<p>-</p><p>Inside LifeWay The Official News Podcast of LifeWay Christian Resources Interview Transcript</p><p>Host: Brooklyn Noel Guest: Barney Self, Chris Adams, Shirley Cross Subject: Being Patty Perfect Episode: #8</p><p>Brooklyn Noel: Ministers’ wives, the picture of Patty Perfect during the holiday season. The perfect hostess, the perfect guest, the perfect gift, the perfect tree, the perfect decorations. Yeah, right! Ministers’ wives may be smiling on the outside but they are probably screaming on the inside. How to deal with it all coming up on this edition of Inside LifeWay. </p><p>BN: The last six weeks of every year are supposed to be the most festive times of year, especially for Christians. We gather with families for big Thanksgiving meals and just weeks later gather again to celebrate the birth of Christ. The herald angel ushered in Jesus’ arrival with, “Behold, I bring you good news of great joy.” Unfortunately, many times for minister’s wives, the only good news that they hear during the holiday season is that they are almost through to January. The stress of balancing the realities of their lives against the expectations of other people can sap them of the great joy they long to experience during the holidays. Today we’re going to talk about these tensions with some experts on the subject. Joining me today is Barney Self, a return guest to the Inside LifeWay studio. He’s a licensed family counselor and a member of LifeWay’s pastoral ministries team. Chris Adams is here. She’s the women’s enrichment and ministers’ wives specialist in LifeWay’s training and events department and formerly a special ministries coordinator at Green Acres Baptist Church in Tyler, Texas. We’re also joined by Shirley Cross, a pastor’s wife herself, a mother of two, a former missionary and currently the administrative assistant in LifeWay’s church leadership training department. Thank you everyone for joining me today. </p><p>Group: Good to be here.</p><p>BN: Well Chris, let’s just get started right away. Why don’t you give us an overview of why this is such a stressful time for ministers’ wives?</p><p>Chris Adams: I would love to do that. I think one of the things that we hear from ministers’ families is that sometimes it is a very lonely time for them. They cannot always afford to go and visit family, or because of church responsibilities during the holidays, and especially during Christmas, Christmas Eve celebrations and those kinds of things, they’re not able to leave and go be with family. So sometimes it can be really lonely for them. Another thing that we’ve heard a lot about as far as some of the issues at Christmas is just finances, expenses. They know everybody in the church, or are supposed to know everybody in the church. BN: Right.</p><p>CA: In the congregation. So who do you buy presents for? Do you try to have something at your home, a little gift of some sort to give to those who come by your home? Where do you stop the gifts? Is it with other staff members; is it with other congregation members? Where do you start and stop giving gifts, and how can you do something that’s not very expensive if you’re having to give quite a few of those? The other expensive issues are, they’re expected to go to every party that the church offers during the holidays, every Sunday school class or ministry wants them to come to their particular party, so they’re expected to go, which means time away from home, but also babysitters, so another financial burden for them. </p><p>CA: What if they had a party at their own home? Who do you invite? Again, who do you invite, who do you not invite? And being invited to a place, are you able to say no, you can’t go to all of them, or what? Time with children is very important. And with all those responsibilities, they also are trying to focus on their own children and the spiritual gift of the Christmas season with them. So just personal renewal time and personal worship time and family time becomes a real issue when they’re expected to be at so many other places during those times. </p><p>BN: Right. They’re trying to be a wife and mother to an organization rather than just their own family. Shirley, as a minister’s wife yourself, have you experienced some of these things?</p><p>SC: Yes, I have. It’s been an interesting season each year to go through, because each year has been a little different, and each year brings the different stresses. When my children were younger, the issue of how to deal with family. When to spend time with family, when to spend time with church members and parties, and that all seemed to be a stressor. But as they’ve grown older, the stresses have become more, still the same as family, but more that they’re involved in other events, which events do we go to with them? And just how do you handle the prioritizing the church parties and the family time? Issues with going to see family also was always a stress because you had to find time. And a lot of times, you not only had the concern about is there time to go, but is something going to happen with a church member in the church? And if something happened at the last minute and you had plans, that was kind of a disappointment. So you had to deal with that as well. But I’ve kind of learned along the way, and being overseas has taught me that family is there no matter what. So just finding ways to deal with how do you relate to family? It’s kind of put the perspective back onto the reason for the season.</p><p>BN: I’d like to let Barney offer a completely different perspective on this. He mans LifeWay’s’ Leader Care Help Line, and takes calls from ministers, ministers’ families, just various people that need someone to speak to kind of anonymously, an impartial party, if you will. What do you hear in the holiday season? Do you hear more from ministers’ wives?</p><p>Barney Self: I do hear quite a bit from ministers’ wives during the holiday season. I think the issue that Chris has brought up and Shirley has reinforced has been the issue of expectations. Expectations are just ubiquitous, they are everywhere you turn, there’s an expectation. I think the ministers themselves can help their wives by helping the church define or defining for the church what’s appropriate, what they can live with. Very often the minister doesn’t do that. They just sort of play a passive role and take it as it comes. Which means they bring home all of the list of Sunday school parties that are on the docket, and I guess there’s an expectation that they’re going to go to all of them. In my own experience with my own church, my pastor very clearly defines that that’s not going to be the case. That’s just an onerous responsibility. They’re not going to be able to do that as much as they love all the people. It’s the both and the grace, if you will. “I both love you, and I’m not going to be at your party.” And that’s a perspective that I think is very healthy for them. I think one of the greatest gifts that a congregation can give a pastor’s wife is the freedom to not be there. The freedom to be able to have her own time to be able to spend time with her children, because it is a very festive and very important time. And if church members are looking for a gift that they can give their pastor’s wife or ministers and wives, that freedom, and the grace to be able to give them the ability to define what they can and can’t do and live with, is a very great gift.</p><p>BN: Shirley, how does your husband handle situations like that?</p><p>SC: My husband is very supportive in just doing that very thing. When we do have class parties, we’ll discuss it together which ones we can go to, or if one of us can go to one, and one of us go to another one, and we’ve been very fortunate in that our church has respected that as well. So it’s really been a relief of that stress because he is very supportive in that.</p><p>BN: And Chris, what do you think?</p><p>CA: It sounds like setting boundaries is really what you’re saying, because you’ve got to put those boundaries out there to begin with. </p><p>BS: There’s a fear, Chris, that would suggest that you can’t say no to church members or that you can’t say no to a class because, oh my goodness, they might be offended. That’s a fear I think that has to be dealt with in a most loving and caring way to be able to say I desperately, again, care about you and your party, but I’m overwhelmed and I really need to be at my house.</p><p>BN: Do you feel like you’ve learned how to do that, Shirley? Does it take several years of going through it?</p><p>SC: It has. At first in the early years of our ministry I was very conscientious of that, and I didn’t say no very well. But that just compounded the stress. So as the years have gone by it has been a learning process. </p><p>BN: Barney, you mentioned before that your appearance, your physical body will give away the stresses that you’re feeling. So you see that, do you think churches should be looking for that in their minister’s wives?</p><p>BS: I don’t know that they necessarily should be looking for that; I think they need to be expectant of that. It’s just an equation for me. If you have stress, most often, if you don’t deal with it in a direct fashion by saying that or by defining boundaries that you can live with, it comes out in the physical realm. Either depression around the holiday season… I have clients in my private practice that consistently come to me about this time of year because they’re going to deal with the issues of depression around some of those very demands that are placed on them.</p><p>BN: Chris, what do you do to deal with stress in situations like that, or did you do?</p><p>CA: Well, I’ve not been in a minister’s wife’s position, but, of course, I deal with stress just in ministry. But I think like Shirley, the older I’ve gotten and the more I’ve been involved in ministry, I’ve seen that God does not expect me to say yes to everything. And that sometimes I say yes to things and then I have to say no to God on the things He really wants me to do. So it goes right back to staying on your knees and building that relationship with Him first, and letting him direct the yeses and the no’s to every opportunity that comes our way.</p><p>BS: In light of that, Chris, I would say I agree wholeheartedly; that is the primary relationship. The secondary relationship is the husband and wife and the family. And that’s where I think it gets out of kilter within ministry life, and where it comes to, really to head at this season, is because that prioritization gets out of kilter.</p><p>BN: Okay. You know, you’ve said that there are some things that make it difficult for ministers’wives to say no. What are some graceful ways for them to do that? Any of you can weigh in on that. It’s hard for anyone to say no sometimes, but how have you dealt with it specifically, Shirley? Do people want to hear, “I can’t; I just don’t have time?”</p><p>SC: Well, there’s a fear factor there that makes you say, “They don’t want to hear me say that,” or, “If I say that, I’m a people pleaser, and I’m not going to please them.” So there’s graceful ways I think that you can say no. I was trying to think of an example, but I can’t think of one at the moment. </p><p>CA: You know what I’ve done? I’ve blamed it on God. If He has given me permission not to do something, I need to say, “You know, I really prayed about that, and God’s just not led me to do that at this time. It’s a great thing, and I’m going to pray that somebody will respond to whatever the need is or whatever, but at this time, God has really not called me to do that.” I think that goes back to your own, again, your own walk with the Lord and your own confidence in hearing from God that gives you the freedom to say, “If God doesn’t ask me to do it, it’s not my assignment right now.”</p><p>BS: Another way of dealing with that that might be a little less spiritually focused is to be able to communicate something in the order of, “I would love to be at your party, but I’m just not going to be able to pull it off. I am just overwhelmed right now, and as much as I would love to be there, and as much as I value and treasure your friendship, your relationship, this class, this is not something I’m going to be able to fit in.”</p><p>BS: And here’s the whole thing of grace again, where you’re trying to both deepen the relationship and be able to live with your own boundaries so that you can experience the fullness of the season.</p><p>BN: We’ve mentioned the Leader Care Help Line, which is obviously twenty-four hours; people can always get in touch with Barney that way. Chris, what other kinds of resources do we have that can kind of help pastors’ wives, ministers’ wives, deal with this?</p><p>CA: Well I think one thing we need to do is make sure that women’s ministry leaders in the church are really aware of their staff wives’ needs, and really love on them, and just provide ways of just saying, “We love you, we care for you. What can we do for you?” Because women’s ministry is really the leadership role I play to a big part here, that is something I think we can do through our women’s ministry leaders. Now, granted, some ministers’ wives are the women’s ministry leaders, and that adds another element. Then we have to help the other leaders on that team to see that, because it’s a little hard for her as the team leader if she is the minister’s wife to say, “Hey, you need to be caring for me.” But we can certainly put that out there for other leaders in the church.</p><p>BN: Okay. And bringing it back to the family. Shirley, your kids are older now, you mentioned. How have they helped you? I know your husband kind of acts as a buffer for some of that, but what about your children?</p><p>SC: They’ve actually been very supportive. I’ll give you an example of this. Last year was the first time we have had, hosted a party for our ministry team. And there’s about twenty-five of us, and we had it at my house. And at first I was very nervous about that, very conscientious, oh my house had to be perfectly clean and had to be decorated elaborately, and the food had to be just so so. But my girls, one of them is a cook and she loves to cook. So she was able to pitch in and help with the cooking. And had a grand time doing that. And as the night came on we all helped to get the house decorated. And I was very nervous as they came in. The team loved it, it ended up being a great night, and my girls helped serve. So they just stepped in been a servant as well. So it’s just been a blessing. </p><p>BN: So you’re going to do it again this year? Is it that great? It did go well then. You’ve already planned it for this year. That’s wonderful. And you know, Barney, it sounds like there are things that people can do. What would you say that churches ought to look for to really help, kind of help their ministers’ wives take a break?</p><p>BS: One thing that Chris had noted was the financial obligations that come to bear. I think they need to be put on the table. “Thank you” and, “We need to be able to give to you at this season rather than you giving to us.” Give them the freedom to not necessarily have to come up with some sort of a gift idea. Or if they’re going to be going to various parties, make sure that the childcare is provided for the minister and his wife so that it woks well that way. </p><p>BN: Okay. Does it ultimately come down to a lay person or somebody standing up for the minister’s family? Is there someone in the church that can really do that? </p><p>BS: I think there are a variety of people that can do that. Chris, what would…?</p><p>CA: Again, I think if she’s not the women’s ministry leader, I think that person could definitely, I mean she’s ministering to women anyway, and certainly the staff wives are women that need to be ministered to. So I think just making sure she is aware. But I also think deacon wives is another great opportunity to really encourage them to do something special for the other staff wives. And just see what their needs are. Do a spa night for them. Do something just to love on them. </p><p>BN: That’s a great idea.</p><p>SC: Sunday school classes as well, and I’m involved in choir and music, so the choir, there’s a lot of times that they’ll minister to needs and so forth. So just whatever ministry area that you’re involved with usually, or for me, has come up to help with those things. </p><p>BN: So really it just sounds like doing the things churches are supposed to do well anyway. Just bring conscious of them. Well this is all really good information. Does anyone have any final thoughts that you’d like to offer before we wrap up? CA: I would just love to say, you know, our staff and their wives are on the front line constantly doing battle with the enemy sometimes, because he certainly does not want them to do the ministry they’re called to. And we just need to be aware of that. They have huge responsibilities, yet they have huge needs to. So I think just being sensitive to all that they’re dealing with, and listen to them, and hear what they’re saying and not just consider that part of life that we all experience. Because certainly some of the things are, but then there are some unique issues and needs that they face because of the roles they have.</p><p>BS: I think it’s critical for the ministry body to be lifted up in prayer. By the congregation and certainly by specific groups within the church that are really committed to the church life being the best it can be. I think the prayer, and bathing them in prayer, especially this time of season, because the pressures are greater I think.</p><p>BN: Which you’d think would go without saying, but so many times we get wrapped up in the season, don’t we? Barney, what is that phone number, the Leader Care Help Line?</p><p>BS: The Leader Care Help Line is 1-888-789-1911.</p><p>BN: And it’s twenty-four hours, and you’re available to speak anonymously with whomever.</p><p>BS: Exactly.</p><p>BN: Okay. Well, this has been a pretty serious topic. I know it’s a lighthearted season, but there’s a lot that goes on that isn’t so lighthearted during the holiday season. I appreciate everybody coming in and sharing your expertise and your time. I hope it’s going to be a good season for everybody, and we’re going to get through it and just really focus on what it’s all about. Thank you so much for coming today.</p><p>All: Thank you. You’re welcome. </p>