When Marriage is Divided by Ministry
Note: A different version of this article was originally published on TGC.
Of all the things that confirmed the call to church planting, nothing strengthened my conviction more than my wife's affirmation. But she wasn't always convinced.
Up to my call, I’d lived nomadically. I was the chaplain of a college in India while my wife and I dated and the English service pastor of an Indian church in Houston while we were engaged. Six months into our marriage, I sensed a call to New York. It’s a miracle she didn’t leave me.
My wife was born and raised in Queens. She knew the challenges of living in the city and that most people don’t move to New York to settle down. Moreover, she’d heard about the rigors of church planting. Her hesitations were justified. After all, I didn’t know how to answer her concerns, and I didn’t have much of a plan either.
Her hesitation was justified. Was my desire to plant a church born from restlessness? One of many examples of my inability to find peace where I am, incessantly craving a new challenge, to achieve more, to become more, all in the name of Jesus?
It was important for me to ask these difficult questions with godly counsel. But I had never felt so compelled to do something that terrified me the way that church planting did. I couldn’t escape it. For nearly two years, for the sake of my marriage, I begged God to either change my heart or change my wife's heart. In God's incredible grace, he changed both of us.
Can seasons of marriage when couples disagree, when each only sees in part, really be God’s plan? We rarely believe it is while it happens. We see it as an interruption and not preparation for ministry. But even in a stalemate between spouses, God is sovereign, accomplishing his purpose in the world and in us. And if we slow down to catch our breath, we may notice him strengthening our faith and positioning us for wonder.
STRENGTHENING AUDACIOUS YET FRAGILE FAITH
Leaders have audacious faith. We have the audacity to believe that God will move people from death to life so that a church is planted. We have the audacity to believe God will use our churches to transform cities and even birth global movements. This audacity-bordering-on-naïveté is a necessary gift. It helps us cast vision and call people to believe God with us.
At the same time, our faith is fragile. Nothing exposes this more than our descent from determination to dejection when others don’t share our conviction. And when it’s those who know us best, who are closest to us who express doubts, frustration emerges beneath the shell of our fractured faith. “Don’t they trust us?” we impatiently ask. “Don’t they trust God?” We dismiss their concerns as a lack of faith without ever seeing the cracks in our own.
For what else does our frustration reveal but an unwillingness to trust the Lord? Is this not an opportunity to patiently wait upon him as he channels the rivers of the heart as he pleases? Couldn’t the God who inspired us inspire others? My wife’s doubts rang so loud to me that I did not hear the dissonance in my own faith. I stood there believing God would change a city but struggled to believe he’d change and unify two hearts.
THROUGH WEAKNESS AND WONDER
It’s painful when marital unity eludes us. An innocent disagreement over ministry feels as if the stakes are higher. Underneath, we fear real and final division over our destiny and purpose. The anxiety that we’ll make a bad ministry decision turns into a fear we’ve married the wrong person. Resentment seems inevitable for the spouse who blinks first, and a peaceful way forward seems like nothing short of a miracle.
But the need for miracles in ministry should be no surprise. Honest pastors will tell you that church planting is a miracle. The confluence of events, circumstances, and relationships that come together, by no genius of our own, is the wonder of this work. In every ministry, God calls us to carry Gospel treasure in weak jars of clay so that when we persevere through every trial we would know the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. In other words, the path is paved with both weakness and wonder, weakness as we experience our limits in trials, wonder as God sees us through. Therefore, couples called to ministry ought to anticipate miracles, and the first one may be marital unity.
I wish I knew how utterly dependent we were upon God for everything in those initial conversations. If I did, the limits we faced in being able to change each other’s hearts, to change our own, and the need to rely upon God for this would not have seemed so strange, but part of the wonder of this work.
PLANTING YET GAINING NOTHING
The Lord disarmed my wife and me by drawing our eyes to his faithfulness. He led us to admit ways we’d let ambition and comfort blur our vision. There wasn’t a specific moment when everything perfectly aligned, but over time, our hearts grew warm to God and one another. He used our struggle for unity to develop dependence upon him and patience with one another.
You may know intellectually that Jesus builds his church. It’s what emboldens you to embark on the journey in the first place. But for the marriage divided by ministry, this conviction is evidenced relationally in the way you wait for each other. This doesn’t mean you won’t need difficult conversations, godly counsel, or compromise. But it does mean that because of your confidence in Christ’s power to change hearts, you can approach disagreement with a posture of patience, trust, and love.
However, if our frustration grows into a refusal to love, then we, who have all faith so as to move mountains and cities, and sacrifice our very lives, would be nothing and gain nothing. Yet wonder awaits those who believe God still changes hearts, beginning with their own, who patiently trust that God will use this present season, no matter what is decided, to better reflect and behold his glory.