Dr Paul Brintley has a candid discussion with his wife on the ministry and why it sometimes feels like a glass bowl
Dr. Paul: I’m joined by my wife today, Celeste, and we’re excited for what God’s doing in our life, what God’s doing in our ministry. We feel like that we can be an assistant to pastors, we can help you guys out and the pastor’s wife.
Dr. Paul: We have the children of the house as well, we also want to make sure that we’re reaching out to them with these videos. And so, we just want to talk a little bit about the false calling of minister’s wives. A lot of times the church, we feel like we live in a glass bowl, we’ve written a book Called Two Wives In The Parsonage, and the cover of the book shows that, like a woman in a glass house.
Celeste: And we do live in a glass bowl.
Dr. Paul: So, when you think about the statement of glass house, how does that affect you?
Celeste: So, it doesn’t so much affect me, it just makes me think. We should already live like Christ wants us to live. But so many times we put pressure on ourselves – more pressure than we should as a minister’s wife wanting to live this perfect life in front of the members of the church or the church world in general – and I don’t think that should be so.
Dr. Paul: So, you feel pressure from that? Can you talk a little bit about how you felt when we first started in ministry, and living in a glass house, and then how you feel now?
Celeste: So, I felt really scared because you want to do everything, just your idea. All of these things that a minister’s wife should be and should do. And not only for the church, but for her family. And because of that you put pressure on yourself and idea to put pressure on myself and also own my son because I want him to do things just right on just from hearing the way that other pastors’ wives did in the past. And that affected us, I think tremendously, sometimes in a good way, but also, it just put pressure on us that we didn’t need to do.
Dr. Paul: So, after experiencing that you learn from that, you are able to mature and you grew from that. So now, what is the pressure like? Do you feel like we still live in a glass house?
Celeste: Oh, definitely. We still live in a glass house, but I don’t have that pressure on me. I just focus on making sure that I’m doing the things that God would have me to do and not trying to focus on, am I doing it the way that the church world would want me to do it?
Dr. Paul: All right. So, we have a book, Two Wives In The Parsonage. We’d love for you to get a copy of it. You can go on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, you can go on our website, paulbrintley.com and also get the book. But there’s a portion in a book, there’s a chapter that you wrote, actually, on the fishbowl false calling of minister’s wife. And I’m going to read a statement about some of the things and pressures that go on in the church that are required. So, you said, “People think that a minister’s wife should be leading a prayer group. I’m not the leader of our prayer group by but the way that I am involved in every Sunday, we have a women’s prayer group, and we have four minister’s wife that led that group. I just have the first Sunday of every month.”
Celeste: Yes, “I am not the leader at all.” And I don’t feel like I should be because that’s just not my calling. But I do want to be a part of the things that the ladies do here in the church. So, one of the things that I do I just lead a prayer group, a prayer session on one Sunday of every month.
Dr. Paul: Okay. All right, thank you. So, if this helped you, we’d love for you to get the book. You can watch some of our future videos, join subscribe to our channel. We love that you will be a part of our YouTube channel as well. Our Facebook page is all our social media, we’re on Instagram, all those different ways. So please join in. Watch us. Thank you so much. And remember, a vision doesn’t work if you don’t.
