[the proverbs 31 -man?]

needless to say, i've been around a while. there's a reason there are lots of churches with pastels and flowers and all sorts of prettiness. most churches have catered to women. i've been in churches where the pastor is a woman and this isn't an argument against women in ministry- i loved that church and i still do. i've been to seminars and meetings where because the church has 20-30% more women in the seats, pastors preach sermons to release women in ministry. this is all well and good, but it's causing more and more men to lose their relevancy in the church.

we're not looking for sole ownership of leadership roles. the fact that men are defecting from churches in college at an alarming rate should cause us to consider what it is we're passing on. after all, prov 22:6 says

train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it

which actually begs the question: what is it that we are training up our children in if they are defecting as soon as they are out of the house?

this past summer i began teaching a small group on a topic that i had been praying about called 'becoming men of influence.' after the first couple of weeks, it became obvious that the name wasn't sufficient simply because there were as many females attending as males, if not more.

a swift name change was completed and 'becoming people of influence' was born and continued throughout the summer. however, this blog isn't a biography of a class; it isn't a promotion of a course.

it became obvious after a few conversations with some of the ladies as to why they were attending when they let on that they are not looking to be released into ministry or even to be set up for success. they simply wanted to know more about becoming proverb 31 women.

i tried, with what became an excercise in futility, to explain that the class was geared towards the men becoming men of influence to which they pointed me towards verses 1-9, 11 and 23. clearly, they had a vision of proverb 31 that i did not have.


when we think of proverbs 31, we tend to think of the "wife of noble character" epilogue and forget that this entire passage isn't actually about women at all. in fact, it's about the ruler- the husband.


yes, the end of the passage focuses on the woman, but only because her husband has released her to be all that she is supposed to be. the fact that the wife is so elegant and desirable in the passage is a testament to the husband's faith in her. verse 11 even talks of this confidence:

her husband has full confidence in her and lacks nothing of value

women in the church all have a desire to be the proverbs 31 woman-- the reason there are so few proverbs 31 women is that there are so few proverbs 31 men.


we tend to remove the first half of proverb 31 from the second half of proverb 31 and assume that they have little to nothing to do with each other simply because most translations of the bible include a header to note a change in subject; however, the entire passage is about a ruler or leader.


not enough men are strong enough leaders to release their wives (and grow their daughters) to be women of influence.