Word: churchful
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HELP WANTED: Pastor's wife. Must sing, play music, lead youth groups, raise seraphic children, entertain church notables, minister to other wives, have ability to recite Bible backward and choreograph Christmas pageant. Must keep pastor sated, peaceful and out of trouble. Difficult colleagues, demanding customers, erratic hours...
Before the Web, PWs say they had little chance to connect and commune. "There weren't networks," says Becky Hunter, 55, wife of the well-known pastor Joel Hunter of Orlando-based Northland, a Church Distributed. "There were denominational groups and retreat-type things." The Web, she says, offers more immediate and constant support. Hunter is president of the GPWN, spun off from the Global Pastors Network five years ago. "When we started researching other resources, we found there was just remarkably little available for the wife of the pastor. Our issues were so similar yet so private"--issues that...
...choice many make is to work. At least 70% of pastors' wives work outside the home, many in professional jobs. Ann Toll had an established career by the time she married Robert, senior pastor of Christ United Methodist Church in Fort Collins, Colo., in 2005. A previously married mother of three, Ann, 48, is a financial analyst for a NASA contractor in Boulder who works 10-hr. days, not including the 40-min. commute. She writes for the church newsletter on her lunch break and runs a Sunday youth group, but she draws the line at joining the choir...
...After nine years, "I still don't." Born in Ethiopia to missionary parents, Andrews had begun college in Fullerton, Calif., when she met Brian, a Stanford grad and aerospace engineer from Los Angeles. Six months after they began dating, he awoke one day with a calling. Hired by Vineyard Church, he moved with his new wife to their current post in 2003. Bored and lonely, Andrews Googled "pastor's wife" and came upon dozens of websites--most created by older women partial to lace motifs and wheezy background hymns. "I was just not feeling the teddy bears and hearts," says...
...feel isolated." The Christian support group Focus on the Family concurs: loneliness is the top topic on its hotline for pastors' wives. After all, a PW can hardly discuss marital woes or child-raising tribulations with her husband's flock, and colleagues or other friends outside the church don't get life inside it. "The church becomes their husband's mistress, and they in many ways lose their identity," says H.B. London, head of pastoral ministries for Focus on the Family and author of Married to a Pastor. "The expectations a lot of times are overwhelming. Although they enjoy what...