The Impacts of a Pastor’s Marriage on the Church

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

“Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.” Hebrews 13:7

The Church and Home

As a pastor and seminary professor for decades, I frequently have a conversation with aspiring pastors and their wives about their expectations of ministry. Almost inevitably the discussion will move toward the personal boundaries that they want to establish and expect the church to observe. I’m often a bit chagrined when they express resentment that the church should expect anything of their marriage or family at all.

Every church should afford their pastor and his family common-sense limits of privacy and respect. But, God gives the church the right to examine a pastor’s marriage and home. In fact, the Lord gives the congregation a mandate to judge whether he is qualified to shepherd the Lord’s flock by how he leads his home. In other words, a strong marriage and harmonious home are not merely helpful in a pastoral ministry, but absolutely essential.

A Marriage Worth Watching

Additionally, the awareness that others are watching and learning is a compelling motivation for a couple in ministry to do marriage well, to leverage their marital union for deep and lasting impact on many others.

I often fear that young ministry couples fail to grasp that truth and its divine wisdom. Rather than celebrating that benefit and blessing flows through them and into the congregation, they resent that others are watching. But when the pastor and his wife exhibit a happy and holy marriage, its impact goes far beyond the peace of their own home. Not only is the church comforted to witness the pastor’s positive leadership in the home which, they can assume, will translate into positive and godly management of the congregation, but the pastor and his wife themselves will reap tremendous benefits from experiencing the reality that their marriage is about much more than themselves and their happiness.

From Eden to Eternity

Marriage is at the very heart of the Bible. Perhaps second only to the Gospel itself, marriage is prominently featured in some manner from the very beginning to the conclusion of the Bible. The happiest moment in the Garden of Eden was the marriage of Adam and Eve. The only thing in all creation that God said was “not good” was Adam’s aloneness, so He created Eve from Adam and joined them together in marriage for life, putting a crowning touch on His crowning creative act in making humanity in His own image.

Likewise, in the book of Revelation, the glorious consummation of all things is only complete when the triumphant Lord Jesus Christ is happily wed to His bride, His church. Between that first wedding in the Garden and the last wedding in the New Jerusalem, husbands and wives have an opportunity to experience something completely beyond themselves in this time and place, to be one flesh with another person for life. Every marriage looks back to God’s design in the book of Genesis and looks forward to the union of Christ

A Sacred Standard for Shepherds

As important as marriage is to all people, it attains a higher standard and a deeper significance in a pastor’s home. The Bible offers numerous passages that emphasize the importance of a pastor’s personal life and character. In 1 Timothy 3:1-7, the Apostle Paul outlines the qualifications for overseers. He states that a pastor must be “above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.” Similarly, Titus 1:6-9 reiterates these qualifications, adding that a pastor must be “blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.” The ministry couple who does not joyfully and conscientiously embrace that accountability and obligation will surely invite many problems in both the church and the home.

What the Church Needs to See in a Pastor’s Marriage

The concept that a speaker’s ethos (his personal character) is bound up in his credibility as a speaker is hardly a concept that only Christians emphasize. Aristotle was the first to divide speaking into the three categories logos (the content), pathos (the delivery and passion of the speaker), and ethos (the speaker’s character). But Christian leaders and preachers have referred to this triad of necessary elements for preaching throughout church history. Nowhere will a pastor’s ethos be more evident than in his marriage. How can a pastor preach on the love of Christ if he is obviously unloving to his wife? Why should a congregation believe a pastor when he preaches on sanctification while his relationship to his wife is characterized by unkindness and verbal abuse?

Outside of the Word of God itself, the greatest source of credibility a pastor has is the way he loves and cherishes his wife. When church members see a pastor who lives what he preaches, whose home is shaped by the Gospel, and whose marriage reflects the love of Christ, they are more receptive to his message. Conversely, it will prove nearly impossible to lead a church with any success if the congregants see no evidence of a godly marriage in the pastor’s home.

What picture are you painting?

What should a pastor and his wife obviously show the church in their marriage? Love and respect are the obvious broad categories, but they have many dimensions. They need to let the church see them loving and in love with one another. Tenderness, kindness, mutual joy and affection. To “sanctify” one’s wife is to set her apart and above all others. A pastor should never compare any other woman favorably to his wife. Rather, he should pursue her with a singular passion and devotion.

Any pastor should strive to be filled with the Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) and to bear the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). Living with a man who daily shows love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control should be a delight to his wife and an example to his congregation!

A Pastor’s Marriage Shapes Other Marriages

While the Word of God is paramount, preaching without a life to demonstrate its truth will not accomplish much. That is why the Holy Spirit inspired Paul and the apostles to place such a great emphasis on the pastor’s holiness in living and in marriage. To be “the husband of one wife” means more than avoiding divorce and staying married. It means pursue one another, to be truly united in spirit, body, emotion, and mission for the glory of the Lord and for mutual joy and fulfillment.

I have been blessed through four decades of pastoring to have many members who wrote me kind notes and letters to express gratitude for something I taught, but none mean more to me than one I received years ago from a woman in my congregation who wrote my wife and me to thank us for her son. She and her husband had been in a difficult and sometimes loveless marriage. But observing my wife and me and listening to our teaching on marriage made them want what we, by God’s grace, enjoy and display in the way we serve together and care for one another. Their renewed love and affection resulted in a child and a happy home. What a grace that a young man exists today because the Lord used the marriage of a pastor and his wife to restore love in a home!

A Pastor’s Marriage Pictures the Love of Christ

Just as a special burden falls on Christian fathers to picture for their children the goodness, love, and wisdom of the Heavenly Father, so a distinctive responsibility belongs to Christian couples to show the world the sanctifying love of Christ and the trusting submission of His church. How could a pastor possibly have any impact preaching on the power of the Gospel to change lives if the Gospel has not even sanctified his home? I keep going back to that verse in Hebrews 13:7. “Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome (emphasis added) of their way of life, and imitate their faith.”

If my preaching does not change my life and shape my marriage, can I really expect that it will impact others? Those who sit under my preaching are not only to hear what I say. Thay are also encouraged to “consider the outcome” of what I live and preach. If I don’t have a life worth imitating, I’m telling people that I don’t have a message worth hearing. But a loving marriage in the parsonage combined with a faithful word from the pulpit are powerful tools in the hand of the Holy Spirit as He shapes and molds marriages for the glory of Jesus Christ.

© 2025, Hershel York. All rights reserved. Used by permission.