The 5 Weekly Habits of Men Who Lead Like Elders
Ordinary rhythms that form extraordinary men.
Last Friday morning, a jacked 23-year-old put me in a chokehold. He was on my back with his arm around my neck. I could feel the blood slowly draining from my brain and knew I had only a few seconds to escape before I’d go unconscious. Unfortunately, none of my escape attempts worked, so I tapped out to end the Brazilian jiu-jitsu match.
I’m 45. I drove home from our gym, replaying what I did wrong, discussing the mistake with my kids, who are higher-ranking belts than I am. Most people would call this a hobby. I’ve started to see it as elder training. It’s the weekly practice of being humbled, corrected, and forced to adapt.
Like Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, eldership is formed in the ordinary, practical rhythms you refuse to quit. You can’t be passive in jiu-jitsu. Passivity gets you choked, and repeated defeats from undeveloped skills mean you’ll probably stop showing up altogether. Same with your home.
In the home, passivity is the single greatest disqualifier for the kind of influence God wants to entrust to you in your city and in His Kingdom (Luke 19:20-27). If your regular rhythm doesn’t include habits that develop elder-worthy character, you’re drifting in your development of these character qualities. They might develop unintentionally, but an intentional plan will always lead to better results.
I’m not saying I have all the answers about the perfect first steps for someone who wants to pursue this noble task. The truth is, it probably varies significantly from person to person, depending on what God wants to develop in them first.
However, at a high level, here are five weekly habits that have helped me steward my home today as I prepare for the authority I’ll be trusted with in the Kingdom to come.
1. Lead your family in reading the Bible together.
An elder must be “able to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it” (Titus 1:9). That ability doesn’t materialize at ordination. It develops in your living room, year after year, as you and your family learn to hear God’s voice together.
Here’s what this looks like for us, and I want to emphasize how simple it is because complexity kills consistency. All we do is pick a book of the Bible and go around the room. Everyone who can read reads a few verses aloud until we finish the chapter. Then I simply ask, “What stands out to you here?” That’s it. No curriculum. No prep. No commentaries open on my phone.
Sometimes the discussion is deep and intense. One of my kids will land on something that cracks open a conversation none of us expected. Other times, nothing really stands out and we’re done in ten minutes. Both are fine. We pray together after reading. We pray about things we’re thankful for, anything we need to confess to God or each other, and whatever prayer requests are on our hearts. Currently, we do this on Tuesday and Friday evenings after dinner, though the timing and frequency has shifted over the years.
The point isn’t impressive family worship. The point is that your children grow up watching their father open scripture, wrestle with it honestly, and let it shape how your family thinks about the world. That’s teaching. Not in the classroom sense, but in the Deuteronomy 6 sense. It’s God’s word woven into the fabric of ordinary life.
2. Have a weekly check-in with each person in your home.
Shepherds know their sheep (Proverbs 27:23). That’s not a metaphor for pastors only. It’s a description of any man who leads well. You can’t father your home if you don’t actually know what’s happening inside the people who live there.
Dana and I meet with each of our kids individually most weeks. Usually, it’s a scheduled sit-down on Saturday and Sunday evenings, but sometimes it’s spontaneous while driving somewhere.
We start broad: “What’s going on in your world lately?”
Then we move into relationships: “What relationships are going well for you?” and “Which ones are tough right now?”
These two questions alone have surfaced things we never would have known to ask about.
There’s usually something else Dana and I have noticed during the week that we bring up, too. We use a framework that’s served us well: “I noticed _____. What do you think about that?” It’s a non-accusatory way to address attitudes or behaviors we’ve observed, whether good or bad. It invites the child into reflection rather than putting them on defense.
We end every check-in with the question, “What do you need from us?” Then we close with verbal affirmation, something specific we appreciate about them, and tell them how much we love them.
Dana and I have a similar check-in on date night, though it’s less structured. The principle is the same: you can’t lead people you aren’t pursuing.
The man who learns to ask good questions in his home, who can discern what’s really going on beneath the surface with his wife and kids, is the same man who will one day be able to sit with a struggling family at his “city gate” and actually help.
3. Study scripture with other men.
“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 9:10), and you’re going to need a lot of wisdom to lead your home and your city well. So get more of it.
I’ll be honest: I’m not great at “quiet time” in the traditional sense. Sitting alone with my Bible and a journal has never been my most fruitful practice. What has been far more fruitful, maybe the single most transformative discipline in my life over the past decade, is meeting weekly with other men, reading a few chapters of scripture together, and then wrestling through whatever stands out to us. Whatever the Holy Spirit seems to be prompting us to dig into, we dig into.
I’ve been doing this for over fourteen years and it has deepened my understanding of scripture, strengthened my convictions, and sharpened my fear of the Lord more than anything else I’ve done. These are men I confess sin to, repent in front of, invite to challenge my thinking, ask to hold me accountable, and trust to care for me despite knowing my weaknesses in full.
You cannot lead your home or your city without the foundation of scripture. And you cannot build that foundation alone. In scripture, God’s people are always led by a plurality of elders, never a single elder alone. You need men who know you deeply enough to say, “That’s not right,” and who love you enough to say it to your face. If you don’t have that, start there. Find one or two men and open a book of the Bible together. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It just has to be consistent. Start building those relationships.
4. Hold a budget and calendar review meeting.
Your family’s two most valuable resources are time and money. If you’re not intentionally directing both, someone else is deciding for you. That’s not leadership. At best, that’s a passive drift with maybe some guardrails in place to keep you from falling off a cliff.
Paul says that if a man doesn’t know how to manage his own household, he can’t take care of God’s church (1 Timothy 3:5). I used to read that as a vague statement about general competence, but based on what the rest of scripture says about eldership, I don’t think it is. It’s about stewardship. It’s the practical, mundane work of making sure your family’s resources are being deployed fruitfully.
Dana and I hold a family business meeting most Sunday evenings where we often review two things.
We review our budget. We use EveryDollar because it makes it easy for us to update each month and track progress. You could use a spreadsheet. The key is that we plan how we’ll use our money and decide ahead of time what we’ll say yes to and what we’ll say no to. Don’t passively let others take your resources from you. Budget them.
We review our time. We go through our online calendars, look at the week ahead, and make sure there’s time protected for our family to be together. Not just logistically coordinated, but genuinely present with each other.
I realize this sounds mundane, but that’s kind of the point. The man who faithfully manages the boring details of a household budget and a family calendar is developing the exact character Paul says qualifies him for greater responsibility. If you can’t run a budget meeting with your wife, you’re probably not ready to steward the welfare of a city beyond your home.
5. Exercise as body stewardship.
It’s hard to father well when you’re sick and tired. The health of your body literally enables you to lead well, handle stress, be prepared for physical tasks, play well with your kids, and make wise decisions with mental clarity.
So eat well. Sleep well. Work out well. This is stewardship.
I do Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu on Monday and Friday mornings for cardio, and strength training on Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. I know that sounds like I’m the most disciplined person in the world, but honestly, it was a multi-year process of figuring out a routine I actually stick to. It was HARD! What finally made it work was getting proper workout equipment off Facebook Marketplace for a home gym and working with a coach from Future.co for accountability, a plan, and measurable progress. Plus, I wrestled in junior high and high school, so grappling in BJJ doesn’t even feel like exercise. It’s just fun to have your throat choked and your limbs potentially dismembered while fighting for your life. (My wife is thoroughly confused on this matter, as any normal person naturally would be.)
I still struggle with nutrition tracking, though. I’ve tried MyFitnessPal and found that I hate logging food. I absolutely loathe it. If eating chalk meant I wouldn’t have to track food, I’d probably do it. So, if anyone reading this has a system for tracking macros that actually works, please let me know. I haven’t figured that piece out yet.
The point isn’t physical, chiseled perfection. The point is that a man who can’t govern his own body — who is enslaved to comfort, laziness, or appetite — will struggle to govern anything else. Self-control is an elder qualification for a reason (Titus 1:8). And it starts with the most basic stewardship you have: the body God gave you.
Lead What’s Been Entrusted To You
Every one of these habits is about the same thing: fathering your home well. Leading what’s been entrusted to you. Making sure the relationships and resources under your roof are fruitful.
Why does it matter? Because Paul draws a direct line from household management to community leadership (1 Timothy 3:4–5), and scripture draws a direct line from faithfulness in small things to authority over greater things (Luke 19:17). The man who fathers his home with wisdom and intentionality is the man being prepared to father his city, to build relationships with families in his community and support them with the wisdom and experience he’s spent decades cultivating.
When practiced consistently, week after week, year after year, these habits will form you into the kind of man your family trusts, your community needs, and your King will one day entrust with more.
I think about this verse a lot:
“Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” - 1 Peter 1:13
When your hope is set on what’s coming, it’s hard to be passive. You can say no to comfort because you’re living for a different reward.
That formation starts this week. Pick one habit you’re not doing and start.
And comment with a habit of your own for me and others to consider.
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Hi Tim, I realize you're likely earning affiliate commissions from EveryDollar and others, but there are options which are not subscription based. I'm only mentioning this not to offend the need your family has for income, but rather under the guise that in a Biblical sense, being a good steward of one's own resources, money being one of them, is what may be of benefit to the man wishing to be financially confident and a strong head of household. Especially one who may not be able to afford (yet another) expense of a recurring charge.
As an example, if you're using an iOS device, and have enough discipline (and can convince your wife) to simply take less than 20 seconds to enter a receipt after making a purchase, you can manage your budget with a simple $3 (one time payment only) app named Spending Tracker. Using their Dropbox sync feature you can link a common budget across multiple devices.
I'm not posting the url because my intent is not to directly promote the app, although I will say it is made by an independent developer from the domain mhriley.com (I have no personal or commerical association, I just use it in my household). The point being... when it comes to services, subscriptions, paying for things and budgeting, there are ways and software that can be used without increasing your expenses while, at the same time, trying to manage or reduce them.
Lately, I'm simply abhorring the direction of our capitalist system where greedy corporations simply extract an ever increasing amount when in reality their own expenses tend to reduce over time. This is so that the executives at the top of these companies can play a totally different game than most of us "normal working folks". You yourself know the feeling of an imbalanced equation. The time and effort you put into increasing the value of YouTube over the years was rewarded at a rate of pennies (or more likely fractional pennies) on the dollar - until you started selling things and services directly from yourself. Yourself and everyone else who are (or were) somewhat "dependent" on the distribution and exposure that the channel owner provides, allows those companies to effectively retain modern day indentured employees. It really is an unfortunate situation even though the Bible clearly spells out that it's what the world will be like until the day He arrives.
Just wanted some people to know that there are older software solutions out there that don't seek to extract more money from you on a repeating basis.