Hi! Nikki here.
You know that feeling you get when you've eaten too much spaghetti bolognese? I'm a bit like that at the moment with spiritual food, I'm stuffed to the brim and could blog about a billion things, but I'll just tell you about the womens session today at the Acts 29 Boot Camp in Seattle.
Two speakers
One of them was Susan Swan a few years into a church plant, who gave alot of practical wisdom about being a church planters wife.
The other was a planters wife who has been on the job for 35 years and has planted 7 churches across Northern America and moved house 35 times. She was the last thing I was expecting!! A gutsy, honest, funny lady who told it like it is and reminded me heaps of jewish comedians. Her funniest comment: "everything I did in ministry I was pushed into by my husband", he made her learn how to play the piano because the current pianist at church was a non-believer, every time her zucchini's were ready to harvest or the renos on the house were done he'd up and move them again.
One of the biggest things I learned from her, which struck a chord with me today was "if you're going to be in ministry, you'd better toughen up and feed yourself. No more milk and honey for you, you have to get the discipline to feed yourself everyday. Your husband aint going to do it, no person is going to do it, its between you and the Lord."
After the two speakers was a question and answer session with Susan Swan (speaker 1), Hilary Tomkins (Mars Hill Shoreline campus pastors wife) and Grace Driscoll about church planting and being the wife of a planter. Some of the most vulnerable and personal things came up from the group (about 100), there were tears and lots of godly advice.
Some of the big teaching points that struck me were (and I'm going to just list them in a simplistic way coz its 9pm) that as a pastors wife I/you/they must:
Feed yourself - learn the discipline of daily bible reading and prayer
Bring everything to the Lord - go to him first for guidance, help, forgiveness, approval, love.
Be discerning about the information you divulge to others - people in your church give very personal information to you and you must use it well. Refrain.
Be discerning about the information you share about your family - be careful not to place stumbling blocks in anyones way, overburden your friends in your church etc (I'm still trying to figure out what I think of this)
Don't have exclusive friendships
You aren't the Holy Spirit - its not your job to change your husband or convict his heart. Dont be a critic, he's got plenty.
Depression is a God thing if it convicts you about a specific sin to repent of. Depression is a satan thing (not necessarily your fault!) if its general and is just there to wear you down.
All up I've been so surprised about the tone of everything today. I was expecting cheesy American, simplistic pastors wifey stuff. It was all open, honest, humble, centred passionately on scripture and all spoken with kindness and love. The leaders we've met have all been humble and lovely, not acting in the least like rockstars.
Shouts out to Mike, Guy and Steve for making it possible for us gals to go along today (the kids all slept in the creche while they had a quiet meeting).
Love and peace to you all.
Nikki
