Rebecca Davis
AFA Journal staff writer
March 2017 – “She’s a real person. … She’s tempted; she struggles; she falls; she fails. She is a sinner saved by grace like everyone else and a work in progress,” said blogger Jen Thorn.
Who is she? She’s the pastor’s wife, and contrary to popular expectation, she’s neither perfect nor does she have it all together. She needs the body of Christ to love her and encourage her and come alongside her as she fulfills her calling.
The purpose
In March 2015, Crossway launched a 31-day online campaign to encourage and honor ministry wives for their service to the church. While there is nothing official that sets aside March as an annual time to honor ministry wives, Crossway offers a wealth of information to help you bless your pastor’s wife this month or any time of the year. (See below.)
The website contains practical ideas, means of encouragement, video interviews, and relevant articles about daily life from ministers’ wives and women in ministry including Lisa Chan, Lauren Chandler, Elyse Fitzpatrick, Nancy Guthrie, Heather Platt, and Jen Wilkin. The information is helpful to ministry wives as well as to anyone who wants to love on the pastor’s wife in tangible ways.
The position
“Pastors’ wives are in a unique position. Being married to a man in ministry is simultaneously a challenge and a privilege,” according to author Gloria Furman. (See below.)
“Across the globe, pastors’ wives have to juggle various responsibilities and handle different expectations,” Furman said. It is important to “encourage and strengthen the faith of our sisters in Christ.”
Noel Piper, wife of theologian John Piper, says a pastor’s wife’s “[p]resence and support and availability is an intangible but vital ministry to … [her] husband, and therefore to … [her] church as well.”
AFA encourages local churches to make an intentional effort to invest in the lives of ministry wives on a regular basis.
“After pastoring for 37 years, I realized that to be an effective pastor, my own spiritual, family, and moral life had to be strong,” said Rev. Bert Harper, director of AFA’s Repairing the Foundations (repairingthefoundations.net), a ministry designed to bless the local pastor and his family. “What better way to strengthen the pastor than by pouring into the one who pours into him – his wife. She needs to be encouraged and loved as much as he does.” 
Resources
crossway.org/PastorsWifeAppreciation
The Pastor’s Wife: Strengthened by Grace for a Life of Love By Gloria Furman
crossway.org or 630-682-4300
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Remember their labor of love and endurance
I first felt the calling on my life to be a minister’s wife while I was in college. Nine years later, I married a youth minister who is now a pastor. So I am a pastor’s wife of two years; new to the role, I consider it an honor, a responsibility, and a challenge for which I am grateful. Based on being loved well by our own church family, my husband and I came up with the following ways to bless a pastor and his wife on a regular basis.
▶ Recognize and respect that the main role of the pastor’s wife is to love, encourage, and support her husband.
▶ Ask the pastor’s wife what responsibility has been unnecessarily put on her at church and relieve her of it.
▶ Provide couples with young children trusted childcare on a routine basis so they can spend time together.
▶ Recognize difficult seasons and long days in ministry, and respond in practical ways such as providing a meal or cleaning their house.
▶ Ask and identify the pastor’s family’s greatest burden and help alleviate it.
▶ Respect the pastor and his wife during worship by allowing them to worship as a family without distractions.
Rebecca Davis
