Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Introduction

Ann Benton

1. Her responsibility to God: ‘Daughter, do you love me?’

Val Archer

2. Her responsibility to her husband: A suitable helper

Kath Paterson

3. Her responsibility to her family: What about the children?

Ann Benton

4. Privileges: Perks of the job

Ann Benton

5. Pressure points: For the sake of the kingdom

Julia Jones

6. Her service for Christ: Using God-given gifts

Jane McNabb

7. Forgiveness and forbearance: Handling criticism

Ruth Shaw

8. Encouragement: Modelling and showing encouragement and hospitality

Julia Jones

9. Humility and contentment: The minister’s wife’s view of herself

Lizzy Smallwood

10. Ten questions younger ministers’ wives ask (or wish they could ask)

Rachel Lawrence

Further reading

Introduction

‘I could write a book . . . ’

How many times in thirty years have I muttered those words to myself?

Ministers’ wives appear in fiction. Anthony Trollope painted some famously unflattering portraits in his Chronicles of Barsetshire. He found the juxtaposition between preaching the kingdom of heaven and handling life on earth a rich vein for comedy, as others have done since. There are incongruities about life in the manse or the vicarage. The minster is sometimes regarded as a separate category of human being, and so too is his wife.

The stereotypes remain, and probably strike fear into any twenty-first-century woman about to embark on ministry life. Barbara Pym in her 1953 novel Jane and Prudence describes a woman not at all comfortable with what she sees as the expectations of her role: ‘ . . . clergy wives have to be very careful, you know. They have to be sitting there in their dowdy old clothes in a pew rather too near the front – it’s a kind of duty.’

That sentiment, if taken seriously, certainly needs challeng­ing. But it also raises a reasonable question. What, if any, are the duties of clergy wives? You could fill several shelves with books about being a minister – no shortage of advice and inspiration there – but a minister’s wife? She must largely find her own way through the rotas and the teapots.

So when I was contacted by the Women’s Ministry Team of the FIEC (Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches) and asked to submit a chapter towards a book by and for ministers’ wives, I was only too happy to oblige. Later I contributed a second chapter, and finally somehow the whole project landed in my lap.

So this is a book about life as a ministry wife. It aims to inform, prepare and inspire those who are, or who might become, fellow members of that peculiar group of women whom my husband calls ‘heroines’.

The original concept was that chapters would be solicited from a range of ministers’ wives. Contrary to popular mis­conception, we are not all the same, and our various experiences and backgrounds colour our take on the role. So there are many voices in this book. Some are women who see themselves as front-line, full-time co-workers with their husbands; others would look on themselves more as backroom support. Some knew from the outset of their marriage that this would be their path and fully embraced it; some expected one kind of life and found themselves in another. Some have substantial employment outside the church and home; others do not. All have known pain, misunderstanding and struggle, as well as pleasure, purpose and fulfilment.

Apart from all being married to men who serve full-time in preaching/pastoral ministry, the writers have two things in common. First, we are all evangelical Christians. That is to say, we believe in the Bible as the inerrant Word of God; we believe that Jesus died on the cross to make complete atonement for our sins; we believe that we are saved by faith alone in Christ alone. Secondly, we are all complementarian on the question of gender. That is to say, we believe that God made male and female equal but different. In family life and in the church, God intends male headship, after the pattern of Christ who loved the church and gave himself for her. A wife is to be her husband’s helper and to submit to his loving and sacrificial leadership. However, readers who take issue with the evangelical, complementarian standpoint may still value the insights in this book while disagreeing with some of its explanations and applications.

In most cases the various writers were assigned their subject. They wrote their chapters without seeing what the other women had written. What was interesting to me as the editor was that, despite our differences, there was a very large area of agreement on, for example, the kind of sins that stalk the manse. This called for some ruthless editorial lopping, in the interest of avoiding tedious repetition. Nonetheless there will still be some central themes which emerge several times but need to be restated in the respective contexts, precisely because they are so dominant. Let the reader under­stand and forgive. Most already in ministry will do so.

My heartfelt thanks go to all the contributors for their patience and humility as the scripts went back and forth in cyberspace. The writers are all women whose hearts beat with a passion for God’s kingdom. They are grateful to IVP for the opportunity to disseminate this collection. One of the reasons why I and others were so keen to see this kind of resource in print is a kingdom reason. There is a tragic loss to the churches year on year of many gifted men who embark on ministerial life and give up. Of course, there is a wide range of circum­stances behind the statistics. But one common reason why a man steps down from leadership in the church is that his job was making his wife deeply unhappy. She had no idea it would be like that. Or she cannot handle the unwritten expectations of a church. Or, or, or . . . No godly man wants to see his wife spiral into resentment or resigned misery because of his chosen path in life. The writers humbly hope that, by their combined offering of the wisdom of Scripture and experience, this book will serve to keep men in gospel ministry.

My husband often reflects on the comments of Stephen Ambrose, an eminent American World War 2 historian. Ambrose records that Hitler’s army had much better military equipment than the Allies had. Technologically it was state of the art. But when the German tanks got damaged, they were just left to rust. The Allies on the other hand had a team of mechanics ready to rescue and repair their damaged tanks and turn them round to be back on the battlefield in a very short time. This, alleges Ambrose, was one of the secrets of the Allies’ ultimate success in Europe after the D-day landings.

Gospel ministry is a war, and men get wounded. A man can sometimes return to his manse or vicarage on a Sunday night or after a church meeting completely shot up. The maintenance and repair supplied by a minister’s wife is essential to his return to the front line. That is the kingdom importance of the minister’s wife.

Ann Benton, February 2011