What It's Really Like to Be A Ministry Wife
Friday, June 19th, 2009
I stumbled across a couple of message board postings I had put up a couple years ago relating to the ministry. They were mostly innocuous–ministry families are often overly cautious of anything they say getting back to the church. But I ran into some newer posts that rather adequately displayed the desperation and loneliness I once felt. I really wish I could do something for these women! I wouldn’t try to convince them to stay OR to leave, but support them in their decisions. I am actually a GREAT person to come to with ministry related problems because I understand them without needing to judge anyone for hating the ministry–whether it be a phase or a permanent thing. I can honestly say I wish I’d had me when I was a minister’s wife!
Check out some of these quotes from other women who will only express their true feelings under the guise of anonymity (which is good for expressing your feelings, but not great for receiving the kind of support you really NEED when you’re going through this kind of thing):
My husband and I have been in ministry for 14 years and the past 4 years we started our own church. It has been a complete drain physically and on our marriage, finances the whole nine yards. The story is really long and you know that this is a very lonely position and you can trust nobody.
I do not enjoy it at all. I have not been in service in over 2 years, I never get to go to a service or group because I am always with my kids so my husband can go. Not too mention our marriage has always been shakey! I am under so much stress. I guess I just needed a safe place to vent. THe only person I can vent to is my mom and sometimes she doesnt understand, she is not even a christian. It is really shameful, because my husband is one way at church and another way at home and with my family. . . I am tired of the church always coming first and the family coming in last place. He talks really harshly with us at home sometimes. Like today my 5 year old pushed button on the computer he was working on for a church sermon or something and froze the computer and he supposedly lost everything. (This happened when I went to the store) and when I came home I found my 5 year old crying and hiding and my 8 year old wrote down on a piece of paper all the bad and mean words daddy called her: (idiot, stupid, moron, little rat, I’m going to kill you) and spanked her so hard that he left welts on her butt. I was FURIOUS! Of course I yelled at him, but he told me to get out. He calls me those words all the time too! So I am not [surprised] that he is starting to tell my children that. I want to leave him so bad, but I am stuck because I feel that divorce is bad.
(The advice this woman received is what made me furious! The other ladies suggested she go to counseling!)
Burn out is soo common especially in Pastor’s wives. Having done it as the Associate Pastor’s wife for 7 and now the Sr Pastor’s for 3 … I would pick any other job for my husband than putting up with people that are too closed minded to hear they need to change!
(Grammar is left intact in this next one):
Been a pastor wife for 8 years want to leave so bad it hurts. I just did a intervention with my husband on april 1 some things have changed already. but something may never but i realized that he may never see he has the issue he says i am lieing about.
I am saddened by the fact that our husbands preach one thing on Sundays and live differently with their families. It is so sad that being a pastors wife has to be so lonely and isolating. Like we are prisoners in our own churches. So many times I want to respond to the alter calls myself but feel I cant because I will be judged. Of course, I have a response in my heart and that is what counts I guess. It is not all bad every day, we have our ups and downs. We had some strife before ministry and now ministry just magnifies it. Don’t get me wrong, I love GOD with all my heart, I am not burnt out from God. I am burnt out from serving people to death. People are so exhausting and just take, take, take. They expect the pastor and his family to do everything, to wait on them hand and foot. That is what is draining.
And this last eerily familiar one:
I really in my heart feel he would not be a good pastor because he does the very opposite of what God’s will is. He can’t handle his own house let alone manage God’s house. I am a simple person. I don’t ask for much. Just his whole heart as I have given him mine. But I have a problem with him that is personal. Our house is always being turned upside down because of lies and deceit and women are the main cause. He has cheated on me before. I caught him only the one time. I feel it may have been more but have nothing to go on. He loves to impress people in the church. He does and says things that he ought not say and do.
So what are burned out pastor’s wives supposed to do? The answers I have found are: pray more, read the Bible more, seek counsel from other godly women, get counseling. The counseling can be good if the only problem is depression, but throw in abuse to the mix, and suddenly there is just a Catch-22: leave her husband, make god mad and go to hell. Stay, and risk the safety of yourself and your children. To me now, it sounds like a no-brainer. But when you live like that everyday for years, it’s incredibly difficult.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: pastor’s wives are not alone. There is help, there is hope, and a way out if you want it. If you are happy, great! If not, you are not a failure and you shouldn’t feel guilty! Pastor’s wives have a very high rate of depression! Feel free to contact me if you ever need to vent! And churches, be nice to your pastor’s wives and stop treating them like your personal spiritual servants!
Edit: I finally found the statistics I was trying to remember awhile back, though I can’t remember which exact post. Apparently, Mark Driscoll is the one trumpeting these dismal numbers. Thank you, WordPress, for automatically generating another post that happened to have these stats:
1500 pastors leave the ministry each year in USA
- due to either burn out or sin or in-fighting at the Church where the pastor becomes a victim
50% marriages end in divorce
80% feel discouraged and would do something else if they could
80% of graduates leave ministry within the first 5 years never to come back
70% suffer from depression
40% confess to adultery while in ministry (many others don’t confess)
40% don’t read the bible unless preparing for a message
80% spouses wish their husband would quit the ministry
40% of those who leave the ministry do so because of “wives’ issues.” I think I would technically fall under here, although I am not entirely sure it is fair to say that we left just because of me!
Tags: Baptist, Christianity, church, ministry, pastor, pastor's wife, pastors' wives, religion
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June 19th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Wow! Those comments are real eye-openers. I am not a pastor’s wife, but it has given me a good insight into how desperately lonely they must feel.
I don’t think, in fact I am sure, that God would not expect any woman to remain in some of the situations described above, because for some of those the marriage described does not equal the marriage relationship that God would expect between husband and wife, far from it. These women need honest people to remind them of the word of God which says: wives submit to your husbands AND HUSBANDS LOVE YOUR WIVES!!! For most of what I read above, there is very little if any love going on from the pastors to their wives, so maybe it is time for them to make the bravest decision they have ever had to make. God knows their heart and He is also fully aware of how they are being treated by the very person that is supposed to honour and respect them, so He would be the first one to want to break the chains of such awful bondage. There is a lot of hypocrisy in the church and people suggesting counseling to cover up an unsustainable situation is just one of many examples.
Thank you for your post and for letting me comment.
Blessings,
ransom33
June 19th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Wow, I never really think of what it means to be a pastors wife. This was instructive to me.
I know a pastor is a teacher but since his life is open to all, it must be quite challenging as well to juggle the needs of his own immediate family.
Life is indeed full of challenges. For the past nine years, I have been targeted and brutally assaulted on line by a woman Shay Riley of the Blackfemaleinterracial marriage blog.
Incredible as it may sound this criminal illegally wiretaps my phones, activates my microphones as a listening device and has used different malware to follow and track my computer usage for years, all the reading my email.
She has to target interracially married women lie me because she runs a slew of interracial marriage sites and blogs under the pretext that she is interracially married and so has no real basis for her representations. She is a fraud.
Why she is not in jail?? In large part because it is a case of Black on Black criminality.
I wonder about things like this and wonder why such criminals like this Predator, pedophiles and other vermin that crawl around the Internet are simply not destroyed by our mighty God.
I guess we live and have to overcome the evil one.
Blessings!
June 19th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
These women need backbone.
Little known story time:
In the earlier years of my marriage I was a major asshole on a number of occasions. I could attribute this in part to my father, who is one of the world’s championship assholes, or to the church, with their ‘man is the boss/god of woman’ damnable crap. But in the end, I made the choices and the actions.
Fortunately my wife has backbone. On two occasions she took the kids and went miles away. She called back and said in essence, “You show me a plan to get your act together and you enact that plan and follow through, or else your wife and kids are GONE!”
Thing with her is that she would and could follow through. She’s European and said that if she had to, she’d take the kids there and leave no forwarding info.
The first time I straightened up a lot. The second time not only did I straighten up, she made it clear that there would be no third time.
It’s been a lot of years and I can honestly say that I got sick of my own shit and am not the person I was.
You found the strength to leave your personal asshole and that’s done you and your kid a world of good.
So to the beat down pastors wives and others I can only recommend being a vertebrate.
June 19th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
I don’t subscribe to the notion that just because one person can do it, everyone can do it. Everybody’s situation is different. I was able to leave because of my changing doctrinal beliefs that lessened the fear of hell and/or God’s punishment. Even then, I don’t think I would have made it if I hadn’t had the support of Steve. It was the hardest thing in my life, and some women’s circumstances make it even harder. It’s easy to say, “Well, I did it!” when you accomplish something hard, but no two situations are exactly alike despite their similarities.
June 20th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
Yes. I know it’s not easy. If it was, there wouldn’t be so many misogynistic, tin-pot-dictator, abusive husbands. They’d pull their crap once and find themselves alone in an empty home.
For a woman with no clear means of support, surrounded by people whose only “help” is to tell her she has to fix the marriage, with dependent kids, with a reputation, and facing an uncertain future, being ostracized by others, possibly losing a custody battle; how the heck much harder could it be?
No my wife is a strong person. I could wish more women were, but it’s only wishing.
The other “solution” would be for people to help these women. To give them a place to go, money, food, baby-sitting, a job, etc. To acknowledge the horror of what their husbands are and to help them escape and to call those men to be men instead of animals.
But that ain’t gonna happen either is it?
Guess I’m not ready to run Utopia.
June 20th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
[...] I stumbled across a couple of message board postings I had put up a couple years ago relating to the ministry. They were mostly innocuous–ministry families are often overly cautious of anything they say getting back to the church. But I ran into some newer posts that rather adequately displayed the desperation and loneliness I once felt. I really wish I could do something for these women! I wouldn’t try to convince them to stay OR to leave, but support them in their decisions. I am actually a GREAT person to come to with ministry related problems because I understand them without needing to judge anyone for hating the ministry–whether it be a phase or a permanent thing. Read more at http://redheadedskeptic.com/2009/06/19/what-its-really-like-to-be-a-ministry-wife/ [...]
June 21st, 2009 at 3:27 am
Agreed. It’s why it’s a passion of mine, and someday when I am rich and famous, I am going to do something about it.
June 21st, 2009 at 5:26 pm
someday when I am rich and famous, I am going to do something about it.
Great. When you get to that, let me know if you need a hit-man.
June 23rd, 2009 at 7:04 am
Lauradee,
Its sounds like you have a real passion, and calling in this area. Maybe you should be a counselor.
Women who are being abused can call the local abuse hotline. In many communities, there are shelters where women can go to stay, for help and support ,if they are being physically, and emotionally abused.
There is a way out. But, Lauradee, in all fairness, are you saying that most minister’s wives are miserable in the ministry, and being abused?
I think this is true of some women, probably more so in these very legalistic, authoritarian type of churches, but I can’t feel that this is true of most women involved in ministry.
Many are there really because they want to be, and are working together with their husbands as a partner. My pastor is a woman, so it would be interesting to hear her whole take in this situation.
The statistics do sound dismal, but I wonder how they would stack up in comparision to the other helping professions. I think doctors have a high burn-out, and divorce rate too. It’s not easy to be intimately involved in people’s lives, and problems all the time. Self-care is super important. (Preachin to myself here.
)
At any rate, Christians defintely need to be supportive of their pastor, and his/her family.
Thanks for bringing this to our attention!!
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:45 am
I am not at all suggesting that all pastor’s wives are abused. I have said in the past that I wouldn’t be surprised to find a higher rate than what a lay person might expect, but that I did not have statistics to back that up so don’t quote me. I try very hard not to say facts that I don’t have any evidence for, though I am sure I have failed on this front. Surveys of minister’s wives have found a range of 80-88% that have gone through periods of depression while they have been in the ministry, so yes, I am suggesting that most pastor’s wives have, at least sometimes, been miserable.
As per denomination, I don’t have statistics on those, either, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that you are right on your denominational observations. Remember that there can easily be 15 (or more) Baptist churches to one Episcopalian church in many areas, so there are many more Baptist, Assembly, and Pentecostal pastor’s wives than there are some of the more liberal denominations. Presbyterian falls in the middle. In my area, there are about 104 Baptist churches within an hour drive, and only about 15 Episcopal. Not counting other denominations, that is quite a gap. So naturally, more conservative denominations will have more numbers of ministry wives taking the survey.
However, just because there MIGHT be less depression in the more liberal wives doesn’t mean that there is none or that they should feel guilty for feeling what they feel–every situation is different. I know you wouldn’t think that, Grace, I am merely stating that in case a minister’s wife should read this comment.
November 4th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
Hmmm. What’s interesting is that Leo’s advice on how a woman should handle a problematic husband is exactly opposite of the advice you’d been given. I agree with Leo, by the way. I’ve found I’ve really had to stand my ground with my husband. Not that he’s a bad guy. He was raised in a conservative religious background and expects to have his way around the house. Since we’re starting out from that very imbalanced default position I’ve really had to be tough just to acheive a fair balance in our relationship. It’s exhausting sometimes, but worth it. I’m glad my daughter sees us negotiating and trying to be fair and reasonable with one another.