Three Easy Ways to Support Your Pastor’s Wife ~ A Guest Post By Karen Stiller

I recently had the pleasure of reading Karen Stiller’s brand new memoir in essays, The Minister’s Wife, which officially releases on May 5th. I loved this book and look forward to having Karen on the podcast soon to discuss it! In the meantime, I’m delighted to present to you these words from her on the important topic of supporting our pastor’s wife. I hope you walk away inspired!

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It was an offer that was difficult to refuse. A lovely woman in our church approached me one Sunday and told me she would like to form a small group of women from our church who would commit to praying for me—the senior pastor’s wife—and my needs and requests.

I thanked her, of course, and then I asked if I could think about it and get back to her. A few days later, I politely declined. I wondered whether I was the first pastor’s wife in the history of Christendom to refuse an offer of organized prayer at my behest.

Even if that was true, though, I decided it was still okay to decline. In fact, it was the best decision for me.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want prayer—everyone needs prayer!—but the organized part felt like pressure. I knew myself well enough to know that I would want to please the group and make them feel useful and valued by providing a steady stream of weekly prayer requests. I’d worry about whether I was asking for enough prayer or too much prayer or the right kind of prayer. What if I became a needy nuisance? What if they found my requests silly or insubstantial or, even worse, scintillating?

Here’s the thing: You should pray for your pastor’s wife—in fact, please do, but do it without even being asked. We need your prayers. And another pastor’s wife might love and use well a group of women praying for only her, but what works for one of us won’t work for all of us. There’s not a pastor’s wife factory in Ohio, churning us out one by one with identical insides.

We are all different.

This might make it more confusing, at first, to figure out how to best support your pastor’s wife. But that problem is easily solved with the first tip, which may even be the easiest.

3 Tips for Supporting Your Unique Pastor’s Wife

Get to know your pastor’s wife. Ask her questions. Even if she’s a great listener, offer her an opportunity to speak and share her own stories, her family history, her likes and dislikes, the shows she enjoys, and the books she reads. Show a genuine interest in her life and interests outside of Sunday morning, just like you would anyone else. Don’t tie her to a chair and interrogate her, of course, but invite her gently into a relationship, like you would any acquaintance. Pastors’ wives do a lot of listening—and we want to—but true community is built on relationship and reciprocity. Give your pastor’s wife a chance to tell her stories, too, and you will naturally discover the best way to support her. Is she a book lover? A gardener? A musician? A writer and a poet? An artist or a scientist? All you learn will help you support her well.

Be kind to her husband and her children. It’s an odd thing to visit your husband’s workplace on a weekly basis, watch him work, probably pitch in and help, then watch other people watch him work (while they also watch your children watching their father), and then field their comments about his work during coffee hour. Church is so much more than a workplace, of course, but it is still a place where some vocations are lived out. Sermons are preached—and no, they aren’t always great—and sometimes unpleasant things happen. There can be discord. But when we treat each other gently and with love, it will all go so much better for all of us. Be kind as much as you can, whenever you can.

Be a good church member. A healthy church is a happy church, and a happy church usually has a happy minister’s wife. We all want our churches to flourish, and you have a big role to play. Are there jobs that need to be done that you can help with? Step up. Is there a bigger role for you to play in the life of your church? Fill it. Are there people you’ve been wanting to invite to church but haven’t? Ask them. The health and wellness of our churches do not rest only on the shoulders of our clergy, no matter how gifted and wonderful they are. People in the pews are not consumers of church, there to just receive, but are members of church, there to also give. When all church members are engaged and active, our clergy (and their spouses) are freed to use their very best gifts to serve God and the mission of his church in the very best way.

There are hundreds of ways to support your pastor’s wife. As you get to know her for the wonderful, unique woman she is, you will certainly find at least a few of them. And as your church grows into the healthy community Jesus wants it to be, we will all support each other more. And your pastor’s wife? She will feel as loved and supported as anyone.

About the Author

Karen Stiller is a writer with more than twenty years of experience. She serves as a senior editor of the Canadian magazine Faith Today and as a journalist who has shared stories from refugee camps in South Sudan and Uganda, the slums of Senegal, and the countryside of Cambodia. Her work has appeared in Reader’s Digest and The Walrus, among other publications. She moderates the Religion and Society Series at the University of Toronto, a debate between leading atheists and theologians. Karen holds a master of fine arts in creative non-fiction from University of King’s College, Halifax. She lives in Ottawa, Canada.