In Today’s Conversation with Leith Anderson, Kay Warren offers insights and advice from her experience as a pastor's spouse in the public limelight.

In this podcast, you’ll hear Kay share:

How to manage spoken and unspoken expectations of the pastor's wife;

What pastors' spouses can do to set boundaries;

Her experience being vulnerable and grieving publicly; and

Advice for church members in caring for their pastor's spouse.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: So Kay you have been in ministry your entire life; you are a pastor’s daughter, a pastor’s wife. So I’ve got to ask: Did you grow up wanting to do this? Did you want to be a pastor’s wife?

Kay: You know, I actually wanted to be a missionary. And growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s in a pretty conservative denomination, that was really the only option open to me as a girl if I really wanted to serve the Lord full time. So that was the direction I was heading, and I was not opposed to being a pastor’s wife. I had good feelings about growing up in a pastor’s home, so it wasn’t something that I ran from. But I sure didn’t anticipate it.

Leith: So, a life in ministry can be wonderfully rewarding and meaningful but can also be deeply challenging with unexpected pressures and stresses — many of which are kind of unique to pastors and their families. So let me ask you a question that I have been asked, but I will put it to you specifically, and that is: What is something you would tell young people who are entering this unique position of being married to a pastor?

Kay: Well, I really do believe it is a sacred privilege. You alluded to the title of a book I am in the process of writing. And when I first started teaching it to ministers’ wives almost 30 years ago, I first called it “The Changing Role of the Pastor’s Wife.” I was young in ministry. Everything around me was changing. It wasn’t the world that my mother — my mother as a pastor’s wife, I was used to that — and this role was changing, so I called it “The Changing Role of the Pastor’s Wife.” And then as Saddleback began to grow and expand, I changed the material title to “How to Grow With Your Church” because then those were the issues I was having to deal with as our church was growing and nothing stayed the same and how did I adjust to this expanding ministry.

And then I kind of hit a more difficult stage of both life and ministry, and I changed the material title to “How to Keep the Ministry from Killing You,” and taught that for several years because that really reflected what I saw a life in ministry. I was having to do everything I could think of to keep it from killing me. Now I as settle into this fourth decade of ministry, I really do see it as a sacred privilege.

So when I talk to women — and increasingly more men whose wives are becoming pastors or senior pastors — I really want them to understand that it is a privilege. There is a lot that changes through the years — through the decades. There are periods in which you are going to think that it’s going to kill and what do you have to do to keep it from killing you. But to settle into that space of believing with all your heart that it is a privilege.

My mom is 92 and has dementia, so there’s a lot of her personality and her memories that are fading. But when I ask her about her years — 50 plus years — in ministry she says the same thing every time. She says, “I always thought being in ministry was a privilege.” So that set it up for me to look at this as a life of privilege. It’s different than any other profession. It has some pitfalls, and some — as you said — disappointments that other professions don’t have.

And honestly there have been more than a few moments in which I have wished that Rick had been anything but a pastor — that I had married a plumber or a pool cleaner, I don’t know,