Ministry Wife

"My People Perish for lack of Knowledge"

I wish I had that information 26 years ago! It would have saved me a lot of grief.

I wonder if I am the only one who feels this way…

Is this normal?

I was reading a 2013 Seventh-Day Adventist paper on the role of the Pastor’s wife where Josiah B. Andor quotes Ellen G. White as saying: The wife of the minister of the Gospel can be a most successful helper and a great blessing to her husband, or a hindrance to him in his work”. She goes on to explain that: “it will depend on the wife if a minister will rise from day to day in his sphere of usefulness or sink to the ordinary level.” She continues: “Satan is ever at work to dishearten and lead astray ministers whom God has chosen to preach the truth. The most effectual way in which he (satan) can work is through home influences, through unconsecrated companions”. He ends this article by quoting another one of Ellen G. White’s statements: “The pastor’s wife can be said to be a great helper in her husband’s ministry, but “an unsanctified wife is the greatest curse that a minister can have”.

Mr. Andor – what about unconsecrated and unsanctified deacons, and unconsecrated  and unsanctified church decisionmakers and unconsecrated and unsanctified church gossipers who make it their business to go against anything the Pastor wants to accomplish for the good of the congregation, the good of the community and the glory of God?

How is it that these entities are not mentioned in Ellen G. White’s writings?

How is it that the minister’s wife bears the brunt of whether the husband/minister, the church and the ministry is successful or not?

How is that even a reasonable expectation that the wife is responsible for the success of her husband, his church, his congregation and his ministry?

Is it the responsibility of a wife of the CEO of a fortune five hundred company to conduct board meeting, shareholder’s meetings, create product, take the product to market, raise funds, plan, organize and execute the plans and events and disperse profit sharing?

Is a doctor’s wife responsible for her husband’s ability to perform delicate and mind-boggling life and death surgeries five days a week?

Is a lawyer’s wife responsible for all the cases her husband will take to trial and is she responsible for all the favorable and unfavorable outcomes?

Is a politician’s wife responsible for the success or lack thereof of the legislation that is her husband’s responsibility to bring to the floor, debate, raise support and send to the courts to ratify?

Let’s take this argument further. Is it the job of a heavy machine operator’s wife to help him and support him as he builds the roads, the bridges and the highways, the overpasses and the underpasses?

No, no, no, no and no!

So why is it the Pastor’s wife’s job to help him teach and preach, be a role model for the women in the Church, and raise the family, and be a domestic goddess and be on public display at all times? Why is that a reasonable expectation? It defies logic. It defies reasoning. It defies everything that can be deemed normal.

We know nothing of the wives of any other professions. Everyone knows the Pastor’s wife. Why?

The article I read of pastor’s wives in Ghana said that 76.1% of the wives assist their husbands in preaching at different levels – as in all the time, most of the time and sometimes. Only 6.5% of wives never do help their husbands with the preaching, visiting, community service and counselling.

She garners a negative and irresponsible label of “detached pastor’s wife”.

I am wondering how much she gets paid for doing her husband’s job.

If she is spending time preparing sermons and preaching, counseling, doing community service, what is he doing?

I am wondering who is raising their children?

I am wondering why this is okay.

I am wondering who decided that all this was even a good thing.

It is an erroneous expectation to think that any woman should be doing any of this. She is not the pastor. She is the pastor’s wife. She is not the pastor’s unpaid assistant. She is his wife. She is put on a pedestal so that unsanctified church members and ungodly community persons can throw rotten eggs, rotten tomatoes and rotten cabbage at her criticizing her, putting her every move under a microscope to see if they can find something to criticize and holding her to a standard to which they do not hold for themselves or a standard to which they do not hold  their own families. When the pedestal is rocked and she falls off or wobbles even slightly, she is labelled as :

“detached”,

“unsanctified”,

“unconsecrated” and

“a curse on his ministry”. Really? Honestly? Seriously?

The role of the pastor’s wife has gone through many changes over the last 500 years since Martin Luther broke away from the Catholic Church and formed the Protestant Church. Some changes have been good, and some have not been good.

One thing that is constant is that the Pastor has either been paid extremely well as in the mega churches – (15% of the time) or 85% of the time, he has been paid, he has had to fight for every penny and make do with less than enough, even though he has a seminary degree. He is not paid to the level of his counterparts in different professions with the same level of education.

It is a travesty and should be an embarrassment to the faith that the Pastor and his family cannot afford to live on what they receive  in compensation from their Churches and at the same time, expect the Pastor’s wife to “assist” for free. The mantra persists: Lord you keep him (the pastor) humble and we’ll keep him poor.

I remember living in a manse that was so damp, that my husband lost his library to mildew and mold inside the manse. Our 15-month old daughter had constant upper respiratory infections directly due to the dampness and coldness and mold in that manse.  The manse did not have running hot water just running cold water. The manse was set in a cemetery on the left of the house, a back alley on the right-hand side of the house, another cemetery behind the house and another cemetery directly across the very narrow street from the house.

As a teenager, I remember our very good Pastor, not preaching on this particular Sunday, but stating the fact that termites had eaten away their bed and the bed collapsed one night with them in it. Would the church please consider investing in a new bed for the manse. He had to bring the matter to the Church’s attention on a Sunday morning because the Church Board and Church Leadership refused to act on the purchase of a new bed for the manse even though it was well within their means so to do. It was one of the wealthiest Churches in that particular conference. They prided themselves on the multiplied thousands they sent to missions each year but could not spend a little bit of money on a bed for their pastor and his wife.

How can church leaders justify allowing their pastor to live this way?

Why do church leaders think this is okay for their minister and his family?

Then they expect the wife to do all that I mentioned in the first part of this article?

Really?

Seriously?

Honestly?

To a varying degree, and with varying details, the minister’s wife is viewed by most Churches in a less than balanced light. The expectations are brutal  on one end of the spectrum and ignore her every need to build her marriage and her family on the end of the spectrum.

I respect the work and witness of Ellen G. White, even though I am of a different religious persuasion. She has done much for the formation of her denomination with her expansive and comprehensive writing and her persuasive and charismatic speaking in her day. Her work is highly regarded and so it should be. It is worthy of such high praise and honor. However, with great respect I must respectfully say that the greatest curse respectfully, Ellen G. White, in the Church is not the minister’s wife. The greatest curse in the church, is the unconsecrated church leaders, and unsanctified members of the congregation  expecting the minister’s wife to be all that they are not and all that they could never be. That is the greatest curse in the Church, and it is everywhere. It is time to take the noose off of the pastor’s wife’s neck and put the shoe on the foot that it fits.