I was in my second year of college when the pastor of my home church made a shocking announcement. I can still remember the aching feeling in my stomach as I sat in the congregational meeting on a Sunday afternoon and heard the pastor, whom I admired and loved, explain that his wife was having an affair with a man in the church.
That occurred at a time when such revelations were still rare and scandalous.
The congregation was stunned. No one knew what to say. No one knew how to respond to the need in his family and the brokenness of his heart. Later I heard that he left the church after that meeting and returned only to clean out his office and pack his books. He and his family left the church, moved from the city, and were never heard from again.
The pastor wasn’t the only one in his family who was hurting, of course. In that congregational meeting, he told about the grief his wife had been feeling for more than a year. Much of her travail was the result of the conflict that had been going on in the church for months. She would come home from choir practice in tears, vowing never to go back again. I guess the conflict took its toll.
Her role in the conflict was primarily as a spectator, though her husband was at the epicenter of the controversy. Few folks offered her comfort or understanding, assuming that she and her family would somehow get through it on their own. They didn’t, and I guess she found her solace in the arms of another.
Though I won’t justify her behavior, I can empathize with her loneliness. When we left a church in the midst of conflict, my wife told me, “I would be eternally grateful to God if he would just let you leave the pastorate.” During another time of turmoil, she confided, “If you got out of the pastorate, I would have no regrets. This life as a pastor’s family is just too painful and lonely.” At one of our lowest points, she told me, “I hate the church and wouldn’t regret it for a minute if I never had to go back.”
Church conflict can deeply wound a pastor’s wife, sometimes irrevocably. (Since the majority of pastors’ spouses are still women, I will refer in this chapter to wives rather than spouses.) She’s hurting, her husband is hurting, and neither can help the other. Several years ago, after the worst church conflict in my ministry led to my resignation and immediate expulsion from the church, I was fortunate that a colleague offered me his friendship. During one of our times together, he asked, “How is Suzanne holding up through all of this?”
Tears came to my eyes because I knew she was hurting as much as I was, but I didn’t know how to respond to her needs. When ministry is buffeted by conflict, the pastor’s marriage can—and should—be a sheltering tree for both him and his wife. Even if there is disunity in the body of Christ, the pastoral couple can, with God’s help, be united in their commitment to Christ and to each other.
But it’s not easy for the pastor embroiled in conflict to come home and think about his wife’s needs. The fact that God takes conflict and forges out of it our character is one of the key themes of this book, and that is no more true than in caring for our family. In the opening chapter, I discussed briefly how during the time of my forced exit from ministry, Suzanne and I guarded our family. In this chapter, however, I want to focus on the importance of making an effort to understand, acknowledge, and respect your wife’s feelings.
Sting of betrayal
Pastors’ wives form their own connections in a congregation, and when conflict tears at a ministry they can feel deeply betrayed by people they trusted. During one of our church battles, Suzanne had been meeting regularly with several women in the church. It was a group she enjoyed spending time with and trusted, and often they would discuss very personal issues about their lives. Suzanne felt she could confide in these friends about our situation. She spoke honestly about her feelings toward two church board members who opposed my leadership. Although she didn’t name the individuals, she did express her feelings of anger, distrust, and dislike.
As the conflict escalated, some of her friends in the group eventually sided with those who were in conflict with me. It didn’t take long for it to be reported at a congregational meeting that “it’s no surprise that the pastor is at odds with the board; even his wife harbors bitterness in her heart against two board members.” The speaker went on to quote what “she told me personally.”
When honest feelings are used against us, there is no greater sense of betrayal.
When we came to our current church, Suzanne acknowledged to me that it would be harder for her to trust people in the new congregation because of the past. After hearing her honest admission, I began to notice that I, too, felt guarded in opening myself up to new friendships. Formerly we had given ourselves to people with great freedom; now both of us were more careful, more suspecting. Admitting that to each other drew us closer together.
Suzanne was in a “birthday club” with a group of women at a former church. She found it a wonderful source of friendship and support—until some other birthday buddies turned against us. Not long ago I asked her if she would be interested in starting a birthday group at our current church. She didn’t reply. She didn’t have to. The look on her face told me everything I needed to know.
Trust betrayed is not easily rebuilt, and I learned again how I need to offer my wife support and space to allow her to heal—in her way and at her pace. There’s no big secret about how I can make that happen. I simply need to listen and not be shocked at what she says or worried that she is not moving along fast enough in the healing process. Feelings of betrayal and distrust that go unacknowledged can drive us to bitterness and resentment. It’s too easy to become cynical.
I used to be troubled by the wife of a friend who was formerly in the pastorate. Whenever Suzanne and I saw them, we knew we were in for an extended session of hearing about the foibles of their local fellowship. The woman would zing unnamed people in the congregation. She painted many in their congregation as hostile, carnal, set in their ways, and sinfully critical.
Rather than challenging her attitude, Suzanne and I tried to be as supportive and as caring as we could. Our listening slowly seemed to pay off. The couple realized we understood and genuinely cared for them. Finally, after one spate of sarcastic remarks, the wife blurted, “I guess by now you know how much I hate this church!”
We did know. It wasn’t that we condoned her bitterness, but we understood it and were willing to put up with it until God pointed it out to her. I remember gently telling our friend, “Now that you’ve acknowledged that you hate them, I think you’re ready to start forgiving them.”
I’ve watched Suzanne struggle through disappointment and disillusionment with the church, and I’ve discovered the best thing I can do to help her is not to judge her attitude, to trust that God is at work in her, and to be emotionally present when she is ready to talk.
Family oasis
Recently Suzanne and I attended our denomination’s retreat for pastoral couples in our region. We look forward to this conference every year. Out of this annual event, I struck up a friendship with a couple who caught my attention when I heard them speak about pastoring a church in the middle of a neighborhood in transition. The largely Anglo congregation was aging and resistant to change. Not only did the people in the church resist assimilating residents of their changing community, they wondered whether their pastor should remain in the church. Most wanted the good old days back. A once-thriving church was now torn by deep conflict, and the pastor was right in the middle of it, through no fault of his own.
As this couple told their story, I could sense their brokenness. The pastor’s wife said, “If I didn’t have my family with me through this past year, I would never have made it.”
She then described how the love and support from their three sons had been their oasis. She told how the boys, who were in their twenties and all still lived in the area, dropped in for Sunday dinner after church. Along with the roast beef, potatoes and gravy, and apple pie, they shared laughter, pranks, teasing, and fun. It was as if for a few restful hours on a Sunday afternoon, she and her husband could forget the hassles at the church and be with the people who knew them best and loved them most. As she put it, “I never knew how much I would come to love, appreciate, and need my family.” She added, “I knew the boys could have been doing lots of other things with their time on Sundays, but they chose to spend it with us—playing games, talking, and letting us know we were loved.”
The hardest part was when late on Sundays this couple would say good-bye to their boys. It was made a little easier by their practice of standing in the living room, holding hands with their sons, and hearing each one pray for them. This couple said that at first it was difficult to tell their church struggles to their children. But they did, trying not to slander the people in the church, and the boys responded with support, which the parents had not expected.
There’s nothing quite like the support of family during times of ministry crisis. Of course, our children can’t be our therapists, and we need to sort judiciously through the information we tell them. But family members mean the most to us, and it is reassuring when they rally together for support and acceptance.
During the time when I was forced out of a pastorate (the story I tell in chapter 1), our family was a tremendous support. Although our boys were younger at the time, Suzanne and I tried to share with them our struggles at a level suitable to their understanding. They weren’t old enough to grasp the details of the conflict, but they knew that it was time for our family to come together in support of one another.
It’s a humbling experience to allow children to care for us during times of emotional crisis. We still recall with gratitude the evenings spent playing board games or putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Family hikes in the foothills, long mountain-bike treks, and canoe trips provided renewal and refreshment.
Shelter of friends
I have a theory that the longer a couple is in the pastorate, the smaller their circle of close friends becomes. In face, if a couple isn’t careful, the circle can become so small they may find that, after a while, they’re the only ones in it.
Part of this stems from the distrust mentioned earlier. Yet we still need people in our lives who support and understand us. Close friends care for our souls when they are bruised.
I remember a friendship my wife developed shortly after one of our ministry miseries. In our conversations, Suzanne often quoted something her friend had said to her that provided comfort and empathy. Today she still keeps in contact with this friend whom God used in her life to embolden her faith and confidence in God’s care.
One way we can help our wives weather church conflict is to encourage them to be open to a few trusted friends—outside of the immediate church situation or maybe just outside of the church, period. When I asked one pastor’s wife how she coped with the conflict in a past church, she told me, “I didn’t cope. It was only with the help of two loving Christian friends in my neighborhood that I even survived!”
Finding such a friend is not always easy. It takes patience and courage. One way to go about it is to ask God to show your wife someone who could be a safe friend. The woman who found friends in her neighborhood said that the person who became her special friend was someone she had only known as a casual acquaintance. She said, “One night I was praying and crying at the same time, asking God what I should do. Without thinking about it, suddenly Shannon’s name popped into my head, and I knew right then that I needed to call her up and see if we could have coffee together.” They did, and out of that came a friendship that provided much-needed support.
To this day, my wife talks about her friend Marcia as one of the special people God used to help her through a difficult church experience. Marcia’s favorite comment to her was that “It’s okay to be who you are, because God has made you to be uniquely you.”
In addition to friends and family, wives need their husbands during conflict. That sounds obvious, but I’m ashamed that I didn’t realize how alone Suzanne felt. When she first told me that she felt alone, I asked, “You mean, alone other than for me?”
“No,” Suzanne said. “I even feel separated from you.”
Then she said, “Doesn’t it matter to you that I feel like no one cares how I’m feeling, not even you?” She felt abandoned. I felt rebuked.
Since then I’ve tried to learn how to listen to her, be close to her, and draw her out to express what’s going on inside. Although conflict isn’t something to relish, I can say that some of the times when Suzanne and I felt the closest have been when we’ve walked through the fire together. We are learning to minister to each other.
When in the throes of a church conflict, our feelings are mirrored and usually intensified in our wives. A pastor can usually engage in the battle directly—he has to go to work and face the problem every day—thereby releasing some of his negative feelings, but his wife doesn’t have that outlet. It’s critical, therefore, that she find safe places to release her feelings, places where she is affirmed and where she can discover God’s healing. The most obvious place where that needs to happen is at home with her husband.
Copyright © 1998 Gary D. Preston
