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The Great Unknown
Everyone in church knows Pastor Moses’ wife, well, at least they think they do, but strangely enough, they can never remember her name; they just know her as ‘the pastor’s wife’, but is that really all she is? Sue doesn’t want to be known just as the wife of Pastor Moses, she wants to be known for being Sue! But, at least for the moment, it looks like the ‘pastor’s wife’ label is how she is known, and that’s why she feels she is actually unknown.
Introducing Pastor Moses’ Wife (Sue)
Sue is Pastor Moses’ wife. She has grown tired of playing church, and going through the same motions week after week. She is frustrated that nobody knows her, and that everyone expects her to be quiet and perfect. She doesn’t want to go to church anymore, and she is just about at breaking point, after all, she has had to put up with Pastor Moses and all his crazy religious ambitions for a long time. There’s just so much she can take of the craziness!
Introducing The Random Church Guy
Random Church Guy is the guy who has been attending the church services at Pastor Moses’ church for years, but, unlike Sue, who is a great unknown, this guy is a complete unknown. Who is this guy?
You hit home with that one! I was married to “Pastor Moses”. You may or may not realize how many Pastor’s wives are suffering from depression and worse. When I got out of my marriage I weighed 89 pounds and could barely function. I not only left my husband, I left religion and what I thought was God.
I was told by two of the highest esteemed “Pastors” in my very large denomination that I was would most likely go to hell if I ever remarried. I spent the next 10 YEARS of my life living in guilt and anger. Got a job in the music business and tried to live like the devil since I had been told we were pretty close friends.
One day I woke up in the pig pen and decided (still single after 10 yrs) that maybe I should go home and plead my case before God. sort of the prodigal daughter thing.
Short version…Heard Bob George on the radio…realized I had missed the real gospel. cried all the way to Dallas….Got so excited…I’ve been teaching God’s grace and love for 18 years.
Pastor Moses may not care much about his wife’s relationship to God, but the Lord sure does. (Pastor Moses fears the Gospel because it threatens everything he presides over. his kingdom.). Job security…same as the Pharisees.
wow Linda, thanks for sharing. Sounds like you’ve had quite the journey, I imagine it must of been terribly difficult during those hard years, but how wonderful to hear you came through it to receive the revelation of God’s grace, and been now sharing it for 18 years. Great stuff.
Mick,It would be great if you collected these and put them into book form.
Yeah, that is what I hope to be able to do Dave. It’s more a time issue than anything else, but hope to release a comic book sometime next year. Hope you’re enjoying the comic! (maybe soon it will be on your coffee table too)
I will definitely buy the comic book! So much said in such a good way. People I give it to will read it when they might not read a book! Hope you are blessed with a lot of ideas and time.
Ahhh, the good ol’ boys club church mentality! I could write a short story on how I feel about this subject alone! Thanks for keeping it real Mick!
Just out of curiosity, what is on the top of the list for boy’s club church mentality Kristi?
Top of the list? Hmmm, well for me it is that men always seem to be at the “head” of everything. They are the pastors…they are on the leadership teams, they are heads of ministry, they are the deacons of the church, they are always the overseers. Women have historically taken a backseat in the church. I know MANY women who feel that while these people in leadership hear what they are saying they don’t really listen or truly value their opinion.
I think that in some regards the men in leadership like it this way because it gives them importance (?) and women often willingly take the back seat because that’s what we see from pastors wives and what we’ve been “taught” we are suppose to do. Women seem to do the grunt work as part of their “ministry.” Deacons of the church have meetings and make decision while deaconesses SERVE at those meetings, cook, clean, stock pastors fridge with water etc…Then, IF they are paid (secretaries/admins) they are not compensated to industry standards.
YET…pastors of big churches (I’ve worked in, volunteered for and attended a “mega” church for years…notice attendED) seem to be doing VERY well financially…because they are the “head” of their house and need to be compensated well for all the “ministry” they do so they can support their families. Like corporate America and government, the scales have not been equal, it just seems to be taking the church a much longer time to catch up with the 21st century…and then we still have a long way to go!
I’ll definitely have to do a comic on the whole ‘head’ thing Kristi. Thanks for sharing. So much of what you said rings true.
I think women have traditionally taken a back seat in every institutional setting in history, the institutional church being no exception, but that doesn’t mean that women are taking a backseat in the church (but it’s hard to see that, because, as we know, history is written by the victors, and so we only know of institutional church history, but I am sure there has always been Christians outworking their faith and communal life outside the historical institutional church. It would be really interesting to know how the women living out their faith in this relational, uninstitutional setting felt).
When we expect the institution/organization to treat woman as equals then we’ll be very disappointed about the past, present and future. But the church itself is not an organisation; it is the relational body of Christ. It is in confusing the church with the institution, that so often surrounds it (but by no means must surround it), that we become lost in politics, legalities and hierarchical authority structures.
Amazing isn’t it? Being a woman I have always noticed stuff like that. I am finding my rebellion is definitely doing my family good :-. Keep ‘em coming!
I’m planning on keepin’ em coming Diane
Everyday Monday to Friday. Glad you’re tagging along for the journey 
What I think is even worse than people not knowing who you are is when they do, but still don’t recognise your giftings. Sue may be known only as Pastor Moses wife, but at least people know who she is. What she doesn’t have, obvously, is a ministry in her own right – she is there only to support her husband! That is SO sad!
I suspect that Random Church Guy has kept himself to himself because he feels he has nothing to share, maybe feels intimidated by all those others with “Ministries”!
It’s a miracle that random church guy hasn’t been suckered into some form of ‘ministry’ in the church yet! He must be standing in Eric’s blind spot
“There’s just so much she can take of the craziness!”
I wonder if that’s why my mom stopped going to my dad’s church when I was young, so she could take us somewhere where we’d be known for ourselves. And I wouldn’t say it was because of my dad–I just can’t picture him ever having big crazy ambitions–but most likely from the expectations of the congregation of what a pastor’s wife should “look” like and should be doing for them.
I think we all want to be free to be ourselves, and the more expectations are placed on us, the more imprisoned we feel. We don’t want to be known by our position, whether that is a wife of a pastor or a leader of a ministry. We want to be known for who we are. We want people to enjoy us for who we are, to journey with us for who we are. That is the challenge whenever we come into a tradition that pushes expectations upon people, they lose the freedom to be themselves. I think that is how Sue, Pastor Moses’ wife, is feeling.