On Pastoral Teams

Quotidian Grace was driving by Lakewood and ran across this sign:

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Lakewood Church
Joel and Victoria Osteen, Pastors

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After noting that neither Joel nor Victoria graduated from seminary, Quotidian Grace states:

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On behalf of all my RevGalPals, who studied diligently in college and seminary--I'm disgusted!

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However, Quotidian Grace is assuming that an individual will go to a seminary to become a pastor. Yet there is a strong tradition (which seems to be most pronounced in the African-American churches, but I could be wrong about this) of husband-wife pastoral teams.

The Bangor Daily News wrote about this in early 2005:

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When it comes to ministering to the flock, the pastors at two venerable Belfast churches have found that two voices are better than one.

The First Baptist Church, 95 High St., and the First Church in Belfast, 8 Court St., called on ordained husband-and-wife teams to serve as their pastors in 2004.

Husband-and-wife teams are not new in some Christian traditions, especially among Pentecostal churches....

Both couples applied for their respective posts as a team. The benefit for the couples is that their workload is shared. The churches get two pastors for the price of one....

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Considering that most pastoral salaries are low for the education they receive, I hope that these churches aren't paying a single salary for two people. Anyway:

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It's hard to determine precisely how many husband-and-wife teams are at work in U.S. churches.

Both First Church and First Baptist are governed by their congregations, meaning they are independent. But both are affiliated with national denominations.

A spokeswoman for First Church's denomination, the United Church of Christ in Cleveland, said there are some 6,000 UCC congregations with 1.3 million members. She did not know how many have couples as pastors.

First Baptist is affiliated with American Baptist Churches in the U.S.A., based in Valley Forge, Pa. Richard W. Schramm, deputy general secretary, said his group has 5,834 congregations with about 1.4 million members. "The wife-husband pastoral team stats are, indeed, hard to come by," Schramm said in an e-mail. "My best guess is somewhere between 25 and 50 across the denomination."

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Interestingly enough, the four people discussed in this article did attend seminary:

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Pat Parker, who holds a master's degree from Bangor Theological Seminary, was serving as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Waterville when the couple applied for the position in Belfast.

Ken, who is a graduate of the American Baptist Seminary of the West in California, was working at the American Baptist China Lake Conference Center. Prior to that, they had served as "informal co-pastors" in a number of locations since the 1970s.

"The congregation seems to know that this is a special thing, that they're getting two of us," said Pat Parker. "When we first started meeting with the search committee, they just wanted to know how they would put our names out front."

Winters and Krueger met at Garrett Evangelical Seminary in Evanston, Ill., where Krueger, a Wisconsin native, was working on a master of divinity degree and Winters was working in a doctoral program. It was during that period that Winters, who grew up Catholic in Brooklyn, N.Y., had felt "a calling to a sacramental ministry."

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But the seminary qualifications are a whole other topic, since this documented pastoral team (or, more accurately, an evangelistic team) did not graduate from seminary:

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Acts 18:24-27 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

24Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. 25He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor[a] and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. 26He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.

27When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. On arriving, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed.

Footnotes:

Acts 18:25 Or with fervor in the Spirit

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Rev. Graham Harrison, while arguing that they were not "leaders" per se, notes that they had a home church in later life:

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There they are a couple, Mr and Mrs Aquila, and wherever they go they seem to have become a centre of spiritual activity there in Corinth. Once the Apostle Paul comes and gets hold of them and presumably they are converted, they give him that home that he is able to stay in, they travel with him across the Aegean Sea to Ephesus. He leaves them there and when he comes back he is able to stay in their home in Ephesus. Sometime they go back to Rome; when Paul writes the letter to the Romans, they are there in Rome, and Paul says some very commendable things of them and mentions the church that is in their house. Then in that last letter that he writes, the second letter to Timothy, he still mentions them. So it is as if wherever they went, they went as a Christian couple. Their home became a centre of Gospel witness and enterprise....

So this is a remarkable couple. Yet in one sense they are a secondary couple. You never read of them preaching, you never read of them being prominent in the sense of being great leaders of the people of God. No, there is something almost subordinate about them. All that they do is done, as it were, at a lower level. It is not drawing attention to themselves, they are providing hospitality for the Apostle. Very possibly the sort of trade that they had as leather workers, tentmakers, meant that they had quite spacious premises. I suspect that they probably were not on their beam ends, financially. They possibly were quite well to do and yet they used their wealth, they used their home for the church. That is why on those two occasions in the Epistles the ‘church that is in’ their house is mentioned — in Corinth and again in Ephesus it seems that the church used to gather probably in their rather spacious dwelling place. Remember there would not be church buildings such as we are used to in our day and so a Christian perhaps who had quite a large house, well, that would have been very useful as far as the church was concerned and they would naturally be able to gather there. You would not get pagans wanting them to meet in their houses, so if you had a Christian couple with a large house, well, what a blessing and an advantage it is for the church — and that seems to have been the case as far as Aquila and Priscilla were concerned.

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Regarding the verses above, Rev. Harrison writes:

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Along to the synagogue comes this rather strange character, Apollos, a formidable character, obviously an intellectual, a man that had come from Alexandria — which was one of the great intellectual centres of the ancient world....He is ‘instructed in the way of the Lord’ but not perfectly. So here are Aquila and Priscilla, they are there in the synagogue, they are greatly impressed with Apollos. They hear him preaching, they realise that basically he has got hold of the truth — but he needs help. So what they do is ‘they took him unto them’. They did in effect what had happened to Paul; they opened their home and let him stay with them....

And this man, Apollos, he must have been a very humble man because there is no doubt he must have been miles above this couple as far as his intellectual ability was concerned. Yet he was teachable and they approached it in such a way that he received their wisdom and their correction....So when Apollos goes across the Aegean Sea to Corinth, he preaches in this amazing way — but all the deficiencies have gone, he is able to explain the word of God, not with the inconsistencies and the inadequacies that he had manifested when Priscilla and Aquila heard him there in Ephesus, but those had been sorted out. He has been corrected, he has been instructed in the way of the Lord more perfectly — and now, you might say, he is let loose upon those Jews in Corinth.

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So, at least in some circles, it's certainly possible to have a husband-wife pastoral team without seminary experience. Of course there are denominations (my own included) who do not ordain female pastors, but that's again another topic. But even if the wife is not formally a "pastor," she is still expected to function (often unpaid) as part of a pastoral couple. Here's what Lynette Kemp has to say:

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The life of a pastor's wife is like a life in a fishbowl. The same is said of Hollywood celebrities and Washington politicians. The difference is that we pastors' wives in Bay City or Eugene neither ask for examination under a magnifying glass nor seek acclaim. The "life in a fishbowl" analogy may seem time-worn, but I believe it remains a valid comparison. However, while it is still true that the fishbowl is as crystal clear as ever, we fish are swimming in a changing environment....

My years as an Air Force wife taught me to acquire these qualities as my husband left for weeks at a time to far-off places or was called in to duty at a moment's notice. I have practiced these qualities often in the time I have been a pastor's wife because of the needs of my husband's parishioners. Troubled parishioners will phone my husband at 10:00 p.m. to talk long past midnight. Vacations will be postponed because of a member's illness or death. Holidays are always spent at home because these are the pastor's busiest times....

As we prepared for my husband's first call, I told my husband that I had decided to take that year off from work outside the home and from any volunteer duties at church. I just wanted time to establish ourselves in our new home, help our children settle in to their new schools, and really get to know the members of the congregation. Plus, I had worked for the past few years to help put my husband through seminary, and I thought I deserved time to pursue hobbies and interests I been neglecting.

That was a fantasy.

Within two months, I was helping my husband with church office work as his unofficial secretary, teaching Sunday school class, and organizing a women's Bible study. However, having no musical ability, I drew the line at joining the church choir. Then, when a family left the congregation, a number of positions opened up in our small congregation of 50 members. By the end of six months I was interim church council secretary, interim newsletter editor, interim Sunday school superintendent, and interim Vacation Bible School coordinator. Either I was very generous or just a girl who couldn't say "no."

Eventually, most of these positions were filled by other members of the congregation, but in the meantime I had made use of my talents and previous work and volunteer experience. Also, by my willingness to take on jobs in a congregation where most members wore several hats I had proven my desire to be a real part of the work of the church. I also can truly call these men, women, and children my friends and co-workers.

The demands on the pastor's wife are as heavy as ever, but I find that if I meet them with humor, tact, and a sense that God's plan is at work always, life in the fishbowl is not a trial but a joy. I realize my limitations so I have made it a rule that I avoid giving advice and defer theological questions to my husband....

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Returning to the Osteens, it's clear that Joel wears the theological pants in the family. But some people seem to think of him as more than a pastor:

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This site hopes to provide Three Things:
1) An outlet for fans of Joel Osteen ministries (and particularly those who only watch him on television) to communicate and tell their stories.....
2) A source of encouragement and strength for Joel Osteen and his family as they continue to deliver the word of God....
3) A place for stories of victory, enrichment, renewed faith and revitalization brought on by the sermons of Pastor Joel Osteen!!!...

JOEL IS OUR MOST FAVORITE PASTOR
IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE WORLD!
WE LOVE JOEL AND PRAY EVERY DAY TO GOD TO GIVE JOEL
THE STRENGTH AND GRACE
TO CONTINUE TO DELIVER THE GOSPEL IN SUCH PRACTICAL AND REAL WORLD TERMS. JOEL TEACHES US SPIRITUAL SOLUTIONS TO OUR WORLDLY PROBLEMS AND HELPS US TO RISE HIGHER BY THINKING CONSTANTLY IN SPIRITUAL TERMS…………
JOY~~~~JOEL~~~~LOVE.....

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Number of occurrences of the word "Jesus" on the page above: 0. Number of occurrences of "Victoria": 2. Number of occurences of "Joel": 27, I think. It's time to stop:

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Acts 14:9-15 (New International Version)
New International Version (NIV)
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society

9He listened to Paul as he was speaking. Paul looked directly at him, saw that he had faith to be healed 10and called out, "Stand up on your feet!" At that, the man jumped up and began to walk.

11When the crowd saw what Paul had done, they shouted in the Lycaonian language, "The gods have come down to us in human form!" 12Barnabas they called Zeus, and Paul they called Hermes because he was the chief speaker. 13The priest of Zeus, whose temple was just outside the city, brought bulls and wreaths to the city gates because he and the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to them.

14But when the apostles Barnabas and Paul heard of this, they tore their clothes and rushed out into the crowd, shouting: 15"Men, why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you. We are bringing you good news, telling you to turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made heaven and earth and sea and everything in them.

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From the Ontario Empoblog (Latest OVVA news here)