This past Sunday marked the fourteenth anniversary of my first sermon as pastor of Pray’s Mill Baptist Church. The call to return to my hometown and my home church has proven to be one of God’s kind providences for our family. These years have been marked by both painful labor and joyful delight.
Anniversaries serve as a good opportunity to chart out progress and plan for the future. In this brief article, I would like to reflect on one lesson I’ve learned during these years of ministry that I truly believe would make a difference in younger pastors as they get started in ministry.
Healthy Marriage Matters in Ministry
Far too often pastors gather around tables to discuss doctrine, ministry philosophy, and missions. During these gatherings, pastors enjoy spirited conversations over areas such as biblical ecclesiology, expository preaching, biblical missions, biblical counseling, and church discipline. One area of focus that often falls through the cracks in conversations among pastors is the importance of the pastor’s marriage. In a general sense, marriage is often a focus among pastors in the church, but a focus on the marriage of the elders who lead the church can be a neglected subject. The marriage of the pastor matters greatly in the life of the church. John MacArthur writes:
God’s way to a successful marriage focuses on what husbands and wives put into it, not on what they can get out of it.1John MacArthur, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary, Ephesians, Moody, 1986, p. 293.
It has been said that behind every successful pastor there’s a faithful wife who is loving, helping, nurturing, praying, and serving alongside him for the glory of God. We must not minimize the fact that healthy marriages among the elders will have an dramatic impact upon the entire church. It’s highly unlikely that a pastor will lead the church faithfully, efficiently, and successfully when he is in an unhealthy marriage.
It’s highly unlikely that a pastor will lead the church faithfully, efficiently, and successfully when he is in an unhealthy marriage.
It is God’s will for pastors to model biblical marriage for the entire church family. This is good for all age groups in the church to see, and it’s extremely formative for the younger couples as they begin their marriages. Unhealthy marriages lead to unhealthy families which ultimate results in an unhealthy church.
Dear Pastor, Don’t Neglect Your Marriage for the Sake of Ministry
Today I’m currently on an anniversary trip with my wife although our anniversary isn’t until October (I wrote this article before we left town). Due to the heavy ministry commitments this October, we determined to celebrate our anniversary in August this year. A few years ago, we established a goal to getaway together for focused time about every two years where we relax, laugh, talk, and enjoy time without the incessant demands of life and ministry.
This has not always been our approach. After time of reflection through the years, we determined to make some changes. In the first eight years of ministry, I rarely took time away and accumulated hundreds of vacation hours because I wanted to keep focused on the church and ministry responsibilities. I believe that one of my weaknesses in pastoral ministry is constantly working and laboring without planned downtime. In the fourteen years of pastoral ministry at Pray’s Mill Baptist Church, I have been discussing the goals of a sabbatical with the elders, but we haven’t arrived at that point to date. Needless to say, I love to work and I never battle with burnout syndrome that plagues many pastors. However, over time as I’ve matured in my role as pastor, I’ve come to learn that it’s easy to neglect marriage in pursuit of serving God in ministry.
While reading R.C. Sproul’s book, The Intimate Marriage, I was impacted by something he wrote as he discussed how he and Vesta Sproul would save money and take a trip every year together. They called it their “honeymoon.” When my wife and I read that, it impacted the way we thought about the need to invest earlier rather than later in our marriage. Such an intentional approach not only honors my wife, but it honors the Lord too as I seek to put emphasis on what is temporal, good, and has become a true blessing in my life—biblical marriage. Charles Spurgeon once said the following:
How shall we call that a marriage where the husband and wife are still two persons, maintaining individuality as if it were a scrupulous condition of the contract? That is utterly foreign to the divine idea. In a true marriage, the husband and wife become one. Henceforth their joys and their cares, their hopes and their labours, their sorrows and their pleasures, rise and blend together in one stream.2 Spurgeon, Charles. “The Relationship of Marriage.” The Spurgeon Center, 1867, www.spurgeon.org/ 10 resource-library/sermons/the-relationship-of-marriage/ Accessed 9 August 2024.
When I read the stories of failed ministries and pastorates, I often want to ask about the pastor’s marriage. How strong was it during those years of struggle before he finally threw in the white towel? Did he seek to invest in the church without any investment in his wife and their marriage? It’s not always the case that every failed ministry is the result of a neglected marriage, but I would suggest that the percentage is rather high. One of the central ministries of every pastor is his home. That ministry begins with his wife.
Every married pastor has a ministry in his marriage and by neglecting this ministry a pastor will hinder the health of his broader ministry in the life of his local church.
For that reason, I believe that a healthy marriage leads to a healthy pastor who can give himself to the demands of ministry for the glory of God. In many cases, that will result in a healthy church. Every married pastor has a ministry in his marriage and by neglecting this ministry a pastor will hinder the health of his broader ministry in the life of his local church.
Dear brother pastor, take time to invest in your marriage. Your local church will thank you.
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