Should She Work Full Time While Her Husband Builds the Church?

The email arrived from somewhere on the other side of the world. It came from a person I do not know and described a most unusual situation, asking for my advice. Here are the particulars. A few years ago, this couple felt called of God to start a new church to reach immigrants in a city in Asia. Both husband and wife worked as a “tent makers,” meaning they both held down jobs while building the congregation. God has blessed and the immigrant congregation has grown from 20 to 160 in just three years. However, the immigrants are poor and cannot offer significant financial support. The weekly offering is quite small. The husband and wife have two children under the age of six. From the beginning they decided not to ask for financial support from other people and they are not supported by any organization. With the growth of the church, the husband wants to go full time working for the church. Here is part of the email the wife wrote me:

My husband says that when he receives the call, it is I who should be working and support the family and church, while he will resign his job and become a full time minister. I am pretty disturbed by this. I find it a great burden to be the bread winner of the family. Isn’t that a man’s job as per what the Lord’s Word says? It is impossible to get remuneration from the church as ours is a poor church and we cannot be a burden to the church members. We certainly are not seeking their support. But in cases like these, how are we supposed to manage? What do other full time ministers do, when their church cannot support them? Does the burden then fall upon the wife?

I want to support my husband when he does get into full time ministry, but the thought that i have to carry the family and church burden upon my shoulders leaves me devastated.

And coming to the fundamental question, what does a call to full time ministry mean?

What I have written here is the totality of what I know. I thought I would share my reply and then invite your insights, remembering that they minister is a cultural context quite different from most of us in America.

Dear Friend,

Your email raises many very important questions that I will try to address. First of all, I congratulate you and your husband for having the vision and the courage and the faith to reach out and minister to the immigrants in your city. It is wonderful to hear how God has blessed your commitment and grown the church from 20 to 160 in such in a short time. This is an enormous blessing and as you said, it is also an enormous challenge as well. If this rate of growth increases, the way you do things now simply will not work.

My general thought relates to a principle that seems very important to me. No ministry can forward unless there is heart agreement between husband and wife. In fact, I would think that God will not bless a church if the pastor and his wife do not share the same spirit. That is to say, if you felt called of God to become the bread winner for the family while your husband worked at the church, and if that calling did not seem burdensome to you, then I would say there is no problem. But God’s call in matters such as this cannot be to the husband alone. There needs to be a sense in the wife’s heart that this is the right thing also. To me this is not a matter of leadership versus submission. I believe in men as the head of the home, but I can tell you that in every major decision we have made, my wife has always sensed God’s leading before I have. To put it another way, I have learned that if my wife feels uneasy about some proposal I have made, then I need to set it aside until God gives both of us a sense of agreement.

I believe the deeper issue is one that your email does not address. You and your husband need a better plan for financing the growing church. You said in your email that the church could not support you and your husband because the people are poor. The only real answer that will work in the long run is for the people to begin to pick up that burden. It simply will not work for you to be the bread winner. It will wear you out emotionally and physically and in every other way. Your marriage will suffer and that means ultimately the ministry will suffer. You also said that you and your husband have decided not to seek financial help from others. May I very kindly suggest that you rethink that commitment as it places you in a very difficult position? Pastors and their wives must be supported somehow. If the church cannot do it, then the church needs to be taught to do it. That means boldly and honestly teaching the people the principles of biblical stewardship.

Personally I think the only workable solution is for both you and your husband to maintain your current situation until the financial situation improves. That means both of you will work. That way neither you nor he bears the full burden. I do agree that it is unfair for you to bear that load on your own. But I know you do not wish to stifle your husband’s sense of God’s call. So something must change somewhere and part of that change must happen in his heart and part of it must happen in your own heart. And that’s what I pray for. That God may create a true heart agreement so that both of you feel good about the decision about finances.

I also encourage you to speak frankly to the church and teach them that the laborer is worthy of his hire. They must learn not to muzzle the ox that treads out the corn. Teach them these things. Perhaps God will call someone else to lead the church. Who knows? The Lord has many ways to solve this problem.

My final word to you is to trust that God is working in and through your husband also and to believe that God can speak to him through you. Do not let a root of bitterness arise between you. No church is worth an unhappy marriage filled with discord where one partner is miserable and where there is constant tension.

God will have to help you both to work this out. And I believe and pray that he will.

Blessings to you always,

Ray Pritchard

There is obviously more that could be said. I’d like to know what you think.