Pastor Stephen Collins posted on Facebook an article from the blog Church Whisperer by Blake Coffee. Knowing the plight of pastor's spouses to be one of those things we don't often talk about, but also knowing it to be a real and needed topic to discuss, I reposted it. It has drawn more comment than anything else I have posted to date so I decided to place it in our blog in the hope that many others will read it. Several years ago a Christian psychologist who worked with many ministry families told me that often the loneliest person in the church, when the pastor is a male, is the pastor's wife. Often she watches as people and the church devour the man whom she loves but has little or no recourse. She often feels she has no voice. The result is she suffers in silence. And often in an effort to protect his wife, the pastor's response is to keep "the stuff" that eats away at his heart and soul to himself. I find that most who leave ministry do so because this "stuff" finally bleeds the life from them and their only recourse for survival, they feel, is to leave the ministry.
While this article is not one to enjoy, I hope it will be of some benefit to both pastoral couples and to the churches they lead.
Blessings,
Randy Spence, Director
Ohio Ministries
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In raising daughters, there are the years when you have lots of say about who they see and who they do not see…and then those years come to an end and you learn to just keep quiet (mostly) and pray a lot. For my own girls, I have been praying their entire lives that, if other men must come into their lives–and, alas, they apparently must–that those men would know God and walk with Him and be shaped by Him to love my girls well.
But in my most vulnerable moments, ones when my worldly anxieties creep in and I allow myself to have an opinion on the matter, if I am completely honest with God I probably have periodically thrown in an extra prayer such as, “…and God, please don’t let them marry a minister.” I have my reasons.
I myself am a pastor’s son. I’ve been around the church my whole life. I have made a career of working with conflicted churches and counseling pastors and church leaders alike through those difficult seasons. I have seen “up close and personal” the results of church fights in thousands of lives. And of all the casualties of mean-spirited Christians and of all the lives and careers I have seen destroyed, the most helpless and defenseless (and typically innocent) of all is…the minister’s spouse.
If ministers have had any decent training at all, chances are pretty good that somebody along the way (maybe a seminary professor, maybe a wise friend) has warned them that they have chosen a difficult path, one wrought with mean people and disappointment. So when trouble comes and I am counseling them and I say to them, “Welcome to ministry”, they usually know exactly what I mean. They are neither shocked nor surprised. But the chances are just as good that nobody warned their spouse of that. When she married a man of the cloth, it only reinforced her dreams of a beautiful family and lots of friends and a life filled with Spiritual rewards.
Then, when that young minister hits his first bump in the road, he comes home and shares it with his wife, who may or may not handle it well. The minister then concludes that maybe he should not share all his difficulties with his spouse, that maybe he should “protect her” from that ugliness. So she becomes excluded from it from that point on. Or maybe he doesn’t exclude her at all. Maybe he brings her through all the pain with him. Either way, whether she’s in the loop or not, the loop ends there. If she is in the loop, she cannot talk with anyone else about the difficulties and is left to watch her husband be ravaged by church people. If she is not in the loop, she is left to her own imagination to consider what kind of people (at her own church) must be causing her husband to lose his faith in the church. In either case, she is all alone and is powerless to help. It is an unbelievably vulnerable place, utterly defenseless.
If you think I am making this up or am otherwise not a good source for this story, then spend some time at Mrs. Pastor’s blog, which paints the picture better than I ever could…I don’t know “Mrs. Pastor”, don’t know where she lives or what church she calls home. I don’t know many details at all about her plight, but because of my ministry, I have heard her story a thousand times.
In my denomination alone, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of pastors’ wives struggling with depression and even various addictions and other dysfunctions born out of their search for a place to turn for escape. It may be the biggest problem which nobody knows about. The happy life she signed on for when she married a man of God is suddenly a life of depression, betrayal, and unspeakable secrets. Because that is an ugly reality of the church…it is filled…FILLED with flawed, broken people who behave badly and who desperately need the Spirit of God and each other. Those people hurt ministers. That is a fact of ministry.
So, here is what I am calling on you to do this weekend. First, give your pastor a long, appreciative hug and tell him that you love him. Second, give his wife a long, appreciative hug and apologize to her for all the pain your church surely causes her husband. She will probably cordially deny that, but you know it is true. Third, pray for them, that God will find a way to comfort them even in the midst of their difficult calling.
Oh, and one final post-script: as of the writing of this post, the men in both my girl’s lives have surrendered to full-time Christian ministry. I love both those men dearly. But if they change their minds about their career choice, I’m sure I’ll find a way to be o.k. with that too. 
© Blake Coffee
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that you do not alter the wording in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. For web posting, a link to this document on this website is preferred. Any exceptions to the above must be approved by Blake Coffee.
Great article. One other area of pain I have noticed for pastors' wives is that for some pastors the church becomes all consuming. So much so that the pastor's wife tends to get the scraps of his time and energy. It is almost as if he has a mistress. But in some ways it is worse than that. If he had a mistress, people would agree with her that he is a cad, and sympathize with her, but if the mistress is the church, to whom can she complain? And how does she complain? She can't even feel good about being angry, because, after all, its the church. If her competition was another woman she could at least get mad at her and at her husband. Instead the pastor's wife has to repress most of her anger. Sometimes it comes out in odd, even destructive ways.
Here's another thing. Many pastor's families couldn't make ends meet if the wife didn't have a job. She, in effect, subsidizes the church so that it can have a pastor. In other words, she works all day to make it possible for her husband to minister to a church that he may be allowing to be his mistress.
Pastor's wife - tough job. Glad I don't quailify.
Rev. Ray Houser
Posted by: Ray Houser | April 12, 2010 at 10:11 AM