Me, The Preacher's Husband - Christianity Today

First service ends at 11:00 a.m. Trip home is 10 minutes. A Trader Joe's Spinach and Kale Pie takes 55 minutes to get out of the freezer, into the oven, and onto a plate. Of those 55 minutes, about 45 are straight up oven time. It takes about 20 minutes to ready my bike, water bottles, food for the ride, and then, as we Australians say, "kit up." By 12:15 p.m. the kids have had lunch, and I'm on my bike pedaling down the street. I'm gone for the next three to six hours.

At 1:00 p.m. my wife is heading home, and I'm on the other side of the city. Who knows what the kids are up to—I'm hoping it's homework, but it's probably Phineas and Ferb. This is the scene my wife finds when she opens the door … but the dog is excited.

It's not exactly a stereotypically "supportive" scene.

When my wife took a pastor's position, I confess that the first thing I thought about wasn't Jesus. Sadly, my first thought was worrying how much more I was going to have to be out in the evenings.

Growing up, the bane of my life was surrendering weekday evenings to church meetings (It wasn't enough that Sunday night services kept me from watching The Wonderful World of Disney.) Predictably, my wife's new job came with invitations for me to serve on various teams. I eventually gave in. But after two months, I started finding excuses to avoid the meetings—not so much an avoidance of ministry as a protection of home life—a common concern for those who serve the church. (As I write, it's Wednesday. We've just finished dinner and my wife is leaving for a missions meeting. The kids and I will be in bed when she gets home.)

The baggage

My concern is not only for family life. While I do find fulfillment in serving the local church—my whole life is about that—I've realized that when your wife is the leader, you carry a lot of suspected baggage into meetings. There's an assumption that I want to take over, like some Christopher Columbus carrying the authority of Queen Isabella as he greedily surveys the wealth and power of the native population. Nothing could be further from the truth, but I understand it.

The pastor's husband role is still new enough in America to afford me the freedom from traditional expectations.

So, ironically, I found my best places of service in the most traditionally female of places—the nursery and making coffee. I wanted to serve in the least politically charged places in the church. (I was very wrong, though—who knew that handing out goldfish crackers to these lovable little monsters would lead to a complex array of political tactics designed to acquire more either from me or others.) I have a PhD in biblical studies, so people are often surprised to see me in the nursery or in the café. Nonetheless, there's an abounding peace in service where the biggest decision is whether to make a new pot of coffee now … or in a few minutes. As I think many more traditional pastor's spouses would also observe, staying out of the politics allows me to smile at everyone, be a better listener, and be a more objective sounding board when my wife unpacks her frustrations.

The expectations

It's easy for me, as a man, to take on roles like these when I don't view them as stereotypical expectations. Pastors' wives have not historically been in the position I'm in as "pastor's husband." I have total freedom to just say no, and I often do. If I don't show up one Sunday, no one starts an investigation. My options abound. Sunday after church, for the traditional pastor's wife, does not typically include a long, peaceful bike ride. The pastor's husband role is still new enough in America to afford me the freedom from traditional expectations.

The abstracted social expectations placed on my wife as "the pastor's wife" loomed so prominently on the church community's landscape that it blocked any view of my wife as a person with gifts and goals.

I myself have been the senior pastor of a church, and now my wife is. When I first took my lead pastoral position, I attended a church picnic to meet people. The first question was "Where's your wife?" My response: "At home"—I didn't see the need to point out that she was actually looking after a sick baby. The sharply stated follow-up went something like, "Well, she's going to need to attend these events if she wants to be a part of us." Not even a question "why" she was at home. This struck me because the abstracted social expectations placed on my wife as "the pastor's wife" loomed so prominently on the church community's landscape that it blocked any view of my wife as a person with gifts and goals of her own. I grew to hold these people dear, and it was a rather successful ministry, and my wife was a huge part of that in her own way. But it meant she was constantly doing double duty, at once navigating their expectations and working to contribute her own gifts. Many pastor's wives are so burdened by social (not theological) expectations and their ministry development will always be formed by it. Nonetheless, my wife was in a situation to be able to participate in her own fruitful ministry, which then led to the composition of her first book and became the seedbed for her now thriving ministry as a lead pastor.

While the newness of the pastor's husband role means there are few expectations upon me, there are also few places to look for models or best practices. While I am free from the traditional sociological constraints, on the other hand, I find that I'm somewhat bound to biological ones—one never escapes constraint. While we eventually worked through the way her role affected our husband-wife dynamics, I still had to get my head around how this works in public practice. Churches are public services, personal communities, and organizational structures so an official church position is under constant scrutiny, not by customers or stockholders, but by peers, friends, and loved ones. A wife in church leadership is going to receive criticism from people with whom you have real relationships. It's a challenge, as a husband, to let that happen. That's especially true when other men have a problem with my wife and engage that situation the way men so often do, by trying to dominate—not just the situation, but her as a person. Males frequently use volume to assert their points—a physically aggressive scenario—and it's difficult for me know that another man is attempting to overwhelm my wife with volume and dominating posturing. I've learned that my wife is just fine with handling this, but I'm not.

The asserters

There are other ways men seek to assert themselves. I was absent the day when a man approached my wife after a service, leaned in and whispered how much he liked her legs. I'm mostly calm, but I'm pretty sure it was a blessing that I wasn't there for that. The bane of women in our society to be constantly sexualized is no less true for women who are up the front at church. Sexualizing the female body has become so deeply ingrained into our sociology that the female body becomes isolated from the female person. Even in our economy, marketers frequently abstract the female body as a mechanism to sell everything from cars to video games. As the presidential race in 2008 was ramping up, a student of mine, while doing a presentation, showed a slide of Sarah Palin's legs. He gazed up at the legs on the screen in awed silence for a few moments, and then continued with the rest of the entirely unrelated presentation. Because they were the legs of a politician, publicly sexualizing them was now okay and, weirdly, understood as a form of respect by many of the males in the class. John McCain's legs were nowhere to be seen.

I certainly don't want my pastor wife to become a sexual object, yet I recognize that for a public female figure it's likely to happen in one form or other. And that's just very weird.

Can a woman even be sexually neutral to men? It is normal for a man to want people to think his wife is beautiful by any standard. (Note I'm not saying "sexually desirable.") However, when I consider my desire for my wife to be socially esteemed and appreciated, it's practically impossible to divorce that from the realities of beauty and appearance. Social esteem for women is so commonly determined by beauty, which is so easily conflated with sexuality. I certainly don't want my pastor wife to become a sexual object, yet I recognize that for a public female figure it's likely to happen in one form or other. And that's just very weird. What may be of greater concern is that I just might be more okay with that than with the alternative. (More biology?)

Contrary to the way Palin's body was sexualized during the 2008 presidential election, the alternative and possibly more painful form of sexualization is when women's bodies are labeled as "ugly"—where the apparent absence of an idealized sexual form becomes the occasion to devalue the woman, invalidating her as a person and giving license to abusive treatment. Prior to Palin's run with McCain, Hillary Clinton was up against Barack Obama. In contrast to the close-ups of Palin's legs, the press played on the desire to sexualize females through a barrage of highly unflattering images of Clinton caught in ungainly moments.

I'm realizing that the best thing I can do is simply support my wife's personhood, to adopt an intentional thoughtfulness that she is someone in whom the Spirit of God dwells and acts, my friend with whom I'm partnered along this life's strange journey.

Given society's ways of viewing women, what's a supportive pastor's husband supposed to do? You're not going to be able to tell society to "just stop it." It's equally absurd to frame the concern of appearance as a frivolous "female problem," especially when it's not the women in the community who are driving the problem, but the men. The only real response that provides meaningful support is to be a reliable source of affirmation for your wife's own sense of her self. Like any aspect of a healthy relationship, this has to be intentional. For my part, knowing how much she has to navigate societal norms (and create a few new ones), I want to be right there thinking about this with her, so that she leaves home fully supported, able to accommodate the inevitable evaluation of her female form so that the deeper realities she wants to present can be received. If a great pastor's wife lets her husband head to church feeling encouraged and supported, ready to take on the challenges of ministry, I want my wife to head to church feeling safe and loved, ready to take on the pressures of society so she can engage in the challenges of ministry.

The supporter

I'm realizing that the best thing I can do is simply support my wife's personhood, to adopt an intentional thoughtfulness that she is someone in whom the Spirit of God dwells and acts, my friend with whom I'm partnered along this life's strange journey. One of the ways I do that is to take care of myself in a manner that makes me a better person for her, hence the long ride after church each week. The rides restore mental and emotional calm, and I am a better person throughout the week. My wife needs me to be that person, so I go even when I don't feel up to it, because it facilitates a better home environment, which blesses my wife's general well being, which is a part of the foundation of her ministry. However this may work for others, my best advice to other pastors' husbands/wives is that "care of the self" (a frequently forgotten virtue forged in the New Testament) is a fundamental of being the best person you can be, which always translates into a better marital (and ministry) partnership.

Jamie Smith teaches New Testament at Cincinnati Christian University and supports his wife, Mandy, in her role as lead pastor of University Christian Church.