A Family Affair: Sharing a Pastorate
Who said spouses
can’t work together?
Kim Egolf-Fox
This article was
originally printed in “The Christian Ministry,” January 1986.
The first sermon my wife and I preached as co-pastors was titled “Share the Vision! Create the Reality!” The vision of a shared pastorate had lived in our lives for six years before it became a reality. Those years saw major changes in our lives. Unchanging, however, was our dream of sharing a local church pastorate.
The pastorate of Protestant churches has in a sense always been shared. The traditional pastor has been a married male, and most male pastors and their wives would say that they have worked as a team. The husband conducts worship and marries and buries parishioners, while the wife ministers in the role of “the pastor’s wife.” That such a role even exists is evidence that the church’s expectations require a pastor to have the family’s support in order to be effective. By filling the role, pastor’s wives have shown their willingness to be active in a shared ministry.
However, the shared ministry that my wife, Brenda, and I envisioned did not fit the traditional model. We felt called by God to be co-pastors of a local church. The co-pastoral model required us each to complete three years of seminary training, plus meet our denomination’s requirements for ordination. We also each conducted ministries in separate churches before attempting to co-pastor in the same congregation.
The vision that we pursued, and the reality that we now experience, is a pastorate that offers advantages both to our congregation and ourselves. By sharing one job, with each of us working half time, we can share equally in home and parenting responsibilities, which are important parts of our marriage. We are more able to pursue hobbies and non-work related interests than when we each worked full time. This freedom helps keep us fresh in both our marriage and our ministry.
We also have the advantage of considering personal preferences and interests in deciding who does what aspects of the job. We maximize our strengths by focusing our individual time and talents in areas of ministry where we are most proficient. With a rich musical background, Brenda is an appreciated addition to our church’s music ministry. My experience as a minister of Christian education for five and a half years before becoming co-pastor benefits our ministries of education. Such picking and choosing of responsibilities is a luxury few pastors enjoy.
With two pastors rather than one, which would be the usual case at a church the size of ours (with few more than 200 members), members have the advantage of choosing which of us they feel more comfortable with in sharing the more intimate and pressing needs of their lives. Thus, between the two of us, we have the possibility of relating to more individuals than either of us could by ourselves, simply because of the range of people’s personal preferences. A more unique advantage we have as co-pastors is our ability to preach an occasional dialogue sermon, providing the effect of “overhearing the gospel” of which Fred Craddock speaks.
Our congregation can also have a pastor in two different places at the same time. For example, when two of the church’s junior high girls graduated on the same night as the senior high commencement, Brenda attended one ceremony while I attended the other. And it sometimes takes the two of us simply to guarantee that at least one of us will be at the right place at the right time. Furthermore, when one of us is sick, the other usually can cover.
There are, however, occasions when co-pastoring has its disadvantages. One of the most important worship services in the life of our congregation had been delayed a week because both Brenda and I were sick. Thirty-six hours before we were to baptize 12 youths, Brenda came down with debilitating flu, and 12 hours later I had it. Our congregation had to face squarely one of the disadvantages of having its pastors married to each other.
Co-pastors can also lose their effectiveness when they do not share information well. Because we’re sharing the role of pastor, our need to share information is greater that if, for example, Brenda were pastor and I were associated pastor. The effectiveness of a person who is in sole possession of the pastoral role does not depend on sharing all the contacts he or she has made in a day with anyone, save God. But as co-pastor, we daily need to ask each other the following questions: With whom did you talk today? About what did you talk? What information should I know? Who should be contacted next? We’ve experienced that our effectiveness as pastors fluctuates in direct proportion to our willingness to perform this ritual each day.
By the last month of our first year as co-pastors, we began to experience the well-documented problem of clergy burnout. Clergy burnout is certainly not unique to clergy couples, but the potential for it increases. In our case, we seemed to be always talking about work when and where we weren’t supposed to be working. And we each worked more than our scheduled amount of time. Personal and family needs were left unmet in our zeal to have a successful start to our pastorate.
After three weeks of vacation and a week-long stay at our denomination’s national assembly ground attending conferences, we felt like pastors again – re-commissioned by God to serve our congregation. During our time away, we decided to change our work schedule and the way we structured some of our responsibilities.
Brenda and I now distinguish three types of responsibilities – shared, alternated and divided. Shared responsibilities are ones in which we are both involved simultaneously. We both share leading worship each Sunday, and we both plan for and attend the meetings of the church’s main governing board. The leadership of youth ministry is sometimes shared, as is the preaching when we do a dialogue sermon. Alternated responsibilities are those tasks that we both perform, but at different times. We alternate preaching, sometimes weekly, though more often we each preach for two to four weeks. We also alternate worship preparation. Although we share evening home visits, we alternate visits to homebound parishioners, the hospital and nursing homes. Divided responsibilities, of course, are those that we perform independently. Brenda works with the mission and deacons committees and supervises their separate ministries. I oversee the trustees committee and the Christian education committee. Stewardship committee work is my responsibility and music concerns are part of Brenda’s duties. From time to time we make adjustments, frequently reducing the number of shared tasks and clarifying which one of us is responsible for which alternating responsibilities.
Keeping our sanity as persons and as pastors is a goal we share with other clergy. And, in part, we approach that task as other professional church leaders do. We actively participate in a clergy support group. However, in our group, we are the only ones who are married to another clergyperson, and we are the only pastors sharing one job. These differences are enough to cause us to want to consult periodically with other clergy couples. In our particular case, however, and in the cases of many clergy couples, that sharing with “those who know our experience” has not happened nearly as often as would be beneficial.
Intentionality, information and inspiration are needed to keep clergy couples together in their marriages and in ministry. With support, clergy couples will be able to survive their difficulties and realize their special visions of ministry.
Only once has there been a national ecumenical gathering of clergy couples. In 1978, the professional church leadership division of the National Council of churches of Christ sponsored a four-day ecumenical clergy couples consultation to share ideas, concerns and recommendations about the needs and ministries of clergy couples. Among the 113 clergy couples from 12 different denominations gathered in Mason, Ohio, several different patterns of ministry and/or employment were represented, from co-ministry to separate ministries to secular employment to unemployment.
The event was, in the words of one participant, “a long-held dream finally come true.” It engendered a sense of empowerment, legitimation and community. Yet no subsequent gatherings have taken place.
Clergy couples interested in a possible second ecumenical clergy couples consultation can indicate their interest by contacting Dr. James Gunn, Division of Education and Ministry, National Council of Churches, 475 Riverside Drive, Room 770, New York, N.Y. 10115.