Dale Partridge - October 24, 2022


What is the Role of a Pastor's Wife in a Biblical House Church？


Episode Stats


Length

14 minutes

Words per minute

152.29187

Word count

2,236

Sentence count

108


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 Hey there, everyone, and welcome to How We Do House Church, the official podcast of Reformation
00:00:12.300 Seminary and the Reformation Fellowship Church Planting Network. My name is Dr. Jason Barker,
00:00:17.880 and I have the privilege of serving as the academic dean at Reformation Seminary.
00:00:21.720 Joining with me today, as always, is the seminary's founder and president, Dale Partridge.
00:00:25.720 Who's that?
00:00:27.360 Just some guy. He's just some guy. I met once. I gave him a job.
00:00:31.880 Excited to be here. Good conversation today about pastor's wives.
00:00:37.220 Yeah, this is a huge question that we get. And let me set the context a little bit,
00:00:42.080 just from my experience in more traditional churches and as being a husband. So maybe
00:00:47.980 it's probably more my wife's experience than my own. But very often in traditional churches,
00:00:53.600 the pastor's wife plays an expected role. And it kind of depends on the church. In some churches,
00:01:01.200 pastor's wife is the co-pastor. In some churches, the first lady. In some churches,
00:01:06.180 she better play piano well, right? Because pastor's wives are often viewed as part of a
00:01:11.680 two-for-one special where we hire the pastor and his wife is expected to carry on a certain amount
00:01:16.860 of ministry. And that can be restricting, constraining, and intimidating for a woman
00:01:23.620 who doesn't feel called to do any of those things. So how does it work differently in a house church?
00:01:31.780 What is the role of a pastor's wife in a biblical house church?
00:01:35.740 Yeah. So first and foremost, we want to clarify that we are biblical in the sense that we
00:01:41.180 don't believe that a woman can be a pastor, that a pastor is basically another word for
00:01:50.480 an overseer or an elder or a bishop, if you're using a different translation there. But those
00:01:56.060 three Greek words are essentially three different words explaining and offering different perspectives
00:02:02.160 on the same pastoral office to be a shepherd. And that is clearly in scripture a position for men
00:02:11.040 and men alone. It's why our school only permits men to come learn to plant a pastor and preach
00:02:19.940 at a biblical house church. But this does not diminish the role of women in the church or the
00:02:27.060 role of women before Christ or the role of women in evangelism. Women are absolutely essential.
00:02:35.240 And my wife, as a pastor's wife for many years now, struggled through this process, not because she wanted to be involved in leadership, more because she was just trying to meet everybody's desires and expectations that they had for her.
00:02:54.660 so we grew up in the megachurch world where the pastor's wife became the quote women's pastor
00:03:03.100 and veronica was expected to have some sort of teaching gifting and theological knowledge and
00:03:09.700 there's this expectation because she's my wife that she's going to be some great female theologian
00:03:16.720 that is going to have all the answers to all the women's problems and that was a heavy burden for
00:03:23.580 her to carry because one, she had really no desire to be a theologian and she had no desire
00:03:32.040 to teach. She wanted to be a faithful wife who took care of the home and took care of
00:03:39.220 the children and was a great homeschooling mom. And now there are other women who have
00:03:45.200 teaching giftings and who have a desire to teach the younger women how to love their
00:03:52.120 husbands and love their children as tight as two. And so you have those women that are more
00:03:57.080 apt to that position. And so what do you do with women on both sides of that spectrum?
00:04:05.780 One, I want to say that a woman, a wife of a pastor, I think her primary role is to
00:04:13.460 keep her husband qualified. And she's a helpmeet. Her desire is to help her husband
00:04:21.600 maintain the qualifications that keep him in ministry.
00:04:27.840 And she is uniquely qualified and positioned to do that.
00:04:33.980 Obviously, men are called to do this themselves as well,
00:04:36.500 but a wife is a great blessing to a man, to a pastor,
00:04:42.000 because she can remind him where he's weak, where he's falling,
00:04:47.180 that he needs to be home tonight to be with the children,
00:04:50.040 that there is some disorder in the marriage
00:04:53.200 or there's some disorder in the home
00:04:55.380 that if continued would lead to a mark in his reputation.
00:05:04.460 And this is an essential and very beautiful role
00:05:10.320 for a pastor's wife.
00:05:12.540 And it's been the role that my wife has filled for me.
00:05:16.440 She has been that voice that I miss
00:05:19.380 Because before we were talking on this episode, Jason, you mentioned something that men are mission focused.
00:05:26.700 Right.
00:05:27.040 And we're just going to run hard, head down, hands on the plow, let's go.
00:05:31.820 And a wife has a unique emotional ability to recognize problems even before they become problems.
00:05:40.260 and to offer that gentle correction and redirection and warning.
00:05:49.720 And Veronica has done that for me time and time again,
00:05:52.660 basically shining light on areas that are getting a little dim.
00:05:57.120 You know, there's something else to this in a woman's just God-given intuition
00:06:03.540 and perception of things.
00:06:06.240 My wife has saved me, Ruthie.
00:06:08.560 She has saved me many times.
00:06:11.760 She sees the snakes in the grass that I don't see.
00:06:14.900 She has seen women and said, let's just be careful there.
00:06:19.800 Let's watch out for that one.
00:06:21.460 I don't think she has our best interest in mind or whatever.
00:06:24.740 She sees things that I don't see and is such an invaluable part of my ministry.
00:06:30.680 And then within church context has had her own ministry of things that she's felt called to do.
00:06:35.760 I think one of the challenges for a pastor's wife in the church is it's almost all or nothing.
00:06:42.420 There are all of these roles that you're expected to fill, but if you don't feel called to fill any of them, you don't know what you're supposed to do.
00:06:49.420 And so certainly being a person who comes alongside the pastor helps us see what we miss, helps keep us moving forward, helps encourage us when the work is hard.
00:07:01.240 It's just an invaluable role that they play.
00:07:03.800 Yeah, I've really appreciated. Veronica's done the same thing where hiring maybe a new person at the ministry or a new person as an assistant. That girl just doesn't seem, her intentions seem strange to me. And she'll see things that I don't see. And I trust her because she's a woman and she understands things that I don't. And she is an invaluable resource there.
00:07:30.480 Another thing that a house church pastor's wife can do is she can model hospitality, care, and biblical wifehood and biblical motherhood for the other families in the congregation.
00:07:48.740 And this is something that all women, in a sense, are called to do.
00:07:55.740 But Veronica has a bit of a spotlight on her.
00:07:59.900 And she is constantly trying to demonstrate biblical character and hospitality.
00:08:07.360 Now, at the same time, it can always feel like a performance for a woman.
00:08:12.400 Right.
00:08:12.800 And I've shepherded her heart through many times where she has concerned herself with this.
00:08:20.760 And I've seen her rebound back with transparency and vulnerability with the ladies.
00:08:27.440 And that has woven them together and knitted a tight group of ladies several times over the years in our church community.
00:08:35.580 And so, Veronica, for example, loves the idea that she doesn't have to have the weight to be
00:08:42.060 the woman's pastor. She can just be a wife. She can just be the pastor's wife. I think about
00:08:49.020 John MacArthur's wife. We don't know much about her. For 50-something years in ministry and a
00:08:56.540 a massive footprint on the modern Western church. It's pretty shocking how little we know
00:09:05.760 about Mrs. MacArthur. And I think there's some beauty in that, where you have a lot of these
00:09:12.340 megachurch prosperity gospel that the wife's on stage and she's kind of sharing the spotlight
00:09:18.760 and being the co-pastor.
00:09:20.900 And it's just a different narrative.
00:09:25.320 And so Veronica, when someone asks about
00:09:29.380 who's the women's pastor, she'll often say,
00:09:31.760 well, my husband's the women's pastor.
00:09:34.120 He's the pastor of the church.
00:09:36.220 And one thing I always remind people,
00:09:39.060 I thought that was beautiful when I first learned about this.
00:09:42.060 John MacArthur's church,
00:09:43.460 you know who the pastor is of the women's ministry?
00:09:47.600 it's a man. Now, there is a woman involved in leadership there, but the doctrinal and
00:09:56.160 spiritual oversight is occurring from a man. The ladies meet at a women's meeting here, and
00:10:02.960 I try to oversee maybe what they're going over, if they're going to read a book or if they're
00:10:08.980 going to go through some sort of teaching or lesson or learn about a certain topic.
00:10:13.360 Like I try to be informed about those things,
00:10:16.880 but I do also trust the judgment of my wife
00:10:19.200 because she's a wise woman.
00:10:21.540 And so men, lean on the beauty and counsel of your wife
00:10:31.400 as a house church planter and pastor.
00:10:34.060 And ladies, don't be overwhelmed
00:10:35.600 because you don't have to,
00:10:36.800 in a house church, it's a much easier.
00:10:39.220 Right.
00:10:40.060 Like Veronica, sure, she does have to get the house ready.
00:10:43.340 on saturday night for about an hour and sunday morning she's preparing and she's she's making a
00:10:49.260 meal um she's uh providing the home and setting up some chairs and the kids are helping setting
00:10:57.660 up the hymnals on the on the chairs and and she's maybe communicating with the other ladies about a
00:11:03.260 special you know on maybe christmas or easter we'll do maybe a more organized potluck or some
00:11:09.420 Some of those things that happen administratively, but it's by no means this vastly overwhelming position that she holds.
00:11:17.740 So in some ways, is it fair to say that outside of her role supporting you as the pastor of the house church, the pastor's wife's role can really be that of what any other member of the church would be?
00:11:33.480 And that is simply, what are you gifted to do?
00:11:35.740 What is God calling you to do within this small focus group of believers?
00:11:41.080 Yeah, she has a position of honor as the pastor's wife, but her position is really essentially
00:11:48.700 the same as any other woman.
00:11:50.200 We have other ladies in our house church that have more of a heart for teaching, a gifting
00:11:55.960 for teaching and have a passion to teach that Titus 2 mandate of what does it mean to be a
00:12:03.880 godly mother and a godly woman and a godly wife and teaching some of those younger ladies whether
00:12:10.760 they're younger in age or younger in maturity how that should look and and so we can essentially
00:12:18.520 allow the body of Christ to be the body of Christ and in my situation specifically my wife can rest
00:12:25.000 and just exercising the gifts that she has and not having to be someone she's not.
00:12:30.700 That's a very freeing perspective to have. And I know that that's probably going to
00:12:36.640 put to rest some of the concerns that some of our viewers and some of your followers on social
00:12:41.560 media have, particularly if their husband is thinking about planting a house church.
00:12:45.440 This is one of those big questions that comes up in the candidate interview process for school.
00:12:51.520 It's sent to you on a regular basis.
00:12:53.760 What does a pastor's wife do in a house church?
00:12:56.380 So I'm glad we've had this opportunity to discuss that.
00:12:59.660 It's possible you've tuned in and you have some additional questions about how a house church functions.
00:13:04.020 We want to remind you, you can certainly pick up a copy of Dale's book, How We Do House Church.
00:13:08.220 This is available on Amazon and at the ReLearn store, along with several other resources there.
00:13:14.740 So we encourage you to do that.
00:13:15.980 And of course, as we always say, if you have specific questions about planting a house church and that you're ready, men, to start that process of getting trained and educated, head to reformationseminary.com and you can fill out an enrollment inquiry there.
00:13:32.380 Dale, any last thoughts before we wrap up?
00:13:33.980 no i'm just excited for uh ladies to hear the the truth about house church and that it's not
00:13:43.260 an overwhelming ministry if your husband feels called to that don't you don't need to be putting
00:13:48.300 the brakes on that conversation because you're concerned about the demand it'll be on your life
00:13:54.620 and heart um i really think that that weight and veronica would say this too is really on my
00:14:00.620 shoulders it's the on the pastor's shoulders because he's the one that's called she's called
00:14:04.860 to help right and it's just a beautiful place for a woman to be to help her husband in those duties
00:14:11.180 so i hope this is encouraging uh for the ladies that are considering this yeah the the role is
00:14:16.380 is to do what she has always done and be a blessing to others around her which is
00:14:22.060 it's just a hugely high calling and a great honor and privilege so amen well that's it folks thanks
00:14:27.180 again for tuning in to this episode of how we do house church just as a reminder these episodes
00:14:32.300 are available in both podcast and video format across all platforms we're super excited and
00:14:37.820 and grateful that you've tuned in and we hope that you'll tune in again next time.