I was really interested in Ron's findings, and so I asked him to share a portion of his research on this blog. He graciously agreed to do so, and his post today focuses on some of the experiences the spouses of "novice" youth ministers had in their early years of ministry.
As a part of my reasearch, between 2009 and 2012 I interviewed 26 people about their rookie youth pastor experience. As part of my research, I also interviewed 24 people who supervised these people in their rookie experience. I found out many interesting things, but the one that burdened me the most was the experience of the spouses. Of the 26 youth ministers in this study, five were single (including the only two women in the study) and 21 were married. Sixteen of the 21 married youth ministers reported that their wives struggled to some degree during their rookie experience. In addition, thirteen of those 16 youth ministers reported not thriving in their position. But rather than simply share data, I thought I'd let you hear from the youth workers I interviewed in their own words regarding their spouses experiences while they were rookies. What follows are word-for-word excerpts from three separate interviews I conducted during my research:
Sample 1: “Another one would be—my wife wasn’t fond of the hours. She’s a stability, consistency type person and I’ll never forget her saying, “We are first—our son”—She said, “I feel like a single mom” ’cause I was usually out. And I was pretty good--if I was out really late doing something--I’d go in the office at noon the next day, but she was not fond of the hours. And that was tough for her. I was not the 100-hour-week guy. I wasn’t trying to be Superman, but if it was a long few days in a row, we’d have a conversation about that.”
Sample 2: “The 2 years in ministry were, that was a huge conflict for our marriage and probably more so because she was working so intimately with me and I almost have to...you’d have to speak with [my wife] about it, but, it was such a tenuous relationship because I had visions of what I would want to do, but I couldn’t communicate them and just the stress of everything made it that much more difficult. (Note: This youth pastor left the church and vocational ministry and his marriage survived the major upheaval that occurred for him in this situation.)
Sample 3: “What would my wife say...well, I think it would be fair to say that she did not enjoy it very much. And there’s a lot of reasons for that. For her it was that church was hard for her to make new friends at. There weren’t people who were her age that were people she’d be friends with. And not having people at church that she was connected with, people she wanted to see at church, she never really developed deep relationships with anyone there. She developed friends outside of the church, other avenues, but she was also more affected by some of the criticisms and conflicts than I was. It was more deep and hurtful for her and she felt it more personally...well, I don’t know how to summarize it. One area would be her attempt to develop friendships with the ladies and their pettiness. And basically they were saying they didn’t want to be friends with her. Those were some of the parents criticizing her because she was too young to know any better or didn’t know anything. She had a desire to invest in some of the girls but they essentially told her that that was my job as a youth pastor to be the one to give the input, not hers.” (Note: They were at the church a very short time and went through a serious time of reflection to see if they wanted to continue in church ministry. Eventually he took a ministry position which was not youth ministry.)As you can see, the experience of these youth pastors' spouses were less than ideal. What I learned from these interviews has led me to understand that rookie youth pastors and those who supervise them need to be concerned about the spiritual life of the youth pastor’s spouse. However, this is more difficult and gets very complicated if the youth pastor is sideways with his or her supervisor. As anyone who has been in youth ministry for any length of time can tell you, there is a lot that can be said on this subject that doesn't fit in just a blog post. If you're interested in reading the full dissertation, you are welcome to check it out online. It's a good idea to skip ahead to Chapter 5, which is where I share the results of my research.
Note from Benjer: I'd love to hear from others on this topic. If you're married, what has the experience of your spouse been during your time in youth ministry? How do you feel churches care for the spouses of youth pastors in general? Are there any difficulties Ron didn't mention that spouses of youth pastors face?
