"No reading at the breakfast table"

I said this recently in one of the talks I've done this term. I was speaking to a group of women who are married to guys training at a Bible college in Sydney. I was speaking about what it's like to be married to someone doing parachurch work (ie. full-time Christian work that isn't in a church context). My husband has worked in both a church role and now with uni students so it was interesting to reflect on the differences. One of the big concerns for families going into parachurch jobs is that quite a number of them (including my husband's job) involve raising funds to support your role. It also means that you will get a lower income than if you had a church based job. While I'd really hope that money wasn't a reason to deter people from considering this type of work, let's be honest, it can be. Especially when the money doesn't always come easily. I always said that we'd never do a fundraising job, yet 8 years later, here we are. One of m...

1.  You aim to work more hours than the hardest working lay person in your church. Yup, DEFINITELY a stroke of genius to base your working life on a person who is doing such a top job of the whole 'work/life/family/balance' gig.  You will provide a most excellent model to your laypeople of how to get that balance all sorted.  ( Ed's note:  pick up sarcasm here...) 2. You are sick all the time.  ' But Jenny ', you cry (between coughs), ' it's go hard for Jesus (*cough, cough*) or go home'. 3.  You have some small people living in your house with you.  You are not quite sure who they are or where they came from, but they seem to do good things for your reputation as a 'family friendly pastor'. 4.  You like to drop into conversation how long it is since you had a day off (obviously the longer it is, the more impressive you look). 5.  When you are questioned about how much you are working, you deny it and add, ' besides, there is so ...

Chatting during the week to some friends who are also involved with university ministry, one of the challenges is trying to explain what it is you're actually doing all day (not that dissimilar to a stay-at-home-mum or a church minister, 'But don't you only work on Sundays?').   In many ways it doesn't matter all that much if others don't understand what my husband does.  Most people think that librarians read books all day so it's not unusual to misunderstand one another's jobs.  I guess the tricky thing with parachurch stuff, is that you are trying to raise financial support for a job that people don't really 'get'.  It's usually easier to understand if you at least went through uni yourself and were involved in this type of work as a student.  It can be really tough to explain to someone who hasn't been to uni and just sees that uni students have long holidays.  It's not like church work where you do tend to see...

Probably the biggest challenge with this type of ministry is fund raising.  Sadly Christians (including myself) are very attached to their money (despite, well at least the last time I checked, believing all we have comes from God).  My husband has had to do A LOT of it recently and it is hard work.  Draining, humbling, awkward - people who do this type of work don't have super powers that make them find it easy to ask for money (they find it hard just like anyone would).  It can be depressing at times that finding the financial support takes hours of time away from the actual work on the uni campus. Mind you, at the same time it is so encouraging when people do give, because they are essentially signing on to be partners in the work.  And it makes you feel like a whole lot of amazing people are caring about what you do because they've invested in the ministry financially.  There are two very distinct sides to the fundraising coin. For me personally,...

A bit of background.  I'm married to a church minister, but he doesn't work for a church.  He works for a not-for-profit organisation that supports the ministry of Christian students on a university campus.  He is responsible for a team of about 20 full time staff members and is responsible for ensuring that the funds for this organisation are raised to pay everyone.  He also works closely with the student leadership of the group which at the moment has about 800 students involved. Here's my first challenge about this type of ministry (nice way of say 'big fat whinge' but anyhoo, off we go). I am on the introverted end of the spectrum but we have A LOT of different groups of people in our life that we are involved in.  The ministry is large and busy and totally people orientated.  We have our family (which is large and busy and people-orientated!).  We also go to our local church (which is thankfully not too large, but is also people-orientated)....

Last week Rowan was away speaking on a conference for the uni ministry.  It is the biggest week of the year for him and he leaves tired and gets home wrecked.  If anyone looks at a speaker at a convention and thinks that it is very glamourous, it's far from it.  Behind the scenes are weeks/months of agonising reading and preparation. In 17 years of marriage, I've rarely seen Rowan go off to work feeling happy with what he's prepared for a talk.  There are always concerns like, 'I could have said more if I had more time' or 'Is what I've prepared going to be easy to understand?' or 'Have I covered every aspect?'.  At one level I don't think this is a bad thing - it always motivates him to work harder on what the Bible actually says and think carefully about the people he is speaking to. I'm often asked what my 'role' in the ministry is.  The way I see my role is that I keep the show on the road at home (admittedly with...

Ten years ago my husband started his first job as a church minister.  Which means that for ten years I've been given the title of a minister's wife.  So, ten years on, what have have I learnt? Frankly, ten years ago, I was a bit of a judgemental cow.  As we were finishing Bible college, I would sometimes look at older minister's wives and wonder why they weren't doing  more.  Why weren't they doing more hospitality?  Running more women's groups?  Looking after their staff wives more?  Why didn't they seem keen to be involved anymore? Oh dear.  If only I had, like, a small, tiny clue.  But I had very little. In the past ten years my girlfriends who are minister's wives have dealt with the following: Parents dying, babies dying, miscarriages, depression, their children's mental health issues, children with significant/long term disabilities, husband's health issues, broken friendships, their own chronic health issues, ...