Barbara Myers remembers meeting the board of a church where her husband was candidating early in his ministry: “After they had exhausted his capabilities and probabilities, someone turned the spotlight on me and asked, ‘And what can you do?’ I was not prepared for that question, but I spent ten years trying to answer it by doing everything.”
Mary Bouma, a pastor’s wife and author, says that at one time, ministry couples were hired as “two for the price of one.” While times have changed, as have many of the expectations, she feels many congregations still have an agenda for the minister’s wife, even when they don’t acknowledge it.
“Today the minister’s wife may serve a more political purpose: befriending the right people, being a peacemaker, smoothing ruffled feathers,” she says.
Most ministers’ wives have experienced the tension of adjusting their role to the stage and the players. Whatever role they choose, it is pressure filled in spite of the increased sensitivity of today’s congregations.
“The pastoral family has been taken down off the pedestal,” says Mary Bouma. “It’s nice to be down, but in some ways we’re more vulnerable now. Today the man of the cloth is hired as an executive to run the business of the church. If the business doesn’t go as well as it might, the pastor is out. It can be scary-for the pastor, and perhaps even more so for the spouse.”
“The woman married to the minister still finds her role shaped by the expectations of others to some degree,” says Dr. Louis McBurney, psychiatrist and clergy counselor.
McBurney goes on: “Women today are better prepared to find a unique ministry of their own. Pastors’ wives today feel less locked into outside constraints than has been true in the past. They want to be heard and are more assertive about their needs.”
To get a better idea of their challenges and responses, LEADERSHIP talked with dozens of clergy spouses and studied a recent survey of pastors’ wives done by the National Association of Evangelicals. Here are some of the findings.
The Calling
Most pastors’ wives find significance, even enjoyment, in their role. The NAE survey offers some indication of the percentages.
Half of those responding to the survey say they love being married to a clergyman. Four out of five see their role as God’s will for their lives, and 60 percent feel fulfilled. Seventy-seven percent of the respondents indicate that their congregations give them freedom to be themselves.
“The overall pattern revealed in our study of pastors’ wives was quite positive,” says Kenneth Crow, professor of sociology at MidAmerica Nazarene College in Olathe, Kansas, who helped analyze the study for NAE. “Large majorities [of the respondents] say they enjoy the role. … [It] may be more demanding than others, but the overall picture is of women who are challenged by those demands.”
While most women enjoy their roles and are committed to the calling, they say there is a price to pay.
“My husband is the senior pastor of the largest church in our city,” said another woman. “That gives me some visibility, too. People see me going about my daily activities. One Sunday morning, a member reached for my hand, grinning ear to ear. ‘I love the dress you have on today. I also know where you bought it and how much you paid for it.’ ”
A younger woman commented wistfully, “We have been married just three months. While my husband was on staff, we dated, became engaged, and finally married. The congregation has set us up as models of romance, dating, and being newlyweds. It’s difficult to maintain the image of perfect love when you’re human and facing normal problems.”
A Canadian minister’s wife says, “We live in the church rectory, and people simply walk in. We always have to be in a receiving mode.”
Nevertheless, whether from practiced habit or inner springs of joy, the overall tone remains positive. In fact, as length of service increased for survey respondents, their attitude became more positive. The figures for those with tenure under five years show 57 percent feel fulfilled, but as the tenure rises above twenty years, 94 percent feel fulfilled. Forty percent of wives under age 30 felt they were competing with congregational demands on their husbands. By age 40 that number had fallen to 18 percent.
The size of the church also makes a difference: the larger the happier. For women serving in churches under one hundred members, 40 percent felt they needed help with discouragement and depression. In churches with more than 350 members, the number needing that help dropped to 19 percent.
In churches under one hundred, 56 percent describe their life as rewarding, and that number rises to 91 percent in churches of 500 or more. For those who stay in the ministry, confidence and comfort in the role seem to increase.
Perennial Shortages: Money and Time
“Just as we decided to go to seminary,” one wife recalled, “all our friends were buying houses and new furniture. While they were bent on accumulating, we were selling everything to go back to school. Not even my own family understood it, but we knew what God was calling us to do.”
Financial worries were high on the list of concerns for clergy wives, especially the welfare of their children. Mothers tend to think of children first when financial constraints affect their lives. If the dollars aren’t available, Mother is usually the one who has to say no to faddish $125 sneakers or the class field trip to Jamaica. She may need to work to provide for the children’s education, orthodontia, or special medical treatment.
“I will always have to work to subsidize our income,” says an Illinois wife. “My husband prefers to serve smaller parishes. Right now he serves a yoked parish of two churches. Since we have no children, I can work full-time. When we have children, I’ll cut my work time, but I will always have to work to make our income adequate. I’m fortunate to have a career I love.”
Slightly more than half (51 percent) consider themselves full-time homemakers, although more than a third (39 percent) are employed part-time, and 21 percent are employed full-time.
While finances seem to be a particular concern to those serving smaller congregations, time is in short supply for almost every clergy family.
“Balancing family time with time spent at the church is our greatest difficulty,” says a new wife. “When my husband was single and pastoring, he could spend large amounts of time on church work. We are trying desperately to change this and have time together. It’s causing us a lot of anguish.”
Another woman relates, “Last year my husband spent several months away on a preaching mission. During that time many people said to our children, ‘I bet you miss your daddy.’ One Sunday as we arrived home from church, our oldest daughter said, ‘Mother, I don’t know what to say when people ask if I miss Daddy. It’s no different now than when Daddy is home. We never see him anyhow.’ When my husband returned, we talked together about this. He’s trying to change, but it’s hard to say no to the congregation.”
“I hear the children asking their father to play catch or go fishing,” says another wife. “Time after time he says he has something to do at the church. On the rare occasions when he sits down to watch television with them, he reads a book at the same time. The children and I feel a loss. I tell my husband that someday the children will quit asking for attention. He’s frustrated because he simply can’t be everywhere.”
Some families have found ways to manage their time. For Ben and Lauretta Patterson, of New Providence, New Jersey, the key word in time control is intentional. “Certain practical disciplines keep our calling in perspective,” they say.
The Pattersons plan opportunities to grow and relax together. As much as eight weeks in advance, they schedule such things on a common calendar. Neither will be out at night more than three times a week, and the first nights marked are home nights and a weekly Sabbath other than Sunday.
“When our priorities are on the calendar, we can weigh other requests, because we’ve already determined what’s best for our family. Invitations sometimes have to be passed up, and church meetings juggled. At the same time, we have freedom to respond to emergencies because we know that over the long haul our priorities are in place,” says Lauretta.
Sources of Support
Almost every pastor’s wife admits her need for personal support and renewal. About 41 percent experience frequent emotional ups and downs. One in six says she is “close to burnout.”
“Younger spouses and especially those with children at home were significantly more likely to describe the role as stressful, hurtful, and frustrating,” says Crow. Nearly half (46 percent) say they need “a real vacation,” and 56 percent say they could use some rest and relaxation. Altogether, 51.7 percent said they needed help coping with stress. For those under age 30, 65 percent needed that help; for those over 60, the numbers were cut in half.
One in five respondents found a move from one pastorate to another particularly stressful.
Rachel is among them. Petite, dark-haired, and intense, she has been raising four children while moving four times during her fifteen-year marriage. First came her husband’s internship, and then an interim pastorate, which was followed by an associate position. Now her husband is the senior minister in a flourishing suburban church. His moves to larger churches have come in quick succession.
“During the first year after our last move,” says Rachel, “I felt absolutely alone. Our new baby had a difficult start. I spent several hours a day just nursing him. Physical exhaustion and caring for the four children kept me shut up at home, while my husband absorbed the details of the new congregation alone. For months I carried a load of guilt for not being able to do more in the church. Eventually I had to ask for help from a professional counselor. I look back now and realize I was expecting far too much of myself.”
“Many times the clergy family doesn’t think to ask for help until there’s a crisis,” says Linda Riley, a minister’s wife and director of Called Together Ministries. “There’s an attitude of ‘We’re the counselors. Why do we need counsel?’ After twelve years of smooth sailing, suddenly our family faced a crisis,” she remembers. “I began to look around for help. Out of that experience grew my determination to find out what help was available to clergy families and get the word out.”
Linda publishes Serving Together, a free resource newsletter for ministry families. She has organized a group of volunteers to counsel on The Listening Line, a telephone hotline for pastors’ wives. The line (1-213-214-2332) is open Monday through Saturday, 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. Collect calls are accepted if the caller cannot afford the long-distance charge. Linda invites anyone to place a call who needs peer counseling, referrals, prayer, or just a listening friend. The volunteer who answers will have at least ten years experience as a minister’s wife and training as a listener.
“When groups of pastors’ wives get together,” Linda says, “they don’t talk about theology and denominational traditions. They talk about their common concerns and how they solve the dilemmas they face in ministry.”
The Ministry Marriage
The woman married to both minister and ministry finds herself feeling like a bigamist. She needs the support and affirmation of her husband if she’s going to keep her head above water in the swirling currents of church life, but she also wants her husband to remain true to his calling.
Eighty-five percent of the women who responded to the NAE survey say their marriages are healthy and compatible. Four out of five have confidence in their husband’s fidelity, and nearly two-thirds say their children enjoy being minister’s kids. It’s a positive picture, for the most part.
When we read the opposite sides of the percentages in the survey, we can see that some women are struggling to survive. While 85 percent said their marriages were healthy, there must have been 15 percent remaining who were less sure of that.
Crow concludes from the NAE survey: “While the number of clergy marriages experiencing severe problems appears to be relatively small, pastors and their wives are not immune to the problems that affect other couples. About one in every twenty-five ministers’ wives seems to be experiencing severe problems.”
The survey found that about one in five respondents experienced one or more of these frustrations: they had to compete with the congregation for their husbands, they didn’t communicate with their husbands, or their emotional needs were not being met by their husbands.
In addition, LEADERSHIP asked this question of clergy wives: “What would you want us to tell your husband if he would never know you said it?”
Almost to a woman they said, “Tell him I need more time from him than I get.”
McBurney often hears pastors’ wives say, “I don’t feel valued as a person.”
An example is the experience of Lynne Hybels, who, writing in Sunday to Sunday, vividly describes her personal struggle. At one point in their marriage, her husband said, “People are dying and going to hell, and you want me to stay home and hold your hand?”
Lynne reflected, “If I said yes, I’d sound blatantly selfish and unspiritual. If I said no, I’d be a liar. Therein rested my dilemma. I knew my minister husband was uniquely gifted to reach the spiritually needy people of our community, and I wanted him to do that. I also wanted a healthy marriage. Unfortunately the two goals seemed mutually exclusive. … There I stood-one timid woman against the ministry, the church, the myriad of needy people, perhaps even against God himself.”
Bill, Lynne’s husband, was to say later, “One day I was reading Ephesians 5:25: ‘Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave himself up for her.’ I’d always thought the ultimate test of my love for Christ was my degree of devotion to the ministry. Suddenly, however, I understood that God’s commendation was based on a much broader criterion. I was called to honor him in all areas of my life. That meant I was every bit as accountable to God for the quality of my marriage as for the quality of my ministry. It seemed so obvious; I was embarrassed I hadn’t come to this understanding sooner. I felt rebuked and broken.”
Finding answers wasn’t easy for Lynne and Bill. By the time Bill began giving more attention to their marriage, Lynne had detached herself emotionally. But Bill began to court her again. She wrote about the steps they took toward healing. “Establishing priorities demands tough choices. It means bucking habits that are entrenched. The answer is to build a solid relationship based on open communication. Bill and I began with prayer. We learned effective communication techniques, and we committed ourselves to carefully planned and protected times together. It took perseverance, but we are thankful that God has helped us remake our ministry marriage.”
Meeting the Challenges
“I’m not just anyone at St. John’s. I’m the pastor’s wife. That’s recognition I enjoy,” Ann says, her eyes reflecting a hint of embarrassment at the confession.
Ann met her husband when he was in seminary. Four different churches, a denominational upheaval, and a growing family of three sons have filled their sixteen years of marriage.
The church they now serve is in transition. Longtime members are feeling the pressure of an influx of new attendees from subdivisions sprouting up on surrounding farmland. New members seem less committed and more materialistic as they struggle for financial stability in spite of high incomes.
Ann continues, “Our family struggles with the changes as well, but we’re in the ministry to stay. We believe in the church as an institution, even though sometimes we feel that in serving this church, our family must survive in the middle of a revolution.”
Pastors’ wives play one of the most challenging roles in our society. It’s always true that the wife of a minister flourishes best when she enjoys the privilege of time alone with her husband, affirmation of her abilities and choices, and help in raising children.
It takes courage and grit for a woman to assess a ministry situation, find an answer unique to herself and her own family, and act upon her decisions. The answers have to be new for each family, each location, and each generation. The women who answered the survey-and those we spoke with-accept that challenge with determination, and most, even with relish.
Copyright © 1991 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
