Expectations for a Pastor's Wife
Thabiti, Mike M., Mike G., Aaron, Jonathan and Greg,
What are reasonable expectations for a church to have for a pastor's wife? Before we arrived at CHBC, we were told that aside from the pastor's wife caring for her husband and children and occasional doing hospitality, there were no particular expectations for the pastor's wife. For us, these expectations have turned out to be a true representation of what we have experienced in DC.
Unlike our own situation, I know a lot of friends in ministry who have wives who are under an immense amount of pressure to be Superwoman--play piano, lead a woman's bible study, be an amazing chef, disciple lots of women, have exemplary children, respond to any and every crisis, etc. Are churches unreasonable about the expectations they put on the pastor's wife? Even worse, does a pastor's wife typically put a lot of pressure on herself to be superwoman? Do pastors put too much pressure on their spouse to do much more than is reasonable for any human being?
Gentlemen, what do you think?
Thank you SO MUCH for asking this question. I'm HIGHLY interested in reading the responses!
Posted by: PaulD | Sep 29, 2009 7:32:52 PM
absolutely! ask any wife -ask and church planting wife. There should be no two for one price deal here. make it perfectly clear at teh beginning that your wife is a servant of God using her gifts as he calls. the same goes for the pastor! as my seminary prof said - guys get over your messiah complex.
Posted by: buddy | Sep 29, 2009 8:17:27 PM
I have a pastor friend whose wife was asked what her role in the church would be. Her response, "To make the pastor happy!"
Posted by: sswhicker | Sep 29, 2009 9:17:08 PM
Thank you so much for asking this question! It is one my wife would love to have answered as she has struggled with this. Not that I have much to say about this, but rather wait for the experts to whom the question is raised, but I did want to share one insight that I have had.
Our church is looking for a new pastor and I think some of the same things are said about what is expected of a pastor vs. what is expected of his wife. Most churches will say that they don't expect the wife to do everything. However, if you have 200 people asking her to do their thing, the effect is the same. So, follow up to this question, how does a wife or a pastor deal with the unwritten expectations of individual members as opposed to the written expectations?
Posted by: Rick | Sep 30, 2009 8:23:48 AM