More Than Just a Ministry Couple
By Glenna Marshall
In nearly two decades of pastoral ministry, my husband and I have found that sometimes we don’t know what to talk about if the church is not the topic of our discussion. For most of our time in church ministry, my husband served as the only staff member, which meant that I was the only person he could talk to about problems, concerns, or plans for the church. Because so much of our life was built around ministry (we had moved to another state solely for our church), it seemed that literally everything in our life must be church-related. We’ve learned, though, that this isn’t healthy for our marriage. It might seem good for our ministry if we’re constantly keeping the church at the forefront of our minds, but it isn’t good for our marriage. And if we want to keep serving and loving our church in a healthy way, our marriage needs care, attention, and priority.
It’s easy to let your church ministry dominate every conversation, be the point of every prayer, or be the source of every joy or discouragement. If you’re new to ministry life, it might even seem right. But your ministry is only as healthy as your marriage. As my husband likes to say, “A pastor can pastor any church, but he can only be married to one wife.” If your marriage is struggling because of the time and attention given to the church, you may need to reprioritize your marriage. Your church members may balk when you say “no” to some things or when your husband agrees to turn off his phone for an hour or two every evening, but in the end, your ministry to the church will flourish when your marriage is thriving.
A couple of years ago, my husband and I realized that we had little time in our day for one-on-one conversation. Our kids had reached the age where they were listening all the time, and we could only talk after they went to bed. However, I’m usually too tired to be attentive to late night conversations, so my husband and I began looking for ways to have conversations without distraction. We began taking early morning walks together. Our kids are old enough that we can leave our house for 45 minutes without worrying that one of the kids will burn it down before we get back. They can reach us if we need to, and we walk loops around our neighborhood that don’t take us far from home.
It’s been a couple of years since we began our daily walks together, and it has changed the dynamics of communication in our marriage. At first, we did talk about church, church members, church problems, church issues—you name it. If it was about church, we discussed it. But as time moved on, we found ourselves talking about our own spiritual struggles, our goals, some desires we hadn’t voiced to one another. We listened to a podcast separately and then discussed it on our walks together. Our conversations run the gamut every morning. We even argue sometimes. We talk through our Bible reading, parenting, dreams for our future, and grief for hopes lost. We talk about books we’ve read and discuss theology like we did when we were first dating. And sometimes we talk about church. However, I’ve noticed that church doesn’t dominate our conversation like it used to. We are a ministry couple, certainly. And ministry takes up much of our time, thoughts, and efforts. But we are also a husband and a wife, parents, friends. We have hobbies and hopes, interests and responsibilities. I write and travel for work. He has a baseball card hobby that he enjoys with our teenaged son. There is more to us than ministry. Sometimes, my husband needs to talk through ministry stuff with me, and vice versa. Our life does still largely revolve around ministry. But, sometimes we slip into church talk by default because it was our conversational habit for so long. These days, if our marriage needs more attention but the conversation begins to turn too much towards the church, I tell my husband, “No church allowed today.” He is usually quick to agree!
If you find that much of your talk, concerns, hopes, fears, or struggles as a couple stem only from church-related issues, it might be time to take a step back and proactively turn the conversation to your marriage and your interests beyond ministry. And if you don’t have any interests outside ministry, it’s probably a good idea to develop some. If you feel there’s no time to cultivate any new activities or times for non-church related conversation, I would argue that you’re likely in dire need of making time for those things.
In addition to our morning walks, my husband enjoys reading mystery novels, buying/selling/trading baseball cards online, playing guitar, and watching college football and basketball. I enjoy reading fiction, playing the piano, cooking, browsing around Target, and watching British dramas. Together, we like to take hikes, go on family bike rides, be present at our boys’ school events and extracurriculars, enjoy a “snack night” once a week while we all watch a show together as family. It is important for our family to be devoted to church ministry, but it is equally important for us to be a family outside of our ministry as well. We are not automatons. We need rest and refilling. We need to be more than pastor and pastor’s wife. We need to be husband and wife, dad and mom, friends, and creatives. We are whole people whom God has created for love, relationship, joy, hobbies, and ministry. I believe that intentionally cultivating our marriage and family life apart from ministry will actually help us thrive in ministry. Our churches will benefit from ministry couples who are filled, rested, and flourishing at home.
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence: Why God is Always Enough (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness: The Beauty of Ordinary Perseverance in a Demanding World (Crossway, June 2020).