opportunities of women's ministries and community care ministries.

 

Among the 42 non-gender-based appointments there are a wide range of roles capitalizing on gifts or interests: teacher, curriculum developer, auditor, evangelism facilitator, pastoral care specialist, multi-cultural ministry developer, older adult ministry coordinator, divisional secretary, etc.  In addition, we've experimented with assigning couples to work together at a headquarters similar to the way they worked together in a corps, with exactly the same titles, dividing responsibilities as suits them best, e.g. both husband and wife are listed as territorial youth secretary, territorial community relations secretary, divisional youth secretary, etc. It seems to work well.

 

Some appointments are unique and require appropriate skillsets. Those appointments should be given to the one suitable spouse but not both. Trust me, you do not want me to lead the junior soldiers program. You want my wife.  Similarly, you do not want my wife to handle the bookkeeping.

 

Things are changing in corps. In our territory we’ve asked DHQ staff to address emails to both husband and wife corps officers. They’re both on Lotus Notes so it is easy to do.  Why not be sure they both know what is going on even if only one of the two will handle a certain issue?  There are many stories from women officers who wrote to DHQ only to have the DHQ officer respond to her husband even though the husband didn’t write and won’t be involved.

 

If the married man is the one gifted for youth ministries the DYL can look to him first.  If the married woman has a degree in business why not assign her the Power of Attorney for cheque signing?  If the married man is gifted for pastoral care why not consider him the liaison to the divisional community care ministries department?  If the married woman is gifted…..  Well, you get the idea. Ministry roles are not a function of gender.  They are a function of giftedness.  That is good theology. Most everything to the contrary is just cultural assumption and unreflected practice.

 

I believe in my wife’s call to ministry, in her commissioning/ordination, in her gifts and graces for ministry. She makes a superb contribution to the Army.  Likewise, I believe in women officers period! All are gifted for ministry. All deserve equal opportunity.

 

Where there are men and women in ministry, particularly married officers, the question “Who’s in charge here?” is irrelevant. The Kingdom’s business is too urgent for us to be diverted to issues of power and privilege.

 

Who’s in charge here?  Not men over women, and not husbands over wives. We are equal partners in the gospel.

 

 

 

 

   

 

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