Free your wife. Make it possible for her to serve one day a week in a place of her choosing, not where "duty calls." Stay home and watch the kids so she can do this.
Pray for your wife and with your wife. The shepherd can be so busy praying for the flock he can forget the needs of his shepherdess!
Respect her opinion. Ask for her input for important matters, such as what she thinks about a prospective ministry move. Be willing to take her advice and come to a consensus before a major change.
Encourage her to continue her spiritual and intellectual education. When an adult is around small children all day, she tends to think, eat and talk like them. Adult company and stimulation helps keep her fresh and up on things.
Delight in your wife regularly, creatively and tenderly. Plan a picnic, revisit some favorite place or activity you enjoyed when courting her or carve out a special day in the middle of the week for her. You will discover that, if you delight in her, she will delight you!
Conversations, letters and surveys tell us the concerns you wives in ministry have. About 45 percent of you fear physical, emotional and spiritual burnout. Nearly 60 percent of you work outside the home. Some 45 percent of you tell us you have no close friends. And more than half of you worry about raising your children.
The underlying cause for the multitude of pastors leaving pastoral ministry centers on two critical issues — marriage/family difficulties and burnout. Based on fourteen letters of concern written by wives of pastors, this book could have been entitled, "Fourteen Frequently Asked Questions by Pastors' Wives."
On a white, northeast winter Sunday, while her children and husband were in church, the pastor's wife committed suicide in the parsonage. When I heard the news, a chilling wave rose in my heart, then settled like gray dust all over my thoughts.