Pastors’ Wives Tell All: Navigating Real Church Life with Honesty and Humor

Gilbert, Taylor, and Allen debut with a quippy advice manual aimed at pastors’ wives and female pastors handling the ups and downs of ministry life. Cheerfully acknowledging that “once you’ve witnessed [the] behind-the-scenes” of church leadership, “there’s no unseeing it,” the authors expound on being compared to former pastors’ wives, parenting under a congregation’s scrutiny, and putting marital fights “on the back burner” when one is needed at church (“Step aside and allow the Holy Spirit to move when you must move on. He can reveal... a solution”). A particularly valuable section on sex in pastoral marriages captures the long-reaching effects of Christian purity culture (even after she got married, Gilbert “could not shake this strange underlying feeling that she might be doing something wrong” by having sex with her husband), and calls on Christian parents to initiate an “open dialogue with our children” about sex. The empathetic tone and down-to-earth humor (congregants “make life-altering decisions like choosing to follow Jesus or changing their hairstyle”) reinforce the simple yet worthy message that pastors, and their wives, are as flawed as everyone else. It’s an upbeat guide to the realities of ministry life. (Apr.)