Being Partners

LadyT · Status: Offline

Being Partners

Deanna · Status: Offline

I guess my question to you first off would be...what are your giftings? Are you a speaker? Are you more of an administrative person? Partnership can take many forms. There are pastor's wives who perhaps are not speakers but really run the administrative end of the church as a partner. There are women that are dynamic speakers but are not gifted in administrative things. What is your passion?

If you are a speaker, I would suggest - why don't you team up with your husband in the coming months for a tag-team message - both of you share on a topic such as marriage, parenting, or something that you can speak on together. Larry and I do this a whole lot, in fact we just finished a 3 week series that we did tag-team. It was, "Extreme Home Makeover".

If you want to be more involved in the day to day things of the church, begin working at the office as dh's right hand partner. I did this whether paid or unpaid - it was my calling, so that's where I belonged, finances aside. (Yes, it was a sacrifice for many years. I know it's one everyone doesn't want to make but it was the right choice for me.)

At the very least you need to begin by taking your place beside him. Greet people with him, pray with people (work the altars - one of your most important roles), if he goes on visitation try to go with him at least some of the time or to the most crucial visits. (I always go for babies or really serious cases, even though we now have a visitation pastor.) Sit beside your husband at church on the platform. Take various roles in the service (even if you are not a speaker) such as taking the offering, making the announcements, etc. At our church I always do the welcome at the beginning of the service. Sometimes I do the offering, just depends on what is going on.

Before I advise you more it would help to know......what do you really "want" to do?

Love you,

me

LadyT · Status: Offline

Pr. Deanna,

I think that you hit on a lot of the things that I am already doing, so I feel a little better already about being on the right track. I guess I will briefly describe my giftings and what I typically am involved in.

I have a strong administrative gift, and I have been operating in this from day one. As a matter of fact, I used to be the church administrator for another larger ministry. Since our church is small, I have pretty much done the same at our ministry for free. My husband is not really gifted in that area, so we compliment each other well in that way.

Counseling is also one of my passions. This is one of the reasons I am not on the board as much as I would like because I have a lot of studying to do. I am currently in seminary pursuing my master's degree in Christian Counseling. My husband and I do all pre-marital counseling together. I also counsel with women in the church. We try to do visitation together when we can. Pretty much the same as you said, babies and serious cases because he does hospital visitation during the day when I am at work. We also have a group of shut-in members that we visit on Saturdays when I am not in class. My children as well as the elderly members really enjoy these visits, so we usually go as a family.

Every Sunday my husband and I greet everyone at the door as they are leaving service. Our youngest daugther likes to stand with us as well. We do altar work together, but it is whenever my husband calls on me. I don't feel like he automatically expects me to be there working the altar with him. I have never spoken at a morning service, but my husabnd has asked me to teach on Wednesday night and we taught the adult class of VBS together this past summer. It went really well. We will proabably do the same again this year.

As far as what I would like to do, I would like to do more teaching together as a team. I think that it would be good for us to teach our new members classes, or at least the first few sessions of the classes together. I am just really beginning my training to be liscensed to preach. Maybe in the future we can do some tag-team preaching. I love that idea.

Other than that, I am not sure what else I really want to do.

Thanks for your help Pr. Deanna.

Deanna · Status: Offline

It looks like you are definitely on the right track already!

I think with adding some tag team messages, you'll really fly! What Larry and I do is come up with a theme for the message, then he writes his points and I write mine. A typical message would be...

One of us does the introduction

Then we have 3-4 points, alternating each of us speaking on a point

Then one of us does the altar call, sometimes ending with us both doing a closing prayer or praying a prayer of blessing over the congregation

It works well -- our people LOVE it. Usually our tag teams are very well attended and we have never had a complaint about it in fact people tend to get very excited about it. One lady told me Sunday that she had to teach kids church and loves to teach but she was very sad about missing our message because she always looks forward to our team messages so much.

Many times we add drama or a video clip to them as well. My asst., Lindsay, leads our drama ministry so most times she will write a short drama to go with our points, or she will start the message with a short drama as an introduction.

I think you are already on an awesome track, and your administrative gifts are really of importance since this is where you are able to fill in the gaps for your dh on the thing he is weak in. I am the saving grace for my dh in this area too. I keep his world together. One of our deacons compared me to a "kidney" a few weeks ago...he said, "everything in this church has to go through the kidney." You know how everything in the body flows through the kidney to stay on track. Well, in our office or our church that's sort of me, the "point person" who knows what's going on. You know what they say... "Do you want to talk to the boss, or to the person who really knows what's going on?" Well, that job has sort of fallen to me. I don't mind, I really love it!!

I am glad to be of help to you in any way I can be. You know I think there is no set formula to this...you find your niche using your particular gifts and make the position your own...you make it uniquely yours.

Love you,

ds

LadyT · Status: Offline

Thanks for the encouragement Deanna. It seems like we will not have to do as much adusting or transitioning as I thought. I am going to talk to my dh tonight about the tag-team messages and hopefully we can pray about it together tonight. I like the way you outlined it. I can't say that I have heard anyone do this before. I would love to hear one of these messages. Would it be possible to get a tape? I think this would help my dh to understand the concept. He is very sensory. He needs to see it, hear it, touch it before it clicks with him.

I will let you know how things go as we progress. I cannot tell you how valuable you are as a resource, especially for those of us who are trying to get out of the box for God. I do not want to have just an ordinary ministry. I want to use every weapon at my disposal to tear down satan's kingdom and build the Kingdom of God!

Love ya,

Tausha

Deanna · Status: Offline

Yes, I will be glad to send you a tape. E-mail me your address at -- PastorDeanna@aol.com.

It is an honor to help you...I believe there are many women just like you who have this passion down inside them, but no one has ever just told them, "you can do it!" Or, "why not you?"

Love you,

me