MARRIED TO THE MAN AND THE MINISTRY
Amid changing expectations, the minister's mate chooses a challenging role.
Bonnie Shipley Rice
January 1, 1991
Barbara Myers remembers meeting the board of a church where her husband was candidating early in his ministry: "After they had exhausted his capabilities and probabilities, someone turned the spotlight on me and asked, 'And what can you do?' I was not prepared for that question, but I spent ten years trying to answer it by doing everything."
Mary Bouma, a pastor's wife and author, says that at one time, ministry couples were hired as "two for the price of one." While times have changed, as have many of the expectations, she feels many congregations still have an agenda for the minister's wife, even when they don't acknowledge it.
"Today the minister's wife may serve a more political purpose: befriending the right people, being a peacemaker, smoothing ruffled feathers," she says.
Most ministers' wives have experienced the tension of adjusting their role to the stage and the players. Whatever role they choose, it is pressure filled in spite of the increased sensitivity of today's congregations.
"The pastoral family has been taken down off the pedestal," says Mary Bouma. "It's nice to be down, but in some ways we're more vulnerable now. Today the man of the cloth is hired as an executive to run the business of the church. If the business doesn't go as well as it might, the pastor is out. It can be scary-for the pastor, and perhaps even more so for the spouse."
"The woman married to the minister still finds her role shaped by the expectations of others to some degree," says Dr. Louis McBurney, psychiatrist and clergy counselor.
McBurney goes on: "Women today are better prepared to find a unique ministry of their own. Pastors' wives today feel less locked into outside constraints than has been true in the past. They want to be heard ...
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