The maple trees that rimmed the church parking lot had almost finished their shedding that gray Tuesday morning as Martin Watson awaited his visitor. The Washington Post lay untouched on the coffee table of his study, between the right-angle couches where he counseled. The pastor had not had time to read the paper that morning; he was too busy going through files and wondering what the IRS agent had in mind.
The new wing of the church had been finished for a couple of years now, providing sorely needed classroom space. Watson had come to this suburban church in Fairfax, Virginia, more than a decade before. The congregation of two hundred that welcomed him was now closer to six hundred, and the trim, fifty-year-old pastor with graying hair had reason to be gratified. His two daughters were doing well in college, and he and Eva had been moved into a new parsonage not long ago.
The stranger with a briefcase arrived promptly at ten. He was cordial enough as he shook Martin’s hand, then sat down across the desk. He delivered his message quietly: the Internal Revenue Service, as part of its ongoing program of review and enforcement, would be auditing the Watsons’ last three years of tax returns. Martin pressed him for what might have triggered this inquiry, but the agent was noncommittal. He assured the pastor that the probe might turn up nothing at all—in fact, he hoped so.
The two men continued talking for a while, the pastor producing what records he had on hand and starting to jot a list of things to be collected for the next meeting.
There was a soft knock at the door.
“Come in,” Martin called. His secretary entered. She hesitated as she looked at the agent, then handed her boss a Special Delivery envelope and quickly left.
Marvin looked at the sender’s name. Some attorney he had never heard of in Alexandria.
“Excuse me a moment,” he murmured to his visitor, who nodded.
He pulled a letter opener from his desk and sliced open the envelope. In a moment, he began reading:
Dear Rev. Watson:
This is to inform you that on Monday, November 13, a suit was filed in circuit court on behalf of Eva Watson to provide necessary funds for separate maintenance.…
He blinked twice. His breath seemed to stop. He could not hear the typewriters clicking in the outer office, nor the traffic outside, nor anything else. The only sound was within him—his heart, suddenly pounding at more than 120 beats a minute, it seemed.
I was absolutely stunned. I had no idea at that point, even though things had been rough, that she was actually going to … I couldn’t say a word.
I just handed the letter to the agent.
He read it and took a deep breath. Finally he said, “Rev. Watson—you have enough problems. I’ll see you in the spring.” And he closed up his briefcase and left.
The actual separation came eight weeks later, on a Sunday night after a lavish farewell reception in the fellowship hall. The congregation would not find out the facts until later; only the elders had been informed. They grieved in silence over the demise of this otherwise successful pastorate. When the appreciation speeches had ended and the long receiving line had finally been finished, Martin drove in the chilly darkness to an apartment he had rented across the Potomac in “the District.” Eva spent the night with the board chairman and his wife. The next week she headed for her sister’s in Annapolis.
Divorce—unthinkable in the Watsons’ denomination, especially at the time this occurred in the early sixties—would not come for another nine years. Finally, all hope of reconciliation flickered out, and the stress of haranguing about money had exhausted them both. A lump-sum settlement was negotiated, and the Watson marriage—thirty-seven years running at that point—was finally buried.
The Greatest Fear
Among the hundreds of pastors leadership editors meet, interview, or correspond with each year, the specter of a marital meltdown is usually their greatest fear. No other tragedy in the ministry holds such a threat. Virtually every month seems to include news of more personal pain, aborted pastorates, alienated offspring, and individuals called of God now trying to get through the long days and longer nights doing something else for a living.
In most other professions, the collapse of a marriage is now accommodated. Doctors, lawyers, educators, executives—such a thing in their lives causes hardly a murmur. No scorn is heaped upon the politician who must take time out for a divorce court hearing; indeed, he is rather the object of constituents’ concern and empathy. In 1980 Americans elected their first divorced President, and returned him with a landslide in 1984. A major bloc of his coalition: conservative Christians.
But when it comes to pastors … the stakes remain high.
Some denominations still automatically defrock a divorcing pastor; others require an unpaid sabbatical of varying lengths. In still others, the leadership may be willing to aid, counsel, and eventually guide the divorced minister toward another parish, but local congregations remain wary. If a church does vote to accept such a pastor, the official act is only part of the battle; the trust and respect of individuals must still be won, often over a long time and at great cost.
If the minister decides to step out of the denomination and take (or form) an independent church, he often finds himself a reluctant magnet for others with irregular pasts, both clergy and laypeople. Those with intact marriages seem harder to attract.
The demise of a pastoral marriage—in addition to its bone-deep personal pain, which every divorcing couple experiences—carries immense professional consequences. Thus pastors know they simply must make their marriages work, or suffer a double aftermath.
The concern crosses all age groups. Marital crises do not happen only to the young and foolish. In fact, can any reader look back on the last twelve months and not recall a moment—a telephone call, a quiet sentence from a friend, perhaps a written notice—that produced a sinking sensation: another ministry marriage had collapsed? As one district superintendent said recently, not in jest but in despair, “Don’t even talk to me about pastoral marriages. I’ve heard so much the past few months I can’t take anymore.”
It is almost as if we are standing on the ramparts with Francis Scott Key, watching the nighttime sky turn luminous with the rockets’ red glare, one after another hurtling through space and plunging to a fiery end. The concussions reverberate through congregations and districts—not to mention those whose lives take a direct hit and can never be rebuilt. No denomination or fellowship appears exempt. The bombardment rages on; it is an evil time.
The purpose of this book, therefore, is disarmament. It is to show where the explosives lie and how they may be defused.
Much of the attention here is given to the stories of current pastoral couples. To read of the dangers they have faced and how they have coped—or failed to cope—is to see pieces of our own lives. The accounts that follow have been gathered from in-depth interviews, usually over a two-day period, with nearly twenty carefully selected ministry couples. Husbands and wives were interviewed together and also separately, one spouse at a time. In order to allow them to speak freely, they were assured that all references in the book would be camouflaged.
What that means is that the names of persons, towns, churches, and denominations have been changed, along with any other “giveaway” identifications. What has not been changed is the essence of their experience. All direct quotations are accurate, nearly verbatim from the tape recorder and edited only for clarity and conciseness. The accounts here are thus the equivalent of what really happened—neither rosier nor more grim. They are documentary accounts of real-life experience with only enough alteration to prevent tracing.
Following each account comes a reflection by a well-qualified Christian author and counselor of clergy couples. Drs. Gary Collins, Louis McBurney, and David Seamands bring their expertise to bear upon the cases recorded here and make insightful observations for the benefit of all. They do so in hopes of preventing the tragedy and long-term loneliness such as the Watsons endure.
Living with the Pain
Today, Martin Watson lives quietly in the basement apartment of a friend, spending his days tending flowers and walking in the neighborhood—up to forty blocks some days, since a heart attack several years ago.
His grandfatherly bearing belies the pain of his past—the late-night arguments, the gradual distance within the marriage, the fading of romance, the loss of respect, and the struggle to keep preaching and praying and administrating all the while. There is no One Great Cause to uncover here—no affair, no rebellion against the faith or even the ministry. There is only an ever-darkening trail of tension, conflict, and finally tears.
And the end was not the end. When a marriage detonates, as any divorced person will tell you, the debris lives on; it is not biodegradable. The spouses simply cannot pretend it’s a new world and the other partner has left for Saturn. Children, money, holidays, memories, and a dozen other things keep raising their hands for attention.
In the early months, the Watsons met more than once to talk about reunion but always stalemated. Meanwhile, in order to try to meet support payments, Martin first took a job managing a car leasing office. Within weeks his boss, an earthy man, said, “You know, you can’t even tell a white lie. You really need to do something else.” Next came life insurance, then fund raising, and finally a position with a county hospital. Now, in retirement, he still makes visits there two days a week.
He turns to his interviewer and says:
I want you to know I don’t think I’ve done everything right in my life. But I don’t know how I could have told it to you any differently and still told how I felt.… As I hash this over, it really sounds awful, and I’m making her out almost to be an ogre. There was another side of her that could be generous.
I think a death is easier than a divorce, because there’s a finality to it. This sort of thing—it goes on. It still isn’t over for me, even though I’m not half as resentful now as I was.
In spite of everything—I think about her getting older by herself. She has several good friends there in the church. But I just wish it had never been. Some things, I guess, are not reversible.
Eva Watson, seventy-five, lives alone in a second-floor flat in Trenton, New Jersey, and still holds a job as a clinic receptionist. She retains a hearty laugh at times. She speaks her mind when the subject turns to Martin, frequently wandering into side stories about old friends, but sooner or later returning to make her point.
She bears the wary visage of a divorcee, the textured skin around the eyes that says, I’ve been through a lot. She makes sure her visits to her daughters do not coincide with Martin’s, even at Christmastime.
It’s too frustrating and upsetting to me. Betty will be in the midst of cooking or whatever, and he’ll want all these things to be done for him. Always needing someone to cater.
He just never thinks of the other person. It was that way from the very beginning.
Is there anything she would like to go back and do differently? The question puzzles her; she honestly cannot think of a reply, except that maybe she shouldn’t have criticized his table manners so much. What has she learned through this whole ordeal? Only “that I was a chump—too naive. I took him at face value, and I shouldn’t have.”
When were the best times? When was her husband least self-centered, in her view? Again, she draws a blank.
What is perhaps most tragic is that twenty-one years after separation, so little has mellowed. The accusations remain as astringent as ever, the stories as one-sided (and therefore contradictory) as they must have been two decades ago. There still is not resolution and acceptance. Both continue church attendance and profess a love and commitment to God. But reconciliation or even reinterpretation of the facts is apparently too much to hope for.
Such a case fills us with sadness—but also reminds us that while the flaws in other marriages are often clear to us, we cannot afford to be smug about our own. As every pastoral counselor knows, prevention is a far better exercise than cure. The following pages focus first on the stresses of the early years in ministry, then on those problems that arise out of congregational life, and finally on the personal pressures that would put asunder what God hath joined together and ordained to his work.
Copyright © 1985 by Christianity Today
