When David Owens brought his city bride, Jacqueline, to a small Bible Baptist church in Bolivar, Tennessee, in the early 1960s, they followed a long succession of short pastorates. David, however, was enthusiastic about the potential in this town of seven thousand; he had grown up only fifty miles away and knew the area.
Unlike the Franciscos, there was not a major educational gap in this case. David was a Bible college graduate; Jackie, three years younger, had done no college at all. The young couple had traveled the previous summer, speaking and singing at youth camps and children’s meetings; now they were looking forward to their own church.
David set a blistering pace at first, calling, studying, praying, fasting—doing everything he could to make this church grow. He visited the local lumber yard to ask the cost of excavating a basement under the little white church for more Sunday school space. He got his figure—and later on, a two-hour rebuke from the trustees for delving into something outside his area. He was there to preach, and that was all.
Meanwhile, Jackie was quickly realizing this was a long way from 4,400-member Houston Baptist Temple where she had grown up.
I was very much a free spirit—I guess I still am. I don’t like being put into a mold. I want the satisfaction of saying, “This is what I am and how I act or don’t act, because it’s right or wrong.” I want to make the choice—not have somebody tell me, “You’d better_____ because of who you are.”
Her husband calls her a prankster and a daredevil—”vinegar and life to the extreme”—and loves her for it. They had met one summer when Jackie came to visit her uncle, who pastored David’s home church. On several occasions during courtship they had locked horns over questions about makeup and clothing styles. David had been greatly relieved (even grateful for answered prayer, he said) when Jackie had agreed to rein in her flamboyance.
I saved some of his letters, and when our own daughters read them now, they just howl. “Dad, we can’t believe you wrote this stuff to Mom!” David gets embarrassed at how legalistic he was. But at the time, it was very important to him. There was just no way his wife was going to sit in church with earrings and lipstick and nail polish on.
And I wanted to do the right thing. I didn’t want to be a hindrance or a thorn. I may have been dying inside, but I thought, If this is what I have to do to be a pastor’s wife—this is what I have to do. That was it. There was no choice.
Once in Bolivar, however, she continued to press the edges of acceptable fashion—a necklace here, a curled eyelash there. The heat began to build. It came partly from the congregation but even more from older pastors in the association—and particularly older pastors’ wives. Jackie’s hair was too short, her clothes too modern, her overall carriage too sexy.
“Why do you wear those pearls?” one woman asked at a ministerial gathering.
“Because I like them,” Jackie shot back.
“But why do you like them?”
“Because when I’m getting dressed, I simply look in the mirror and think, Oh, this string of pearls would look nice with this outfit. I don’t feel like I’m complete until I’ve added—”
“No, no, that’s not the reason,” the older woman said. “You wear them for sex appeal.”
Jackie could not hold her tongue. “You’re crazy!”
(Now, more than twenty years later, times have changed drastically. Most of her former critics now dress as stylishly as she does, and they laugh together about the early days.)
David had little time or inclination to think about such discussions; he was too busy trying to ignite this church. He also had to patch together a living somehow. The $35-a-week salary was simply not enough, and so he went to work as a farmhand outside of town, putting in up to sixty hours a week for a dollar an hour.
Their first daughter had been born before coming to Bolivar, and a second one arrived during the two years they were there.
Meanwhile, Jackie seethed … but conformed.
In those years, all the motivation for ministry I’d had as a young girl left me. I was so totally wiped out as a person.
They said I was ruining David. So I gave away every piece of jewelry I owned, even a beautiful jewelry box he had given me when we were going together.
It wasn’t good enough to throw the eyelash curler away, because I knew if I put it in the trash, I wouldn’t be able to stand it, and the next day I’d go take it out again. So I put it on the floor and stepped on it—crushed it—knowing full well we could not afford to buy a new one.
David regrets to this day that he did not support his wife. “I guess I just encouraged her to knuckle under and be dowdy. See, I’d grown up in this kind of environment. Everything was negative, and the only way to see revival was to ‘preach the clothesline’ so people would get straightened out and God could bless … that was my whole mindset back then. I was terrible.”
But neither his wife’s comedown nor his fervent praying brought the breakthrough David sought. “I was buying Rolaids by the carton,” he remembers. The congregation of thirty had grown only to forty-five by the time the Owenses were exhausted and ready to consider a new call. Two years after they left, the church closed its doors—but not before the pastor who followed them, an older man, had insisted that the board send David a letter of apology for its obstinance.
The next congregation—and its neighboring pastors—were not so legalistic about appearance. And of course, Jackie was more compliant by then. They stayed in Van Wert, Ohio, six years; here a baby son was born.
The pressure in this place, Jackie soon realized, was more social: much of it revolved around who would be best friend of the pastor’s wife. The Owenses were also frequently criticized for not going to someone’s house for Sunday dinner—even though no invitation had been extended. Parishioners would drive around town checking where the pastoral car was parked, and criticisms seemed to sprout like spring weeds.
Nevertheless, good things began to happen in the church along with the bad. Some doctrinal aberrations were corralled, and attendance climbed from 60 to 160, which filled the building.
The matter of David’s workaholism was yet to be dealt with (see chapter 14). In fact, the combination of factors might have sunk Jackie for good had not a wise and attentive God steered David into an experiment as a traveling evangelist. Jackie retreated with the children to David’s home town in Tennessee, where her parents-in-law could provide a rent-free house.
Finally, I was no longer the pastor’s wife. I jumped over the traces. I put color in my hair; I decided to wear some make-up; I wore what I wanted. I got active in the women’s club in town, the PTA, women’s Bible studies.…
When David would call each Sunday night, however, too often it was to say his week of preaching had netted only enough money to buy gasoline to the next stop. Jackie took to selling Avon door to door on a country route, dodging German shepherds in the farmers’ yards. At the end of a day, she might pick up her spirits by taking her brood to a greasy spoon on the highway for hamburgers. When cabin fever struck, she would rearrange the furniture.
December came, and several churches canceled their bookings around the Christmas/New Year’s holidays, so David returned home and sought temporary work. The only job he found was as a gravedigger.
I was out there in the middle of winter with a pneumatic air machine—d-d-d-d-d-d!—breaking up the frost. It liked to killed me! But I’d been away from the family for three months straight, and at least I was home nights.
I do not know how we made it. At the end of that year and three months, we were $2,500 in debt, despite having no house payment and no car payment all the while.
The only benefit was that I got to travel and study a lot of different churches. I got to analyze what was working and what was not. It was an invaluable education for returning to the pastorate.
Today this couple leads a large church with a sizable staff in Phoenix, Arizona; their ministry has stabilized and prospered beyond any early imagination. They worry hardly at all these days about either fashions or money; Jackie is busy as a senior pastor’s wife speaking, organizing, being a hostess, and enjoying her first grandchild. David is at his prime of effectiveness. They have taken a church of seventy-five and built it to a thousand over the last sixteen years, set free by a congregation more concerned about outreach and love than tradition and hemlines.
It is not unreasonable to say, with hindsight, that their break from the pastorate, even though only fifteen months long, was critically timed and in fact salvaged their future. Without it, they might have become casualties.
Reflections
by Gary CollinsHere is youthful idealism hitting the real world. Actually, it’s good that people in their twenties and early thirties are willing to try things we older people wouldn’t try. At least we get shaken out of our ruts that way.
They come out of school brimming with creative ideas for church growth. They go down to the lumber yard to find out about excavating the church basement—and everybody screams bloody murder. One suggestion, and their wrists get slapped. This is what makes life difficult for many new pastors.
It takes awhile to discover the wisdom of saying to the church board, “Here’s an idea that maybe we could think about sometime.” Nobody is threatened by that, but three or four months later somebody brings up the same suggestion and thinks it’s theirs. That’s all right; at least things get changed that way.
I once heard that changing a university is like trying to reorganize a cemetery. The same can probably be said of churches. This is very difficult for people who are eager to get going now that they don’t have to write those dumb term papers anymore. David Owens went to the lumber yard thinking he was being efficient, getting things done, being a “mover”—but the church was threatened.
The problem for many of us is how to be creative and submissive at the same time! That’s very hard. Anybody who works in an organization faces this. How can I be creative without making too many waves or knocking heads with my superiors?
A lot depends on being positive, willing to encourage people, and pointing out the good things they do. Then when we present new ideas, others don’t feel threatened.
In our society, success and self-worth go together. If a church “fails,” the young pastor doesn’t say, This was a bad situation (even though in this case, the following pastor insisted the Bolivar board send an apology to the Owenses, and the congregation later folded). What the young pastor tells himself is, The church is no good, and I’m tied to it; therefore I’m no good.
This makes us struggle for success in order to boost our own self-worth. The Scriptures say we are all accepted in the eyes of God because he loved us “even while we were yet sinners.” But that’s not the way our society operates. Society says if you fail, this reflects your worth. So you take it personally.
If you’ve had three successful pastorates in a row and then one bombs, you can handle it. But if you haven’t had any successes to date, you don’t know whether you’re any good. You go on being controlled by “the tyranny of the urgent,” to use Hummel’s expression, putting out fires in the church and thinking you can tend to your spouse and family later.
Regarding the lipstick, earrings, and later on, wearing pearls: Male pastors must try hard to understand what is important to wives. We get busy and forget that women value many things differently than men do.
I always thought flowers were dumb. Why? Because they’re expensive, and they quickly die. Why not buy your wife something that lasts, something “practical”? Then I discovered that wives like flowers; a corsage will stay in our refrigerator for a month, it seems!
Another example: Most men can live comfortably in a house not yet fixed up. But for a woman who’s a homemaker, that’s her area of expertise. The pastor wants his church to look well-run and nice; she wants the same for her home. His church is a reflection of him; her home is a reflection of her. So is her dress. If she wants things that make a house a home, or wants something to wear that makes her feel more feminine—and he squelches these as unimportant or unaffordable—she is left very frustrated.
Jackie stepped on the eyelash curler out of frustration and anger plus a heavy dose of “poor little me.” It may have even been a manipulative move, without her being aware of it, to say, Look how much I’m sacrificing for your church people. Nothing was verbalized, of course, but there was a lot of anger.
The fact that they can laugh about these early-1960s days now says something, too: We must be careful as we get older not to lose touch with the struggles of younger couples in the ministry. Their difficulties may seem humorous or unimportant to us, but it is not so to them. The parent who watches his teenager fall in love is amused and says, “Oh, that will pass.” It probably will—but it’s very important at the time.
Things that look rather small to the Owenses now can be crucial to young couples who are insecure and struggling. These people need mentors who have lived through the stresses and are still sensitive to them. Mentor relationships don’t last forever; in fact, Levinson’s research shows they usually end after a while in hostility, anger, or distance. However, the mentor is still an invaluable person in the ministry as well as other careers.
When the Owenses were young, they also didn’t have enough money. Too often we take young pastors, pay them inadequately, and put them in the most difficult situations: the church that’s struggling or on the verge of collapse. That kind of place needs an experienced, capable individual with a strong backbone. If young pastors survive such an ordeal, then they get to go to bigger churches that pay better and function more smoothly! This all seems backwards.
A friend of mine told about going to his first church after four years of college and three of seminary. He had spent almost as much time in school as a physician.
His salary was set one evening at a public business meeting. Afterwards, during a coffee hour, the church chairman began exuding about his son who had just gotten a bachelor’s degree and was now earning a handsome salary—far more than the figure just set for the pastor. “Isn’t that exciting, pastor, that he landed such a good position?” My friend could only bear the irony in silence.
David Owens talks about consuming cartons of Rolaids. This is what happens to pastors who have no one to talk to about their stresses. My own pastor, who serves a church of thirteen hundred, has recently been through a similar experience. Two years ago, an arsonist set the sanctuary on fire. Throughout the long rebuilding program, there was a good spirit in the congregation; we didn’t have a lot of dissension. But then a streak of unusual deaths came along. One young man committed suicide. A nineteen-year-old girl who had grown up in the church died of anorexia. (The pastor has daughters the same age.) The husband of the church secretary had a fatal heart attack on the way to church one morning. Several elderly “pillars of the church” also died.
One Sunday we all arrived to learn our pastor was in the hospital with a gastrointestinal problem. No wonder.
A parishioner who works there walked into his room and joked, “What are you doing lying there? You’re supposed to be on your feet encouraging us!” I doubt the pastor found her comment very funny. Lay people often do not comprehend the pressures of the ministry.
The Owens story also shows the stress of fishbowl living. Even the location of their car is monitored! That’s amazing—but I bet it isn’t rare.
Here is a pastoral family trying to live up to others’ expectations, and they’re in a no-win situation. It doesn’t matter what they do: If they go to someone’s house for dinner, they’re playing favorites; if they stay home, they’re being cold and withdrawn. This sounds like what people said about John the Baptist and Jesus, doesn’t it? One way, you’re an ascetic; the other way, a “winebibber.”
Jackie Owens apparently remained isolated until her husband got out of the pastorate for a while. Then she started wearing pearls again, went visiting people to sell Avon products, and got out from under the oppressive control. She didn’t have to fit a role anymore, and as soon as that happened, it was like a load lifted.
It’s very hard to blossom in an environment where you feel squelched and boxed in. If you were in the business community, you might buck it. But pastoral couples more often buckle under because, after all, “This is the Lord’s work.”
That makes it all the more important that we in the ministry help each other cope with the strictures, talk out our problems, diffuse our frustrations, and find effective ways to expand—not explode—the box.
Copyright © 1985 by Christianity Today
