Wives Must Navigate Ministry, Money Conundrum
Some church members in one church in the United States balked when a new pastor’s wife seemingly spent more time pursuing her education and career than she did teaching Sabbath School classes or cooking potluck entrées.
For many pastors’ spouses, family and career responsibilities jockey for attention, leaving them little time to volunteer at the church. Those who do work in team ministries with their clergy husbands make what some church leaders say is the biggest financially uncompensated contribution to the ministry of the Adventist Church.
The church has yet to satisfactorily deal with the issue, which has “brewed” for decades, the same leaders say.
Some regions of the church have implemented—successfully and otherwise—payment policies for ministers’ spouses, and one country is employing many full-time.
But church leaders point out that in some countries, pastors’ wives are not allowed to work outside the home and any denominational work they do goes entirely uncompensated.
Darlys Robertson, Women’s Ministries director for the church’s Northern California region, says pastors’ wives are particularly affected by frequent moves that often unmoor their established careers and retirement buildup.
“I talk with frustrated wives all the time who tell me, ‘Every time we move to a new church, I have to start all over again,’” Robertson says, noting the increased difficulty as a woman ages.
For Robertson, herself a pastor’s spouse, retirement looms like a long overdue dentist visit. “We’re not going to live under a bridge and we’re not going to starve; we believe the Lord will provide for our needs, but I know that when I retire, I have no build-up of benefits,” she says. “And that does worry me.”
Sharon Cress, an associate in the world church’s Ministerial Association, shares Robertson’s concern but says it’s not surprising that Robertson and others who work in so-called ‘team ministries’ with their clergy spouses receive zero financial benefits.
Cress remembers one particularly troubling incident: a pastor’s wife was evicted from her home after her minister husband’s death because she couldn’t afford the rent. “When I hear stories like that, I realize we’re ignoring the New Testament principle of providing a safety net for widows.” Cress says offering a retirement benefits package to pastors’ spouses would help “right that wrong.”
But doling out compensation at the end of a spouse’s career is neither ideal nor legal, says Del Johnson, Retirement department director for the church’s North American region. A better solution, he says, is to put pastors’ spouses on the payroll, “like anyone else working for the church.”
Johnson says that prior to January 2000, the church in North America did make an attempt to provide pastors’ spouses remedial retirement benefits in the case of team ministry but faced discrimination charges and legal battles.
Johnson says 38 of the 50 U.S. states block spousal allowances entirely on the grounds that such remuneration amounts to disproportionate pay for the same work. “It’s unfair to the pastor who gets fewer benefits because his spouse has a job outside the church,” he says.
Because it’s increasingly common for pastors’ spouses to work in the public sector, the need to write a spousal allowance into a benefits package at all is frequently “obsolete,” says Johnson.
Gerry Karst, a vice president of the world church, agrees. “Not every wife is employable, nor do they [all] wish to be employed in team ministry.” But, he says, that doesn’t erase the challenge of remuneration for those who do. “In today’s economic environment, it’s extremely difficult for a pastor with a family to survive on one salary.”
The issue isn’t new. In April of 1898, Adventist Church co-founder Ellen G. White wrote a letter to church leaders threatening to divert some of her tithe to compensate pastors’ wives she believed deserved a salary.
Ralph E. Robertson, Darlys’ husband and director of the Ministerial Association for Northern California, says it’s unfair for a wife to make up half of a ministry and never get paid. He adds that team ministries are ideal but few can afford the luxury.
However, Marti Schneider, programs director for Adventist Mission, routinely cautions pastors’ spouses against avoiding team ministry simply to dodge financial sacrifice. She says ministry is not the place to expect a hefty paycheck or clout. “Learn to step through any door that’s open, even if it’s not your first choice.”
Because the church does not systematically employ pastors’ spouses, some regional church administrations do so independently when funds are available. That, says world church undertreasurer Juan Prestol, is the only way to enact change. He says efforts from top church administration to encourage payment for team ministry wives have been “feeble at best” because the issue must be prioritized at the local level.
“I don’t want to sound cynical, but at the world church level, we can say whatever we want, but it boils down to a local issue of dollars and cents. [Programs to pay pastors’ spouses] seem to collide with other major church financial commitments,” says Prestol.
Since 1993, a church program in India hiring spouses in ministry has educated hundreds of women, resulting in increased literacy, more productive ministries and hundreds of new church members. Adventist leadership says the church in India is “thriving” because of the efforts of the pastors’ wives there.
Hepzibah Kore, who locally oversees the program sponsored by the Adventist world church’s Shepherdess International, says equipping pastors’ wives with Bible-study, small-group savvy and a firmer rooting in church history and beliefs makes pastoral ministries more productive. About 220 pastors’ spouses now work within the program and are reported to have drawn some 2,000 people to the church.
In the church’s Northern California region, pastors’ spouses receive a three-month stipend when they move to a new area to help with settling and job-hunting costs.
Some spouses choose careers in nursing or education to “practically guarantee” employment in any area they might move to, says Frank Tochterman, president of the church’s Southern New England Conference. Others, he says, “start from the ground level” and are “lucky” if they meet someone in the congregation who connects them with a local job opportunity.
Tochterman also says some pastors have told him, “‘We won’t accept this call unless you hire my wife,’” a request he says is rarely acquiesced. He adds that pastors and their spouses should not finagle a bogus position just to get on the church payroll.
In the U.S., Bonnie Davidson, an employee for the Carolina Conference and the wife of the region’s president, says a well-received local church program in the region employed 600 to 730 pastors’ wives from 1991 to 2001. On stipend, not salary, the spouses worked 10 to 15 hours a week, Davidson remembers.
It’s a program she says the conference would welcome reinstating if “unlimited resources” were available. But the church in the region, she says, cannot justify cutting back on pastoral staff to pay wives.
Balancing that budget seesaw, Karst says, will likely require “the wisdom of Solomon and the patience of the saints.”