I
had just been hired for an associate staff position. Another associate position
on the same church staff was open. I casually inquired if Amy, my wife, might
be a potential candidate for the position. The Pastor was cordial but firm: “It
is our practice to never hire a married couple for our staff. We did that once,
and it just does not work out.”
Less
than five years later I find myself sharing not just a position on the same
staff, but sharing a pastorate with Amy, and I now know from experience
what our hearts, minds and souls told us for so many years, that Shared
Pastoral Ministry does “work out.” A decade ago, Alvin Toffler
prophecied a change in the business climate of the West. “We can expect to see
couples hired by companies – as couples. Before long we will no doubt see a
wife-husband team placed in charge of a profit center and permitted – in fact,
encouraged – to run it like a family business” (Power Shift, p.184).
Toffler
writes about a needed change in corporate mentality, from a bureaucratic and
hierarchical leadership model, to one that is more flexible, leaving room for a
variety of leadership styles even within the same organization. Shared Pastoral
Ministry offers the church-as-business an opportunity to capitalize on
Toffler’s insights. Shared Pastoral Ministry offers the Church as the body of
Christ leadership that models the interdependence, respect, and mutuality that
such a metaphor deserves.
It
seems that Toffler’s prophetic insight was right on target. In November, the
Charlotte Observer’s “BusinessMonday” paper featured a number of Charlotte
couples who share the leadership of their businesses. John and Lee Tabor own US
Mortgage Group Inc., and enjoy the benefits of working together. Lee said in
the interview “Most couples are separated from their spouse 70 percent of the
time and they’re happy. It sounds kind of goobery, but we have the kind of
relationship where it doesn’t matter if we’re spending 24 hours together.” In
the business world, couples are recognizing what Toffler notes, that “a
high-powered husband-wife team can be a formidable political force in the firm” -- and enjoy their marriages while working
together.
In
an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (December 8, 2000),
Alison Schneider features a number of couples sharing tenure-track positions in
the university setting. After working closely for many years, John B. Willett
and Judith D. Singer agreed to share the academic deanship of Harvard’s
Graduate School of Education. They view themselves as “professional spouses”
(they are married to other people). They share an office with face-to-face
desks, a conference room, even a filing cabinet. They each copy the other on
all e-mails and sign their memo’s “J2” (that’s J-squared in case
your e-mail dropped the superscript). Schneider’s research reveals a trend
which seems to be increasing in acceptance in the academic community. W.T.
Pfefferle, who is the director of expository writing at Johns Hopkins
University apparently expresses the sentiment of many university
administrators: “If I have three vitae in front of me, and I knew I could lock
in two for the price of one, I’d be tempted to lock in the academic couple.”
But Pfefferle admits the “two for one” temptation comes packed with a
“tremendous potential for abuse.”
Slowly,
even the Church is catching on. A growing number of couples are being allowed
the opportunity to share ministry appointments. Banu and James Moore serve a
Presbyterian church in New York. Several months back, in an e-mail, she wrote,
“I think this will be the century of the married clergy.” My e-mail list
of couples now includes 32 couples from across the country (New York to Florida
to California) and from seven different denominations. Shared Pastoral Ministry
recognizes the importance of mutuality and equality; it also values the family
unit, and seeks to take seriously the need of pastors to be fathers and mothers
to their own children, as well as to their congregation. Syed Mumtaz Saeed is a
management expert from Pakistan quoted by Toffler: “The dehumanization of the
industrial era in the West has been a consequence of the relegation of the
family to a purely social and non-economic role. Thus, the manager and the
worker of the modern age are torn between the work-place and the home in a
physical sense, and between the family and the organization in an emotional
sense… this conflict is central to the problems of motivation, morale and
productivity in modern Western societies” (Toffler, p.185). Shared Pastoral
Ministry by no means eliminates family needs or crises, in fact there are
particular challenges due to this form of ministry, but it offers to the clergy
couple the opportunity to practice their calling in a setting which also allows
them to value family, and to use their own lives as models for their
congregation.
Russ
Dean