It can feel confusing, restrictive, and nothing like you once imagined.
Life in the fishbowl.
You have a husband working tirelessly to teach and preach beautiful, hard truths from Scripture. A husband juggling hospital visits, Bible study, counseling sessions, church problems, and family life.
Although your heart is happy to follow your husband to the ends of the earth, it is often more difficult to follow him into the same church building week by week.
Why?
Primarily because your family is under attack. Satan has come to kill, steal, and destroy. (John 10:10) Any man willing to faithfully preach the gospel is the Enemy’s primary target.
Secondly?
Unbiblical expectations.
There is no list of duties for the role of pastor’s wife anywhere in Scripture. We are called to be godly wives and mothers, faithful helpers to our husbands, like all Christian women. Yet a handful of dominant parishioners always emerge, expecting more from the pastor’s wife than is humanly possible.
Even though unrealistic, unfair, and unbiblical expectations arise like an ocean wave from merely a few, it feels like a tsunami. The truth is that such expectations have long existed, and always will. May I encourage you to speak patiently and kindly, before swimming away, back alongside your husband? Abide in God’s Word.
As you seek to follow the Lord, bear in mind that your primary task is to tend to your family. Adorn your home with holy calm, praying as you make it a space of refuge and retreat. Pray for your husband, children, grandchildren, and church. Love your family with tender devotion, happily displaying that they are your top priority, second only to God. Many church members can accomplish various jobs at church, but you alone are the wife of your pastor, chosen by God to bless him.
May I suggest asking your husband what is most helpful to him as you serve your church? You may be surprised by his answer.
I have friends who are also married to their pastors, and each of our husband’s answers to that question vary:
- It is helpful when you have dinner ready when I come home from work, so that we can relax as a family around the table.
- I would love for you to oversee the women’s ministry, because I trust you to teach truth to our ladies.
- It is most helpful that you oversee nothing at church. I need to know that you are praying for me and that you are present in the pew. I love that you manage our family, home, and checkbook well.
- It is most helpful that you are willing to work part-time. The financial pressures of our little church burden me, and your willingness to work inside and outside our home is a blessing.
Pastor’s wife, take heart today and remember that you have been gloriously stitched together by God’s holy design, a woman forever loved, created by him to swim through the waters of ministry life for his praise and glory alone.
“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.” Proverbs 31:10