Hello Ladies! I glanced at the thread topic in disbelief. A Christian woman married to a pastor is supposed to recognize and pay respect to him as head of the family. Submission is not a bad word. If both are called to ministry they should be able to work out of the same ministry. I do see Mr. Bishop and Mrs. Pastor or co-pastor. A woman refusing to attend the church her husband is pastoring is not in the will of God.
Many women get married attending let's say Greater Macedonia International Ministries. The woman meets and marries a man from Worldwide Blessing Church. I think the woman should follow her husband and join his church, Worldwide Blessing Church. In this way, the women are not approaching him believing him to be single or in the middle of a divorce. Attire for the church can be adapted to for sunday service. This gives the wife leave to enjoy bible study over at Greater Macedonia Intl. This sounds like a workable arrangement.
The bible says foolish women pull down their houses with their own hands.
If the woman does not like the church, she should join and pray him out of the church. This does not apply to a pastor's wife. If a preachers wife is enjoying the word and shouting the walls down, this is a preacher to listen to. He can bless the socks off of his own wife. It is disrespectful not to join your husband who is pastoring.
Comments?
Comments, you ask... ? You know I got em'...
The order of Marriage is Christ is the Head of the husband, the husband is the head of the wife. As a wife, the husband is her covering, therefore he is also her Pastor at Church and in the home.
Now if the husband is in sin, is preaching heresy and / or rebellious about repentance for his acts, that's another issue totally different from this topic. In such a case, the husband has departed from God and from his wife.
Outside of such circumstances, there's no scriptural reason for the wife of a Pastor to not worship alongside her husband in his Ministry. She is his 'Help Meet Suitable'. All husbands need their wives with them, beside them and before them. Proverbs 31, Ephesians 5, are among scriptures to study upon.
Something else is noteworthy:
For a wife to not be alongside her husband is not a good representation of a family nor a marriage. And this has nothing to do with making an unjust assumption (judgment). As the Body of Christ, our foundation is Jesus and our family.
To see a Pastor without his wife plants a subliminal message (a seed) that a Marriage has a 'divide'. Also, what about the children? What 'seed' does this plant for a Pastor's wife and children to be at one Church and not his Church where he pastors? Are their children being told that 'Daddy' is not worthy to listen to and Daddy is not worthy to teach Jesus and that another Pastor from another Church is better than Dad?
Our society has way too many 'excuses' for why we do what we do when we are doing something that we should not do or for not doing what we should do.
(I'm spinning with that one too
).
Even Paul speaks of 'Liberty' that is taken out of context.
The maddness needs to halt. And I absolutely love that one of my favorite scriptures fits in with this. Those who know me here, know how I love what Elijah says in I Kings 18:21 ...
"How long will you halt between two opinions?"
How can a wife halt between two opinions? To not attend her husband's Church and support him as a Pastor and yet choose to be 'pastored' under another...
She is indeed halting between two opinions. She is splitting her loyalties which should only belong to the 'One' to whom she has been joined to as 'One'... her husband.
No man (woman) can serve two masters. He (She) will love one and hate the other.
Ephesians 5:22-33 New International Version (NIV)
22 Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.
23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
26 to make her holy, cleansing[a] her by the washing with water through the word,
27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29 After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—
30 for we are members of his body.
31 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
32 This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Marriage... God's Gift to Man and Wife