Word: pastoral
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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...
...recent years, pastors' wives have found a place to vent. PWs (in electronic shorthand) from Fargo to Fiji reach out to and support one another in lively fellowship via Web-based networks, blogs and online discussion forums. On websites like PastorsWives.org SarahsTent.com and GPWN.tv, they share their thoughts on topics of unique interest, from the banal (recipe ideas for a mother-daughter prayer brunch) to the intimate (how to confront a pastor husband who is addicted to porn). When a Seattle pastor blogged that Ted Haggard's wife was to blame for his infidelity, PW chat boards...
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...
When the levees broke in New Orleans, the Rev. Jerry Kramer scrambled to get his family out alive. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed their tiny house, but within days, Kramer, pastor of the Free Church of the Annunciation, was wading through the filthy floodwaters to help others. Before rebuilding his own home, Kramer helped rebuild homes and find shelter for many others. His congregation took out a million-dollar mortgage to turn the church and several surrounding properties into what they call Resurrection House, which includes a dormitory for volunteers who do construction work or reach out to the needy...
...collaborating across once deep religious, racial and socioeconomic divides. "When it comes to serving the needy, we don't proselytize," says the Rev. Travis Scruggs, the minister of home relief and recovery for the First Baptist Church of New Orleans, who is known around town as the "Disaster Pastor." "We love people the way Christ loved them, without turning anyone away. Actions speak louder than words...