And the Shofar Blew

And the Shofar Blew, Francine Rivers

In this book Rivers tackles the risks and pitfalls of ministry. Paul Hudson is a keen young pastor, excited about preaching the word of God and bringing people to saving faith. Recently graduated from bible college, with his wife Eunice and infant son Timothy, he is called by the small and dying congregation at Centreville Christian Church to replace their beloved ill pastor who has faithfully served for over 40 years.

Paul and Eunice are thrilled and after prayer and consideration take up the post moving across the country.

Things are great in the beginning: Paul builds a youth group, takes time to get to know locals and preaches faithfully. Eunice joyfully leads the singing with her extensive music gifts and meets with elderly congregation members.

Paul, however, is driven to succeed and to prove himself to his father who runs a mega church, who had no time for Paul when he was younger, and is never pleased with him no matter what he does.

In time, Paul starts chafing against the older elders he has inherited and their grumbles about the way he is changing things. These are faithful godly men, somewhat set in their ways, but also prayerful and wise. Paul feels constantly questioned and challenged, they feel unheard and ignored.

In time, the desire for a large church and a larger building mean that Paul has to cut things people no longer want to hear. The gospel becomes watered down. Big donors are chased regardless of their belief. New elders are appointed without ensuring they are truly men of faith.

Meanwhile, Eunice is faithfully standing by her husband, but increasingly concerned about his change of direction and behaviour. Once he had time for his family, but now they always come last. He counsels everyone in his congregation with love and patience except his wife and son, with whom he is abrupt and harsh.

Some of the most encouraging characters are the elder Samuel and his wife Abby. Married about 60 years they encourage each other to godly living and prayer, and also have fun together. Samuel prays constantly for Paul over the whole 15 years, first with eager joy and expectation, then with disappointment and later pleading with God to change him and bring him to repentance. This example of long term prayer in the face of changing circumstances, but a reliance on a sovereign God is very edifying.

Being a minister’s wife myself, I found Eunice an interesting character. Paul stops listening to her opinion, and changes her involvement at church. She is aware of the damage he is causing to their son. While she maintains her own faith and devotion, she struggles with whether to speak up about what Paul is doing, whether as the minister’s wife it is her role to do so, and if anyone would really hear her. Her mother in law, Lois (note the numerous name echoes of biblical characters throughout this book) tells her: “When you live with a faithless man, you learn to lean on a faithful God.” Eunice knows the damage that revealing Paul’s sin would do to the church, and so she battles with how to manage.

In many ways, it’s a depressing account of a ministry skewered in a faithless direction. Sadly what is portrayed here reflects some people’s reality. Yet, it is still a story of God’s faithfulness despite our faithlessness, and a reminder to all that no one in ministry is exempt from sin or temptation. Both challenging and encouraging at the same time.

Zeal without Burnout

Zeal without Burnout, Christopher Ash

Seven years ago I did a detailed chapter by chapter review on Going the Distance: How to Stay Fit for a Lifetime of Ministry, by Peter Brain.  It is an excellent book, but requires a fair time commitment to read it. 

Christopher Ash has developed this primer which is also excellent in its simplicity, clarity and brevity.   Ash writes to those who can prevent burnout in ministry:

Burnout is a terrible price to pay for Christian zeal.  Sometimes it cannot be avoided.  For some, their circumstances mean there is no other way to live sacrificially for Jesus.But sometimes it can.  For many of us there is a different path.  One that that combines passionate zeal for Jesus with plodding faithfully along year after year.  I want to write about this path.  (p14)

He writes to those in full-time ministry and to those committed lay people who also serve the Lord Jesus faithfully.   

As someone who has spent the last decade training young men and women for Christian service, I have been keen to help them see that the best kinds of ministry are, more often than not, long term and low key.  I have tried to prepare them for a marathon, not a short, energetic sprint.  In other words, to help them have a lifetime of sustainable sacrifice, rather than an energetic but brief ministry that quickly fades in exhaustion. (p20)

This resonated with me as Husband and I often talk about wanting to be in ministry for the long marathon and to manage it in a way so that we can.   He also addresses the truth that “there is a difference between godly sacrifice and needless burnout”, adding that even if it may sound heroic to burn out for Jesus, we do not do it alone.  We take others down in our crashes – spouses, children, colleagues and friends. 

Ash starts with the reminder that we are creatures of dust.   We are mortal and we need sustenance, but God does not.

He then moves through seven keys:

1. We need sleep and God does not – sleep is both a necessity and a gift.     
2. We need Sabbath rests and God does not.  Husband and I know this from personal experience – the rest of a day off in seven has been remarkably restorative for us individually and as a couple.
3. We need friends and God does not.  He adds an extra part here about maintaining intimacy for married couples.
4.  We need inward renewal and God does not.   We need to find ways to refresh and recharge.
5. A warning to beware celebrity – for how much of overwork is driven by a desire to please others and be feted?
6. An encouragement – it’s worth it.  God does not need us, yet this service of the Lord matters.  It may not be able to be measured or counted, but it is worth it.   And any fruit borne, is a gift of God.
7. A delight – rejoice in grace, not gifts

He concludes with some parting ideas: don’t be soft (ie. don’t go the other way into over protection), don’t despair (you can change patterns, and God still works out his grace), do a self-check and make a resolution (to glory in salvation not anything we can or cannot do).

I read this book with two other ministry wives and we were encouraged and challenged.  I suspect you will be too!

Minister's Wives

We have a little tradition here at our church - the 'Preacher's Wives' (as we call ourselves) go away together each year. It's an event we all look forward to. We leave our husbands and children for 2 nights and go away, usually to a beach house, for a time of encouragement and refreshment.

It's only one of the ways we support each another, as we also meet fortnightly throughout the year to pray together. When I arrived here, this group of women had been meeting together for years, as well as going away together annually. It was a wonderful group to arrive into. Here were women also married to men in ministry, all seeking to live godly lives and all keen to encourage one another through joyous and sad times.

Five years later, this group has become one of my main support networks. I look forward to our fortnightly times of prayer, and I really look forward to our times away. Not only because for me they really are a break, a time with adults only at the beach for 3 days - but because these women are a constant encouragement to me.

We are a diverse bunch - we currently number 11 women and we are spread over 8 congregations at 3 centres. We age from under 30 to nearing 50, we have children ranging from 'in utero' to university age. We serve in different ways: some teach publicly, some lead bible studies, some lead singing or play music, some encourage other women and meet with them privately, some have wonderful hospitality. We look after our households in different ways: some work, others do not; some love to cook, others prefer take-away; some love craft, others can't stand it. But all of us love our husbands, love our ministries and are united by the gospel.

This year, we watched the DVDs of the Equip Ministry Wives Conference from 2008. There were 2 talks from Phillip Jensen on 'Being a wife' and 'Being a ministry wife', and a talk from Carmelina Read on 'How to discourage your husband in ministry' (later turned into a Briefing Article, which can be read here).

We watched each talk as a group and then talked about each in depth. And here I share some of the points I liked/learnt:

Talk 1 - Being a wife

- He centred his talk around Prov 12:4 "a wife of noble character is her husband's crown, but a disgraceful wife is like decay in his bones"

- The idea that we are made for our husbands by God, and that there is nothing more glorious than a man (on this earth) than his wife - she is the crowning pleasure of his existence. Which is a privilege!

- Most men do not need many friends, a good wife is all they need. This helped me to think through how G views me. He doesn't have many other close friends (although there are some), but primarily he wants to spend his time with me. Which I love and which I do not have to worry about - I am enough for him.

- He finished with a comment, that many minister's wives know and probably fear - "all minister's wives halve or double their husband's ministries". What I felt when I looked around at our little group was encouraged - all of these women enhance their husband's ministries - all in different ways - but they do all enhance them.


Talk 2 - Being a ministry wife

He had an interesting section on work vs. career vs. calling, with the following definitions:
- work - the job you do to get paid, so that you may live
- career - finding your satisfaction in your work, seeking your own development, which can be very self-focused
- calling - the thing you would do even if you were not paid to do it (this can include sportsmen (ie you would play golf even if no one paid you), artists, authors, musicians - money or advancement is not the motivation, but rather the joy of what you do.
- He made the point that those have jobs are often happy, those who have a calling are often very happy, and those who follow careers are often unhappy. It was an interesting point, which I think does contain some truth. If you look for your self worth from your job, no job is likely to ever be good enough for very long, however I wonder if the lines here are a bit too clearly drawn.

However, following from that, he asked - what then is your calling? He suggested that as a minister's wife we have two callings:
1. to be a wife (because we are married)
2. to be in ministry (because we are Christian) - I wonder then whether this definition of 2 callings may therefore apply to all Christian wives, not specifically minister's wives?

Another helpful point was that we are wives before we are minister's wives. We married a man, not a minister. If he was not a minister, we would still be his wife. Therefore, if you are a minister's wife, how do you describe yourself? "The Minister's wife" or "His name's wife"? I must say I don't tend to describe myself as the minister's wife, but I find it is helpful for people to understand how I fit into the picture at church pretty quickly, more to save them saying something they might regret, or making them feel embarrassed!

Then he had a few points about being the Minister's Helper. Here are some of them:

1. Do not complain about being in Christian ministry - for our lives are much easier. Our work is our church and our workplace is our home. We are not divided between his work, her work, home and church - other live in 2 or more worlds, we live in 1. And I know this to be true, I watch my friends, who struggle with his job taking long hours, her trying to run the home, and perhaps another job, and them also trying to be committed their church in their small amounts of available time - and I know that my life is easier.

2. Remember that we have more ability to exercise our gifts in ministry than almost any other woman in the congregation. It is a privileged position.

3. Related to that, is that we need to be thankful for the privilege of the position we hold. Our husbands are paid to read the bible, pray with others and preach the word. We are taken care of by others, and we must be teaching contentment to our children.

4. We need to work at being dignified. (1 Tim 3:11) - we must aim to be constant, reliable, honest, not slanderers and sober-minded. A high calling, but one that all Christians should be aiming for.

5. He also had some helpful guidelines for giving sermon feedback. As we discussed this amongst us, we realised again how different our husbands are and how they respond to feedback differently.

As you can probably tell from the amount of my notes, I really enjoyed this talk and it gave me lots to think about.

Talk 3 - How to discourage your husband in ministry

This humorous talk by Carmelina Read brilliantly captured some of the many things we all do as wives which discourage rather than encourage our husbands. I linked to the Briefing article above, and suggest you read it directly, although I actually think the talk was better. Obviously the things she was talking about especially near the end were deadly serious, and she dealt with them very well and sensitively.

***

Of course that is not all we did - we went for walks on the beach, ate lovely food, watched DVDs, quilted, made cards, chatted, shared, and avoided the mice that were sharing the house with us. And we even had facials on the way down there!


All in all, a time of great encouragement together. If you are a minister's wife and do not have such a support network - can I encourage you to find one? It is a great blessing to us all.

Dangerous Calling

Dangerous Calling, Paul David Tripp

This is a very powerful book that everyone in ministry should read.

Tripp has spent years talking to and counselling pastors and he is convinced there is a malaise that has taken over ministers of the gospel: that pastors are in great danger of both losing their awe of God and of thinking they have ‘arrived’ and are no longer in need of change.

Tripp is clear from the beginning this is a diagnostic book encouraging pastors to look honestly at their lives and hearts, and to hold them up against the gospel for Christ for analysis. He calls on pastors, and those around them, to try read it with an open heart and mind, to deactivate their ‘inner lawyer’ and to be willing to address things in their lives that need change.

Boy does he use a scalpel to dig deep! Tripp starts with pastoral culture and the risks it brings:

• Letting ministry define your identity
• Letting biblical literacy and theological knowledge define your maturity
• Confusing success with God’s endorsement of your lifestyle
• The regular disconnection between public and personal life
• The fact that in the ministry of the body of Christ, often the minister does not allow himself to be ‘ministered to’
• That there is always a battle going on between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of self (a key idea also in Tripp’s marriage book What did you expect?)

He has quite a challenge to those responsible for employing ministers that they must try to see their heart, what really matters to them, not their ‘on paper’ success. Rather, how they relate to their families, treat their wives and listen to rebuke. I imagine this would be a very hard thing to do well in an interview process.

Then he comes to the first of 2 key areas – the danger of losing your awe of God, in forgetting who God is. When this happens, various things can result:

• A familiarity with the word of God, to the extent they are no longer moved by it
• Living in fear of man, caring more about what others think than how to be godly
• A contentment with mediocrity. This was a very helpful, sad chapter about the way we accept mediocre sermon preparation. If you are still preparing a sermon on Saturday, there is no way you have worked out its truths in your life, so how can you properly apply it to the lives of your hearers?
• Losing your awe of God, results in you starting to think you are pretty good, and therefore leads to the second area – the danger of forgetting who you are.

The risks of thinking you have arrived are:

• Self-glory – promoting ourselves, not God
• Always preparing – personal time with God gets squeezed out and preparation time takes over. We no longer let the word of God shape us personally
• We risk separating our public life from our personal life – we don’t let people in, we find it hard to hear rebuke, etc

As you can probably imagine, it’s a pretty devastating critique. Yet I also think it’s very accurate. I saw his truths in myself, in our lives and have seen evidence of them in others.

For those who are willing to listen and learn, there would be great benefit. Not many people are willing to stand up to their pastor and challenge their godliness (and perhaps not everyone should); but every pastor should make sure they have people around them who are willing to do so. I would say the same for ministry-wives.

Tripp’s solution is that pastors much keep coming back to the gospel, dwelling on God’s majesty, their sinfulness and the grace of God in Christ. When we raise again the glory of God and decrease again our own important, we are willing to change. There were ideas throughout the book about a way forward, although really much of it was depressingly diagnostic. The final two chapters were a proposed way forward which were helpful. However to really get into this further and analyse one’s heart and motivations, I would switch over to Lane & Tripp’s book How People Change and do some serious work from that one!

Very worthwhile reading for all in ministry, and those who are responsible for them.

Running on Empty

Running on Empty, Barbara Bancroft

I was sent this book by New Growth Press, and very much enjoyed this one of their latest offerings.

Barbara Bancroft is a ministry wife in the US, who with her husband Josiah has been involved in parish ministry, church planting and mission work. So in writing this book for women in ministry, you know she understands the joys and challenges that face wives and women in a variety of ministry situations.

Subtitled The Gospel for Women in Ministry, Bancroft brings her reader back again and again to the gospel, emphasising that this good news is one we also need to hear repeatedly; and while we are often tempted to rely on our abilities (or despair at our lack of them), in fact we must keep relying on the work of Christ for us and the Spirit working in us.

She does not want us to shy away from the role or position we have, whether paid or alongside our husband, in fact alerting us to the reality that “those in ministry are in a unique position to deeply affect the life of the church” (p65), yet “being in ministry places us in a battle for our faith and faith of others... All who work in the church...live in harm’s way and feel the effects of the battle. The difficulties of ministry are real and many have fallen. We all know stories of adultery and secret sins, children who have left the faith, and burn-out, just to name a few.” (p58)

I found myself resonating with many issues Bancroft raised. In truth many of them would be relevant to all Christians and to Christian women generally, but they do hold a power over many women in ministry.  Some of the issues she dealt with in detail were:

• How women in ministry and ministry wives are viewed differently from the rest of the congregation. This includes people’s expectations and stereotypes, and expectations you place on yourself. This also affects friendships and how honest you can be with people about your own life and various situations.
• Some of the unique dynamics missionaries face, including raising support and people’s view that you are somehow spiritually superior
• The ways our culture affects us and our ministry, and the need to be able to see the culture we are in and be able to critique it.
• The trap of feeling entitled to more or envious of those around us - be it money, skills, support, or appreciation.

Yet amongst all these issues, which are very real, Bancroft keeps bringing us back to the cross and the message of the gospel. We are reminded of our very real sin, our great need for a Saviour, the need to forgive for we have been forgiven and the joy it is to serve our Lord.

I wrote many notes on each chapter and could easily have given you a whole list of great quotes. I found myself often smiling in wry acknowledgement and nodding in agreement as I read along. It should be noted that it is written with a strong North American emphasis, but mostly can be easily converted to our Australian situation. She also assumes a complementarian view of ministry and I loved how she addressed even some issues women can face here: “In the church, humbling ourselves under the leadership of men may be one of the hardest things women do, particularly if we are competent leaders ourselves.” (p108)

Bancroft has also structured each chapter very helpfully. She sets up the issues, clearly identifying it and how we find ourselves in it, then asks some diagnostic questions for our own personal assessment and honesty; then she delves into a bible passage to help re-orient our thinking. I felt many issues were dealt with well and at length and not just glossed over.

In the end, the overwhelming positive emphasis of this book is that she keeps bringing women back to the gospel, encouraging heart change, confession and a desire to let Christ do his good work in us through the Spirit.

A very helpful book.

Book Review: I'm More than the Pastor's Wife

Book Review: I'm more than the Pastor's Wife: Authentic Living in a Fishbowl World, Lorna Dobson

I picked up this book off a friend's shelf, intrigued by the title - I am a minister's wife, after all. (I still don't like the word pastor - no good reason though!)

It was good, and I will outline some reasons why in a bit.

However, it helped me to realise a number of things (most of which I already knew!)

• I see myself more as Husband's wife, not the minister's wife. He is certainly the minister, but that does not define entirely who I am. [I'm sure part of that is because I do not attend the congregations that are his main responsibility, for 'stage of life' reasons]

• Having said that, I am very happy to be the minister's wife. Both of us feel that being in ministry is an enormous privilege. We are invited to be a part of people's lives. We share people's joys, we talk, cry and pray with people in pain and strife, we help couples to prepare for marriage, Husband marries them and he baptises their children - we share in the ups and downs of people's lives. It is understood, and expected, that we would read the bible and pray with people. What a privilege!

• We are truly blessed to be in the church that we are in. Husband serves at a church that values and cares for its ministers. Husband is supported and encouraged, we are provided with a wonderful home and there are many, many people who truly care about us and our children.

I guess, having said that, you may see why I don't feel I got a great deal from this book - not because it did not have much to offer, rather that I am just very content at the moment as 'the minister's wife'.

Some of the helpful points Dobson makes are:

• The reminder that "As pastor's wives, what we need to realise is that our struggle for normalcy and balance is no more difficult than that of others." (p40). This is very true, our lives are not more complicated than others. In fact, I find that the benefits of my husband being in ministry far outweigh any negatives at the moment. Our circumstances I'm sure are different to some others, but Husband is able to be flexible with his time, helping to pickup or dropoff at school and he can be around for dinner/bath/bed times most evenings. He can have his day off on a weekday which enables the two of us to have a day together, child-free. This is much more flexibility than a number of my friends whose husbands work professional jobs in the city, who work long hours with little support from bosses when it comes to family issues. I sometimes think we ministry wives don't realise quite how good we have it.

• The importance of support networks of other ministry wives'. I am convinced this is a very important means of support. We are in a church where all of the 'preacher's wives' (9 and growing), meet together fortnightly to pray for one-another as well as going away together once a year for a few nights. This has been a wonderful group and a great support, and true friendships have grown from it. We all make it a priority to attend. Over the years I have also caught up with other smaller groups of minister's wives from other churches. I have particularly valued the time with women who are at stages of life ahead of mine - seeing how they manage the early school years, the teenagers and the children growing into adults. Those of us 'young ones' think they should pool resources and write a book to guide us later! Dobson did not really go into how these types of groups could also help with accountability, but they certainly can. As we are all 'on the same level', we can ask each other how our personal relationship with God is going and be honest about our struggles. My guess is the average parishioner is unlikely to ask the minister or his wife if they are reading their bibles and turning to God in prayer.

• I won't go into detail but she covers a wide number of areas: our identity, marriage, priority, relationship with God, balancing friendships, managing criticism, feelings of loneliness and boundaries. She had helpful things to say in all of these areas. Some things she covered were not relevant to me personally: we do not deal with a church board and Husband does not have a personal secretary who manages his diary.  Husband is not a senior minister either, so he does not have Parish Council Meetings or anything like that, and those things which he does have are supportive rather than not - however her advice on some of these areas would be helpful for those whom it is relevant.

My only real quibble with the book was that it seemed to skim the surface a bit, I would have liked to read more in depth about many of the issues she covered. Also, it was not as logically ordered as would have suited my brain, so I felt the chapters did not fit together well - but that is my problem!

So, all in all, a helpful resource.

Can anyone recommend other good books on this topic?