How Your Church Can Be a Blessing to Your Marriage

After creating Adam, God gave Adam his first ministry assignment – name the animals of God’s creation. In completing this assignment, Adam realized that, unlike the animals, he had no suitable partner, and God declared, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Genesis 2:18). 

And so, God made Eve and brought her to Adam. Adam loved his new bride, and for a short while, they enjoyed a wonderful marital harmony and fruitful ministry.

Then came the fall. Sin entered the world and corrupted everything, including ministry and marriage. Today, many pastors feel the need to protect their marriage from ministry as though ministry is a threat to a healthy marriage. But God never intended ministry for the married pastor to pose a threat to his marriage.

Instead, God designed marriage to enhance ministry and ministry to enhance marriage. God designed marriage as a living allegory for the mission of Christ – building the church.

(Ephesians 5:32)

This past summer, my church awarded me a sabbatical for 35 years of ministry service. My wife Lois and I spent the sabbatical together on a cross-country trip. We purchased a used camper and towed it from our home in Pennsylvania to California and back for nearly 9,000 miles! When we returned home, we created a photo book entitled “West to Rest, 35 Years of Ministry Together.” While we experienced many ministry challenges in those 35 years, ministry has been a tremendous blessing to our marriage. God planted us in a church that understood the complementary relationship between ministry and marriage.

Here are a few things we learned that can help your church be a blessing toward your marriage, too.

Making Marriage a Priority over Ministry

First, the pastor’s marriage relationship must take priority over the pastor’s relationship with the congregation. 

Paul makes this priority clear to Timothy when he says, “If someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church?” (1 Timothy 3:5). The apostle Paul understood a strong marriage and family positions a pastor to lead by example. The church’s leadership insisted we invest in our marriage, knowing the importance of a healthy marriage example for the rest of the church. 

Limiting the number of evening meetings has always been a priority for our pastoral staff.

I had to keep track of evening meetings to make sure I was not crowding out my marriage and family with increased church responsibilities. The other pastors held me accountable to spend alone time on a “date” with my wife at least twice per month. 

Similarly, our pastoral team encouraged our staff to spend quality time with our children and held us accountable to disciple our kids. They understood the demands that can be placed on “pastor’s kids” and ensured we spent quality time with our children.

The Wife as a Suitable Helper in Ministry

Secondly, the church protected my wife against the ministry expectations of folks who wanted to pull her from her critical support role to me in the home to lead ministries in the church. 

God’s call for a pastor’s wife is to first be a suitable helper for him in ministry. For pastor’s wives, especially those in the child-rearing years, their ministry at home takes up their full energy and time. Our church never insisted that our pastor’s wives lead the women’s ministry, church hospitality, children’s ministry, and more. Some of our wives served in those areas as they could, but our wives knew their priority was the home and their marriage relationship with their pastor husband. 

A Safe Place to Receive Care as a Couple

Finally, by fostering an atmosphere of friendship and fellowship among the pastors and our wives, my wife and I had a safe place to confess our struggles and receive care vital to the health of our marriage. 

We’ve attended small groups together twice a month for all 35 years of our courtship and marriage. When we go through a rough patch in our relationship or with one of our children, our first instinct is to share it with our small group. We never felt alone.

By emphasizing the priority of a pastor’s marriage and providing a regular and ongoing context for care for us, our marriage prospered. The healthy marriages of the pastors on our team provide an ongoing example for the marriages in the congregation. Few things tear at the fabric of the church more than a failing marriage between the pastor and his wife. Churches suffer greatly when a pastor or his wife falls into sexual sin. By prioritizing the pastor’s marriage, the church is looking out for its best interest. 

©2024 Marty Machowski. Used with permission.