The difference between David and Jackie Owens’s first church—the two excruciating years in Tennessee (chapter 3)—and the second church in Van Wert, Ohio, was the difference between a stagnant situation and one with growth potential. As the couple adjusted to the realities of pastoring, David began to thrive in the ministry, and the rise in attendance figures paralleled the boost in his own spirit. He still had to work part-time in order to support the family, but his love affair with the pastorate blossomed regardless. He remains infatuated to this day.
I find myself too often having early meetings. I like to meet with a new Christian or a potential Christian, maybe a business person, and catch breakfast before they go to work at eight. And the day just keeps going from there.
Even when I’m bushed, I guess I just love the work of God. Roll me out of bed, point me in the direction of the shower, and I’ll head [automatically] for the restaurant.
I don’t drag and mope and grumble, “Oh, I hate this.” I love it.
In Van Wert, the idea of taking a day off was preposterous to David, given the challenge of the church and also the need to work an extra job. The more Jackie began to get her bearings as a pastor’s wife, the more she began to notice his absence.
I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that I could be home with the children. But Saturdays were extremely hard for me, because everybody else’s husband was home that day. Families were together.
Saturday was the day I didn’t see David all day. He was in the office preparing, and I would be home with not a lot to do.
One particular weekend stands out in her memory. A special Friday evening dinner was planned; Jackie cannot remember now, twenty years later, whether company had been invited or whether it was to be romantic candlelight for just the two of them. She does recall setting the table with her best dishes and preparing a menu to impress.
Suddenly David came across the street from the church. He had to leave right away for an overnight trip to Cleveland with someone. He’d be back late the next day.
Both David and Jackie have by now forgotten the particulars of this trip and whether it was truly urgent or not. They still recall the feelings it triggered, however. Says Jackie:
I was so angry. Once again, his choice was somebody else.
In his mind, it had nothing to do with his love for me or wanting to be with me. But in my mind, it had everything to do with that. I wasn’t important.
By the time David returned Saturday evening, Jackie was deep into silence. The next morning, they went to church and performed as expected, but at the Sunday dinner table, the only sounds came from children and utensils.
Finally, David decided to get to the bottom of this. “Why are you acting this way?” he asked. “Why don’t you talk to us?”
Jackie could manage no words. Seven years of occupying second place in her husband’s life finally exploded. She grabbed a table knife and flung it backwards across the bare floor. Two little girls looked up wide-eyed as their mother stormed from the room.
David took a deep breath, then excused himself and followed his wife into the bedroom. “Jackie, please tell me what’s wrong.”
She could only stare at him, then turn away.
I knew the way I was acting wasn’t right, but I was so hurt … I felt he’d been so unfair. The thing had just been getting bigger and bigger inside of me.
I mentally packed my bags more than once those days. I knew he loved me, and I thought if I left, he would really be in trouble. I mean, he just wouldn’t be able to stand it! That would be my way of hurting him back.
Would she take the children? No—but then how could she get along without them? What would she use for money? That was a major problem. Where would she go? She didn’t know.
Her fantasy was impractical, she admitted, but that did not stop her from reconsidering it several times. Three weeks went by with the relationship deeply frozen. Then came a week of special meetings at the church with a white-haired Bible teacher named Foster Mathewson. He stayed, of course, at the parsonage.
After church the second night, we were sitting at the table having coffee and refreshments, and he looked up at David and said, “Is your wife always this quiet, or is something wrong?”
I was just floored. I thought, Oh, my goodness. I looked at him, and I looked at David, and David looked at me and said, “Well, would you like to answer?”
I finally said, “Well, I’m not always this quiet.” I didn’t know what else to say.
The older man began to talk. In a kindly but direct way he said, “I think, my dear, you have been going on your reserves for quite a long time, and you are close to running out. The Lord does not want either of you to live this way.” He counseled them both not to hold back from each other but to give one another the time and attention a godly marriage needs. Jackie dissolved in tears.
That whole week of meetings was really just for David and me, more than anyone else in the church. We prayed, and that was the beginning of my relief.
Not long after that we left Van Wert.
When, after fifteen months away from the pastorate (David traveled as an evangelist and Jackie stayed with the children back in Tennessee), they began their church ministry in Phoenix, the board strongly urged a pastoral day off. “Take the phone off the hook,” they said. “If anyone really needs you, they’ll come to the door.”
David tried Mondays at first, realized he was too drained to be much good, and so switched to Fridays. He and Jackie later bought a mountain cabin away from the city in order to have a hideaway. Whenever the subject turns to his personal life, he is openly apologetic about his early priorities.
I have neglected family; there’s just no way I can excuse it or justify it. I’m afraid I’ve always been one to say, “Next week, it’s going to be better. There will be more time for the family.” And that usually hasn’t come off.
I’m deeply grateful for the way Jackie has somehow been able to develop ministries for herself without sitting around and moping. That has filled some of the inner vacuum in times when I was not giving. And she’s never turned the kids away from God, or the church, or me. They love the church; they love God; they even love me. It’s unreal, because she really got shortchanged.
Now that the children are grown, David and Jackie do not get to the mountains as frequently, and when they do, she finds him with his nose in a book too much for her liking. She is not beyond occasionally telling David he should have been a priest. They laugh together at the crack, but both know there’s a meaning underneath.
David fights to make room in his Day-Timer for staying home. But he loses as often as he wins. Like Jeremiah, there is a fire in his bones:
Look at all this population. We’re in the capital city, with a university to boot. How many churches are even making a dent?
We’re doing better in one sense than we’ve ever done, and I don’t disparage what God is doing and has done. As a matter of fact, our church is one of the strongest in town, in the county. But what’s a thousand people in more than half a million?
I’m not just talking about a numbers game, a pride and ego thing. We’ve got all this wide-open opportunity here: it’s an intellectual city, it’s a professional city—dear God!
I know you win people to Christ one by one. But still, I am so frustrated! I say, “What’s the next step, Lord? What’s the key?” He’s helped us year by year; now we have the building and the acreage. We can go to three services with twelve hundred in a service; that means we could have a thirty-six hundred morning attendance without having to build again.…
He says all this not in weariness but with a light in his eye, a forward tilt to his body. This is fun. This is living. Eighty-hour weeks—so what? He will make the most of his calling and gifts not out of duty but because he can imagine no greater thrill.
Meanwhile, Jackie watches … and waits.
I am a person who needs to talk things out. And David just doesn’t have time. It’s “catch me when you can.”
He’ll say, “Tomorrow morning I’ll stay home a little while longer, and we’ll have coffee and talk.” That just excites me no end!
But it absolutely never works out. We barely get into a conversation, and the phone rings, and he’s off … or somebody comes to the door, or he remembers something he’s got to write down. In my mind, I think, This shouldn’t bother me so much. But it does.
Jackie has discovered over the years almost a perverse coincidence: Her times of greatest need seem to hit when David is busiest. The church has just bought a camp, or it’s time to reorganize the Christian education program, or a great opportunity has just come for David to visit a foreign mission site … all legitimate things, but hard to applaud when you’re craving quiet togetherness.
She has created her own outlets, of course; the same verve that made her a maverick in the early days helps her stay busy today. In spite of their busy pace, she and David maintain a positive atmosphere; their children, now grown, are sources of common joy. Among the common projects are team teaching and occasional joint counseling at the church.
But the sore spot of time alone remains. It is sore enough now that Jackie has come to resent the two-birds-with-one-stone approach:
The time David sets aside for us is always intertwined with something else in the ministry. He’s going to a conference, so why don’t I go along and we can talk on the way. It’s never openended. It’s never “Let’s go away for the day just us.”
I feel like I’m always being pushed into the Day-Timer; We’re going to get Jackie in here somewhere.
I know that’s not his attitude, but that’s what I have to deal with.
When Jackie turns cold from waiting too long, David quickly realizes it. He immediately feels guilty, pulls out his calendar—and realizes he is locked in for the next three weeks. To break away before next month is not just difficult; it is impossible.
In recent years he has sometimes found himself reforming too late: he has invited Jackie to a time away only to find her calendar booked. She has a women’s Bible study to lead, or she’s scheduled to have lunch with a counselee, or it’s time to start planning the fall missions banquet.
Is there a danger that two separate tracks will develop in this marriage, especially now that the empty-nest years have come? David responds:
Yes, it’s possible. She has developed such a ministry here that she doesn’t realize it’s not always me who has the problem.
We’re like a two-career marriage, undoubtedly. And if we do not come back and re-establish our commitment and time and tender loving care regularly, then I suppose we could go our separate ways, and pretty soon, we’d be to the place of who needs each other? We’re very mindful of that.
David and Jackie Owens will most likely hold their marriage together in years to come, if for no other reason than that they will have to slow down. They also have the legacy of weathering a great number of other storms in the past. Their common love for the church will keep their paths crossing even when they are too busy to plan for it. Neither one dislikes the pastorate. Neither can think, at this stage, of doing anything else.
But it is fortunate that they were born in a generation that was taught the permanence of marriage. A younger couple might not be so resolute. The Owens marriage is held together by its formal commitment even on days when the partners neglect to nurture its essence. Says Jackie:
One thing I do know is [the time frustration] has nothing to do with how much he loves me or cares for me. There’s not a doubt in my mind about that. It’s just that we need to keep working through this.
Reflections
by Louis McBurneyAgain, a busy pastorate.
One of the things that strikes me about the early days of this ministry marriage is the lack of support, the isolation. It took the visiting evangelist to identify the problem at home and minister to David and Jackie. That is a common story. I’ve known a number of evangelists who have said their ministry is as much with the pastors they visit as the congregations they preach to. It’s sad that so many ministers feel they cannot talk with someone about the problems they’re having.
These two people have developed separate interests. That can be either divisive or enriching. Floyd and Harriett Thatcher’s book Long-Term Marriage (Word, 1980) deals with this effectively. Many churches need education about this, especially if they have a stereotypic role for the pastor’s wife to play, and if they create problems and tensions for her when she steps outside that role.
A key to keeping a separate interest from being divisive is sharing it with one another. By bringing it back into the relationship, it becomes enriching. But if you tend to do your own thing and never bring it home, the result is likely to be division.
Jackie Owens knows her husband’s love. Regardless of the fact that he’s too busy some of the time, she still has a foundation: he loves her, and he’s special to her. When that is in place, some of the other things lose their impact. When it’s not in place, most anything can rock the boat.
The idea of a wife being important and number one is communicated in lots of ways, positively and negatively. Part of it is time together, but other parts are the respect a husband shows for what she says, whether he asks her opinion about things, how much of himself he shares with her. All these are positive signals to a woman.
Another part of this case deals with play, something a lot of ministers have never been able to do. They either have a high sense of responsibility, which is why they’re in ministry, or they’re workaholics needing to prove themselves. Either trap prevents a person from learning to relax and enjoy life. Even the leisure activities of these men become highly competitive; they must win.
This inner drive probably saps a man’s joy more than even church demands or church stress. Most churches are now willing and even eager for their pastors to take the personal space they need. The only remaining question is whether the pastor himself will get in touch with his inner motivations and be willing to be freed up.
When David Owens says he just loves getting up in the morning and heading for the work of the ministry, he doesn’t sound like a man driven by a tremendous inner need to prove himself. He simply enjoys what he does. And that’s fine.
But there is another consideration: he has a wife, and she has legitimate needs, too. He can’t always do what he enjoys doing most.
Copyright © 1985 by Christianity Today
