WATCH DRURY WRITE A BOOK. – THIS IS A TEMPORARY POST Writer’s first draft of a book to be
published by The Wesleyan
Publishing House. as an introduction
to the ministry. This web-posted copy is
an early draft of the manuscript and not intended to be used as a final
document. While the editors will catch minor errors if you see something significantly
wrong or missing drop Keith Drury a note at kdrury@indwes.edu
©
2003 Keith Drury
12
Dating and Marriage
How should my call to the
ministry affect dating marriage? Does it
limit who I can “get serious with?” Can
I date or marry anyone I’m attracted to and work out career details later? Can
I be single in ministry just as easily as be married? What if I marry a person
who is open to my calling then they change their mind after we’re married? What
happens when both of us are called, one to African missions and the other to
inner city ministry? Which should we do?
Does my marriage trump a ministry call or does a call to the ministry trump my
marriage choices?
If
you plan to be a married minister, this chapter is very important to you. Why?
Go ask an old minister for their wisdom on ministerial marriage. Get their advice. What will they say? They will all agree. They’ll say something like this: “Your marriage will influence your
ministry—it will either double your effectiveness… or cut it in half.” Thus, in hope of doubling your effectiveness,
this chapter will give some help in recognizing whom to marry and date. It won’t be as helpful as talking to older
pastors, but reading this chapter will get you thinking about the subject until
you interview an older minister.
Marriage
A
call to the ministry stipulates the sort of life you will live. While there is great variety in the way
called people spend their lives, and there are always exceptions, if you are
called to lifetime ministry you will most likely share a common lifestyle with
others who have taken this path before.
Here are several descriptions of a minister’s lifestyle which are
relevant to marriage.
Ministers move around.
While
some ministers get to stay in one city for a decade or longer, most ministers
move 8-10 times (sometimes more) during their life’s ministry. A minister shares this characteristic with
those in a military career—both move from time to time as they are “stationed”
for the sake of their service, not their personal preference. Ministers move. It is a rare minister who spends a whole
life’s ministry in one town or church.
Some people can’t live such a migratory lifestyle. They want to get married and “settle down”
for the rest of their life, perhaps even in their home state or near their
parents and relatives. Or, sometimes a
person your are considering has a “non-portable career” – that is, they
couldn’t move very easily—say, they plan to own a local business. While it is possible to run a local business
and be married to a minister, the spouse in this case should know that living
in that town is most likely temporary.
In a sense, “all ministers are itinerant.” They move around. Usually people who want to stay in one town
for all their lives do not marry a minister.
And ministers don’t marry them.
Ministers are public figures.
Ministers’
families are in the public eye. A minister’s
family life is not a totally private matter.
A minister shares this characteristic with those in a political career,
Ministers work long hours.
A
minister has a wonderfully fulfilling life, but it is not done in a 40-hour
work week. Most ministers work about
50-55 hours a week (some more) and they are "on call” most of the rest of
the time. A minister shares this
characteristic with other professionals including physicians and business
executives. A minister’s work is never
done. There is no time clock for a
minister. In one sense, a minister never
completely "punches out."
Most ministers are on call 24-7.
If a daughter of someone in your church has a serious auto accident and
is rushed to the hospital, they'll call you, and you will immediately go to the
hospital. If a key member of your church
passes away while you are on vacation, guess what? You’ll probably be cutting your vacation
short to perform the funeral. In a
larger church, the ministerial staff might do “rotations” passing around a
beeper and taking turns doing these emergency calls but even then there are
some things you’ll just have to do.
Either way, a minister (like a doctor) is “on call” much of the time
along with his or her regular 50-hour work week. Your potential spouse might not be able to
handle this idea.
A
potential spouse might imagine marriage together with every evening off to go
on picnics or watch TV together. Most
ministers do usually have two evenings a week with their family, but they spend
the other four or five evenings a week in church work. After all, that’s when the laity are “off
work” and available for meetings, counseling, church services, youth meetings,
and other activities. A husband or wife
of a minister has to share their spouse during the evenings. This does not mean that ministers are
automatically poor mothers or fathers, it just means they have to work harder
at protecting the family nights they schedule to be great occasions. A person who expects their spouse to work
only a forty-hour week and be home every evening usually does not marry a
minister. And ministers don’t usually
marry them either.
Ministers sometimes live in
a parsonage.
Since
ministers move from time to time, some churches give the minister a
church-owned house—a “parsonage” or “manse” to live in so they don’t have to
keep buying and selling houses in each city they live in. This is similar to military personnel who
often live in "base housing."
Churches often build large parsonages, since they can't foresee how many
kids their future pastors might have.
Thus, a pastor in a parsonage might live in a larger house than they
would if they received a “housing allowance” and bought their own house. However, other churches have a ‘leftover
house” from many years ago they call their parsonage and the minister will have
to live in a house far under the standards of many of their member’s
homes. The trend in housing for
ministers is to give them a housing allowance and let them rent or purchase
their own house. However, the majority
of churches, particularly average churches still provide a parsonage. Some potential spouses insist on having their
own homes. They say, “I could never live
in a house we didn’t own ourselves.” Or
they have high standards on the exact kind of house they intend to live
in. The lifestyle of a minister would be
hard for such people. Usually they don’t
marry someone going into ministry.
So who marries
ministers?
Besides
the few lifestyle issues above, most of the lifestyle of a minister is so
positive for marriage and child-rearing that there are still plenty of
“candidates” left to marry. Who do
ministers marry? They marry a person who
loves them and loves other people. They
marry someone who likes being with people.
They marry a person who likes to help people. They often marry a person who loves the
church and the ministry and sometimes they marry another minister so that they
can both minister together at the same church.
Most of all, ministers marry someone adaptable and flexible—someone who
can “roll with the punches” and adjust to new situations. Rigid inflexible people seldom marry
ministers. And, ministers seldom marry
them.
Dating
So
can a person called into the ministry date anyone they want? Sure, but most
ministers would warn you against getting serious with someone totally
incompatible with a ministry lifestyle. But how would you know this without spending
time with them? Spending time together,
hanging out, “just being friends” and dating can help you find out what sort of
"lifestyle non-negotiables” the other person has. If you discover they are incompatible with a
ministry lifestyle you’ll want to let that relationship cool.
Then
again, people change. It always causes
older professors and ministers to chuckle when they hear 20-year-olds ticking
off a long list of non-negotiables they insist upon from their future
spouse. Older folk know you seldom “get
your whole wish list.” What really
happens to most people is they fall in love and with their head swimming they
think they've found “everything they ever wanted.” Love is blind—or least has serious visual impairment.
The person in love tends to find the things they were looking for. Love exaggerates. But 20-year-olds don’t always know what they
are going to be or what they'll value when they will be 30. Sometimes the very opinions they hold so
strongly at 20 evaporate and they take the opposite position five years
later. What does all this mean for
dating and marriage? It means that a
20-year-old who always wanted to live their life in
This
is not to say such matters can be dismissed casually. The ministry lifestyle is not very
negotiable. It is not easy for a
minister to try to be a broker between spouse and church, often feeling like
the rope in a tug of war. Every minister
feels this way already. If the
minister’s spouse isn’t on board with a ministry lifestyle, extraordinary
stress comes to the family. So, while
people change, these issues are worthy of discussion. If you have a
relationship that's getting serious you ought to have some chats about the
elements of a “ministry lifestyle.” A
man or women who marries a minister marries the ministry too. It's like being the President’s spouse. The spouse of the President gets more than a
chance to live in the White House—they marry both a person and the job and become
a public figure for the nation. Like the
President's spouse, a person interested in marrying a minister needs to put
some serious thought into the cost—no person should sit down to build a
building without first "counting the cost." If you are getting serious with someone and have
not had this chat, start by giving them this chapter to read. It could guide your discussion.
The
life of a minister’s family can be extraordinarily meaningful and positive.
Minister’s homes produce dozens of times more future ministers than lay
homes. It's a great way to spend your
life. But if a person cannot accept the
lifestyle, then such a relationship should die out—even if you are in
love. Once you are married, your spouse
could force you to leave the ministry. Before
you are married, you still have a choice.
Marriage and Calling
So
what happens if you get married, are ordained and one day your spouse
announces, “I’m finished. I refuse to be
in a ministry situation any more. Either
leave the ministry or I’m leaving you!”
What will you do then?
While
such a situation seldom happens, it has occurred. Many ministers can tell you such a story
about some fellow minister they’ve met through the years. It’s a tricky situation. Do you let your call
trump your vow in marriage? Or do you
leave the ministry to keep the marriage afloat?
Which vow takes preeminence?
There
are obviously two answers to this situation.
If you ever face it, get wise counsel for neither choice is a pleasant
one. This book is not written to people in such situations. The reason it is raised here is to remind you that dating and
selection of a spouse is a significant decision in your ministry. Your decision now on who to marry could bring
this more painful one later—a hard decision you hope to never face. Choose carefully a person with the “gifts and
graces” to serve at your side. If you
can find a spouse who is also called to the ministry so much the better! But even if you don’t, at least find someone
who loves God’s church, loves people, and is not rigid and inflexible. Then ask God to bless your marriage to each
other. For marriage is a “means of
grace” designed by God to make you both more holy. Then
ask God to bless your marriage to the church, so that (even if you have no
children of your own) your marriage will “be fruitful and multiply” among the people
at the church where you serve.
Singleness in the ministry
Because
we have dealt with dating and marriage, you might get the idea that a single
person can’t be an effective minister.
That is not true. Indeed, if you
follow the logic of the Apostle Paul, a single person can be more effective. They are able to give undivided attention to
church work. That is not to say that
single people should work longer hours in the ministry than married folk
(though they usually do). If you’d like
to be married but just have not found a match yet, who knows, in time you may
find the perfect match. If you are
single and never intend to marry, however, so much the better—you can more
easily give your full devotion to Christ’s church and His work as your passion of
life. A single person is not a
half-person. Indeed, if there are any
half-people around they are all married…for in marriage, “the two become one.” (However, see the chapter on women in
ministry to be alerted to some of the difficulties a single male can face in
getting a job.)
Are
you hoping to be a married minister?
Seek a spouse, but seek wisely.
Don’t go overboard with such high standards of perfection that you never
find a mate, and don’t sell away your calling for a pot of love-soup with a mate
incompatible with the lifestyle of the ministry. your marriage can double or halve your
ministry effectiveness—chose wisely.
Follow up study
and application
To Share:
1. Of the
descriptions of the "ministry lifestyle" which one do you think may
be the hardest for you as a prospective minister, let alone your possible
husband or wife?
2. Tell about
several characteristics or traditions of your own home life that would be good
characteristics for you to emulate in a minister's home.
To Discuss:
3. What are the
comparative advantages and disadvantages of a "shopping list" of
characteristics you want in a spouse?
Are such lists a good thing or not?
Do you have one—written or unwritten?
What is one thing on that list?
What is one of your present “non-negotiables”
4. What do you now think of
the situation mentioned in this chapter where the spouse refused to any longer
stay married to the minister if they wouldn't leave the ministry. What would you do—leave the ministry or let
the spouse leave? Why? what Scriptures would guide your decision?
To Do:
5. Whatever you think of a "shopping list" of
characteristics desired in a spouse, use this chapter and your own experience
to make a general list of the ten important things that ought to be on such a
list for someone entering the ministry?
6. Interview an older minister and spouse who has raised a family
in the ministry for their stories and advice on marriage and family matters in
the ministry.