There are many things I love and appreciate about my wife. I love the way she laughs at our dogs, the way she sings in the car and the way she turns our house into a home. But none of those things are the subject of this article. This article is about what I love and appreciate about her as a Pastor’s Wife. I intend for this to be read in a descriptive, as opposed to a prescriptive sense. I am sure that there are many different ways to be a Pastor’s Wife, but the way my wife does it, seems to me to be particularly deserving of praise. Whether or not you find anything in this brief tribute to imitate is entirely up to you.
Here are 5 things I appreciate about my Pastor’s Wife:
She gives me honest and level feedback
Like many pastors, I can be a little too hard on myself, particularly when it comes to my preaching. When a sermon doesn’t go the way I had hoped I will often come home convinced that it was terrible, a complete waste of time, and possible the opening shot in the apocalypse.
When I ask my wife how my sermon went, she will typically reply by saying something along the lines of: “I thought it was good. It wasn’t your best sermon ever, but I really liked it.”
Most of the time, her assessment is far closer to the truth than mine. By that I don’t mean that I am a consistently fabulous preacher, I just mean that she doesn’t ride the ups and downs of my emotional journey with the sermon, she simply measures it against a fairly basic criteria: Was it faithful to the Bible and did it teach me something that will help me in my Christian life? If the answer to both of those questions is yes, then in her estimation, it was a good sermon, and I should probably lie down and have a nap.
She isn’t wrong.
A pastor is often subject to a storm of self-doubt and a cacophony of accusing voices on Sunday afternoon. He doesn’t need a partner to go with him on these emotional journeys, he needs a steady perspective from someone who is standing on solid ground.
My wife can always be counted on for levelheadedness, and for that I am thankful.
She serves quietly and faithfully behind the scenes
I came into ministry just after the era in which the Pastor’s Wife was expected to play the piano, type up the bulletin, clean the toys in the nursery and host visitors and missionaries at the kitchen table all without receiving a salary. In all four of the churches I have been employed, the person who hired me made it clear from the onset that they were hiring me and not me and my wife.
I’ve always appreciated that.
I believe that the expectation on a Pastor’s Wife should be no different than it is on any elder’s wife. She should be a Christian, she should be a member in good standing, and she should serve in a way that is appropriate to her gifting and availability.
When our kids were little my wife served mostly in the nursery and on Worship Team. She came along on several trips and retreats as a female leader, back in my Youth Pastor days, and she mentored a handful of female students, some of whom we are friends with to this day. Now that our kids are mostly (though not all) adults, she has taken on a larger role as a Children’s Ministry Coordinator. To be clear, she is paid for this larger role, in contrast to the volunteer positions she filled in the past. She continues to volunteer in the area of Worship Ministry.
In the nearly 30 years we’ve been doing ministry together I’ve never felt like she was acting as an unofficial elder or pastor. She never plays the “Pastor’s Wife card” to get special treatment. She never inserts herself into issues outside her area of concern. She serves joyfully, gladly and generally behind the scenes.
I’m not saying it has to be done that way, I’m just expressing appreciation for what she’s done and for how she’s done it.
She is gloriously disinterested in church politics
I remember a particularly difficult Board Meeting in the first few years of my current pastorate. I don’t remember what we were arguing about, but I do remember that it was one of the 2-3 times I can recall when voices were raised, faces were flushed and things were said around the table that probably shouldn’t have been.
It was not our finest hour.
The following Sunday the wife of one of the other elders went up to my wife in the lobby and said: “How is Paul doing? I know that was a really tough Board Meeting the other night.” My wife, in typically honest and guileless fashion, said something to the effect of: “I have no idea. He didn’t say anything about it. He came home; we made a snack and watched NCIS.”
My wife almost never asks me what we were talking about at Board Meetings. Very rarely she might ask if we remembered to talk about something related to Children’s Ministry, but she never wants to know who is under discipline, who is having marital troubles or who is spreading gossip amongst the members.
We don’t get into that kind of stuff. She isn’t curious and I prefer to talk about other things when I’m at home. A lot of pastors have a hard time shutting it off. They see every bad thing, they hear every sad story, they make a lot of hard calls. A wife that needs to rehash all of that can keep her husband from ever relaxing. My wife is a refuge and a retreat for me. We eat dinner together, we pray, we laugh at the dogs, we talk about the kids, and the world somehow shrinks back to normal size. I’m not saying that’s how every ministry marriage has to be, I’m just thankful that’s how mine is.
She has adapted joyfully to the oddities and advantages of the pastoral schedule
I’m not convinced that pastoral ministry is any harder than most other jobs, it is just different. It has different rhythms, different seasons and different demands. My dad worked his entire career in the financial district in the big city. We lived in a small community beyond the suburbs. He left the house every morning at 5:45 am and he got home every night around 6 pm. He didn’t make it to a lot of school plays. He didn’t go to any parent teacher interviews. But on the other hand, we went on at least one family vacation every year. We’d go to Disney World; we’d go skiing in Vermont or to the beach at Cape Cod.
There were trade-offs, and the same is true in pastoral ministry.
Unlike my dad, I can be at pretty much anything. I’ve been to parent teacher interviews. I’ve been to all the school plays and pageants. I’ve been the chapel speaker at the Christian School, and I’ve even been the driver for a couple of field trips.
We don’t do multiple family vacations every year, but I do get most of the month of August off which we use to visit Grammy and Popa at the cottage and to take road trips.
My point is that every job comes with certain perks and challenges. My kids got to use the church basement for nerf tag and birthday parties, but the flip side is, they sometimes had to get themselves ready for church on Sunday morning because both mom and I had to be here to set up. My son once came to church in sweatpants without having brushed either his teeth or his hair. My daughters have occasionally selected outfits that would certainly not have passed parental inspection.
Trade-offs.
We’ve learned to laugh at things like that – most of the time – while enjoying the freedom and flexibility my vocation affords. Having a wife like that has made being a pastor feel less like the sacrifice I was led to expect it would be.
She gives me unlimited and guilt-free operating space on Sunday morning
Sunday matters. Sunday is prime time for a pastor, not just in terms of the pulpit ministry, but also in terms of pastoral care. Sunday is when the majority of your people are gathered together in one place. My wife understands that I need to be “on” on Sunday and that implies a variety of things for her as a wife and mother.
It means, first of all, that Saturday night and Sunday morning are not good times to introduce potentially contentious topics. If my wife has something important to talk to me about, she will almost certainly do so between 6 pm on Sunday evening and 10 pm on Friday night. Saturdays and Sunday mornings are strictly no go. She knows that if we have an argument that ends on a sour note it takes me 24-48 hours to recover. In that time frame I will struggle to pray, I will struggle to listen to other people, and I will struggle to access the Spirit’s help and guidance. She knows that if I can’t do those things then I can’t do my job, and so as a kindness, she picks her moments carefully.
She also understands that she will need to be the primary parent on Sunday mornings. In the early years, when the kids were young, that meant getting 5 kids up, fed and dressed for church and doing that all on her own. Now that the kids are older and she has taken on more responsibility at the church, our two youngest daughters, both teenagers, will get themselves up and mom will drive back home to pick them up in time for service. Immediately after church the children know that I need a bit of space. I am usually praying with people or trying to shake hands with the newcomers so if the kids need money for Starbucks or permission to go to a friend’s house they check in with mom. To do my job properly I need at least 2 hours of prep time before every service and at least 90 minutes after every service for pastoral care. My wife understands that and leaves me to it. When I get home at 1:30 pm, she and the kids have usually been home for over an hour. I generally walk into a house that has been tidied, with some soup warming up on the stove to go along with the sandwich she has lovingly prepared.
Again, I’m not writing a prescription for what should be, I’m just expressing appreciation for what is. The Lord gave me the perfect companion for the life and the ministry he has called me to, and I am profoundly grateful. If our version of marriage and ministry can be an encouragement to you in yours, then so be it, and may God alone be glorified.
Pastor Paul Carter
If you are interested in more Bible teaching from Pastor Paul you can access the entire library of Into The Word episodes through the Audio tab on the Into the Word website. You can also download the Into The Word app on iTunes or Google Play.
