“You should never work with your spouse.”
“If you want to stay married, you’d better not even think about working together.”
These and other sinister warnings have been given to me and my spouse for years. As of this writing we’ve been married 18 years — including 3 years of seminary and 14 years of ordained ministry in the Presbyterian Church (USA). We have had shared ministry for most of this time, and have yet to end up on the steps of the divorce courts.
It’s our hope that this blog will be a forum for reflection and musings on the practice of ministry in partnership.
By “Clergy Couple” we mean spouses/partners who are both engaged in professional ministry as clergy. There is a growing number of clergy couples, and the institutions of our churches are ill-equiped to deal with this reality and to embrace new models of leadership that embody partnership, mutuality, and relatedness.
So let the conversation begin!
I actually hope that one day soon I will be organizing a more formal network of clergy couples — I’ve already amassed a short list from friends and friends of friends. We may find it helpful to host a conference, or retreat or something else in that vein. I’ll let you know when there is something more concrete. Blessings!
Dear Jeff and Kerri- greetings from CTS! My husband and I are both srtudents here, and hope to co-pastor after graduation in May. We have been searching for answers to questions about boundaries, trangulation, etc, in co-pastor situations- our CPMs (apologies to those not Presby…) have had this as part of our covenants, but other co=pastors have had precious little time to discuss this with us- essentially, we got blown off. Any help? be well- Nancy
Hi Nancy! How’s school?!? I hope the year is starting off well. Tell us more about how far along you are at CTS, where “home” is (outside of Decatur), etc.
You are asking some great questions as you consider being co-pastors — those are real issues that, I think most clergy couples would agree, if you don’t think about before you find yourself in a call, you’ll face some challenges. Sorry that you’ve been blown off previously. Kerri and I are happy to talk with you about these issues and other questions you might have. I’ll email you outside of the blog about that. I’m hoping, too, that folks like you will be able to find some more connections through this blog.
Also, I’ve started a facebook group for clergy couples if you’re a facebooker.
Finally, I don’t know if you’ve done your SM210 internship or not, but Kerri and I have been supervisors previously and are hoping to do that again in our current church. Our particular interest in being supervisors for interns is to provide a space for clergy couples (or part of a couple) to have the experience of exploring various models of co-pastorates. Just a thought…
Thanks for introducing yourself and for joining the conversation here!