A Horse & Carriage? (Part 4)
Thought I’d share a few posts on your wife for pastors, especially church planters. I don’t mean to be sexist. If you are a female pastor or church planter, more power to ya. I just don’t know anything about being a male spouse of a church planter, so I can’t speak on that…
This one is especially for church planters (though it may apply equally to pastors of established churches): I really encourage spouses to be on different emotional journeys. What I mean is that if you’re both fully living and dying with exactly the same things – that is going to be a crazy emotional roller coaster that I personally wouldn’t want to be on. So, for instance, if you’re both totally focused on the attendance, or the offering, and it’s bad this week, you’re both going to be out on the ledge, with no one to talk you down. I’m not saying your wife shouldn’t care about how the church is doing, of course she will, but I am saying that things will likely go better if she’s more concerned with aspects of the church that you’re not so focused on. Maybe she’s really into the Student Ministry, and on the week the offering stinks things with the Student Ministry are rocking, and vice versa, so you can encourage each other.
On a related note: I’m a fan of not telling your wife everything. As a pastor you’re going to deal with a lot of stuff, and a lot of it will be about people. I try to tell my wife as little as possible. If it doesn’t impact her, I don’t tell her, unless it’s HUGE and I feel like I have to. Why? Well, first, it’s not necessarily any of her business. Second, it’s usually depressing enough for me to have to deal with, why should she have to as well? Third, I don’t want her to have negative opinions of people on staff or in the church. — So, usually if something has me down and she asks what it is, my answer is, “You don’t want to know. Don’t worry about it. It will be fine.”
You may disagree with my philosophy on all this, but it’s worked well for us for ten years now, kept us off the roller coaster, and allowed each of us to have the other to talk us off the ledge.
– featured on newchurches.com