Happy Mother's Day, Part 2

Last week we had the privilege of sharing one pastor's wife's story of how her mother, also a pastor's wife, impacted her life for the gospel. Today we want to continue this theme of older pastor's wives encouraging the younger women in their lives.

Older women, we want you to feel the powerful effect you are having on younger pastors wives who are embracing on the adventure of raising their families in a home where Dad is a pastor. We are so grateful for your examples! Many of us younger moms would be lost without the guidance we’ve received from you; whether its how to love our husbands, or teach our children, or warmly host a meeting. Where would we be without you! To illustrate this, we asked three pastors’ wives at Covenant Fellowship Church (Philadelphia) this question:

What is one thing you have learned about raising your family in ministry from pastors’ wives who have gone before you?

Older moms, let this encourage you. Your quick conversations with younger women, your encouragement, and your faithful service are making a difference! Keep up the good work!

Younger moms, we hope you can glean from the experiences related here. And if you have more questions, tap an older pastors’ wife on the shoulder and ask her!

Here’s Meghan Mellinger to introduce the group and start things off:

Meghan

Combined, Wendy Stigora, Ashley Shorey and I have 11 kids, all 7 years old and younger. Wendy is the heavy hitter in terms of experience: Her husband has been in ministry for about ten years. Ashley and I don’t even have that many years combined. But we can all say that we have been able to glean valuable lessons on raising a young family in ministry from the older women who have gone before us. We are indebted to their wise counsel and encouragement that has helped us serve our families and our church so much more effectively!

When we first arrived at Covenant Fellowship and Jared started working as an intern, our boys were three and one-and-a-half, and our baby girl arrived soon after that. I was adjusting to life at a new church, to mothering three children, and especially to navigating a Sunday morning on my own without any help from my husband. I can recall very specifically hitting a season where it seemed like every Sunday my kids were running around the church completely out of control!

Thankfully I was (and still am!) surrounded by other pastors’ wives who have been at this much longer than I have and so I was able to get help and get it fast! I posed a simple question to my friend Trish: “What do you do when your kids are running amok at church and your husband is unavailable?” Now what she shared may seem simple and even obvious, but I’m not kidding when I say that it changed my life (or at least my Sundays!)She encouraged me to take advantage of the car ride to church and have a little “pep-talk” with my kids, reminding them about what obeying Mommy at church looks like, what happens when they disobey, and how obeying Mommy honors God and serves the church. I need to make sure I’m not overwhelming them with a long list of “do’s and don’ts” for church, but instead give each one an area to work on that morning. For the first time I was approaching Sunday mornings proactively, rather than simply reacting to the behavior of my children. And you know what? It actually bore fruit over time. My Sundays don’t go perfectly, but they usually look a lot better than they did in those early days, and that serves not only me, but my husband and the church as well!

Ashley

If there’s one thing I’ve learned as I’ve watched some of the women who have gone before me on this (sometimes crazy!) road of ministry with young children, it’s the vital role of faith towards God for his call on our family. When I’m around these women or bring my own “plight of the day” to them for counsel, I’m definitely helped by their input and ideas of ways to train my children to participate in the work of the Gospel. But in between the lines of their practical answers to my questions I hear faith. I am reminded that the only real way that I can train my children to eventually value kingdom work is by having faith towards God in my own heart.

I am just ending a season of busyness sprinkled with a week or two of travel on my husband’s part. Recently, there was a moment of complete meltdown with all three children (4, 3, and 1) crying and clinging to Daddy as he attempted to head out the door for work. In all honesty, I was tired and there was something inside of me that wanted to cling to my husband’s leg as well! In that moment my battle wasn’t for the words to say to lead my children through their release of Daddy. It was for faith towards God in my own heart—faith that would give me the ability to be genuine and contagious in my joy and hope in God’s grace for us as a family! By faith I can trust God’s promises, gain an eternal perspective, and rejoice in the privilege we have as a family to participate in the work of God’s kingdom. Faith towards God lifts my eyes off the sacrifices and brings my heart to worship the One who is so very worthy, so that I can both train my children in practical ways and call them to lift their eyes as well.

Wendy

Looking back on the last ten years in ministry, I am so thankful for the early years and the examples I had to watch in the other wives of Covenant Fellowship who were raising their families in the midst of fulltime ministry. We have had great examples in the families around us of not “weeping over our lamb,” as Charles Spurgeon called it, as we sacrifice our time with Daddy so that he can serve God’s people. But that can be hard for a young child to really understand. When I asked one of my sons, “What does your Daddy do for a job?” He answered, “Play guitar all day.” Now, leading worship on Sundays is one of Joseph’s primary responsibilities, but he has also pastored college students and married couples for many years as well. I realized that the kids really had little idea what “pastoring” meant. So I asked a dear friend, Amy, “How do you help your kids understand what their Daddy does so that they can release him to serve more joyfully?” Her answer was simple, “Let them see it for themselves.”

For years I had watched Amy taking her little kids to Youth Camp each summer when her husband was Camp Commander. At the time I thought she was either crazy or a superwoman (now with years of friendship between us I have found she is a little of both with a lot of godliness mixed in.) So I began looking for opportunities to let them see what daddy does. If he was preaching at a meeting on campus, we’d go early, interact with some of the students, enjoy worship and head out before the preaching began (and they became a distraction). If Joseph was asked to lead worship at Youth Camp, we could release Daddy while we stayed home in our comfy house OR we could join him in a rustic cabin, blow naps and bedtime, and let them see what Daddy really does.

Taking advantage of these opportunities doesn’t always come easy. There were plenty of times when things did not go well and I wondered why I was even trying. But over time, we have seen God’s faithfulness at work and the kids starting to get it. Even small opportunities help children understand and have faith for the calling upon their daddy and us as a family.