‘Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry’

A Pastor’s Wife and Her Pastor Daughter

In November 2022, I was in the Texas Collection archives at Baylor, researching an academic article. My focus was Bill Estep, a historian who taught at Southwestern Seminary for more than fifty years.

I got sidetracked by a pastor’s wife whose story encapsulates the growing tension between the role of pastor’s wife and that of female pastor.

The pastor’s wife’s name was Peggy Bartley. She and her husband, Jim, were career missionaries in Uruguay, sent by the Southern Baptist International Mission Board and serving from 1952 to 1993. Jim was a seminary student and pastor when he met Peggy in 1951; he already felt called to be a missionary in South America and was very serious about this call. He had ended a previous engagement because the young woman “had no sense of calling to foreign missions.” Three months after meeting Peggy in 1951, “the sweetest girl I had ever known,” he asked her to marry him. “I never knew anyone could be so happy as I became,” Jim wrote. They married in January 1952 and by January 1953 were living in Uruguay. They served for forty-one years as SBC missionaries in Uruguay until retiring in 1993.

Peggy began writing her own progress reports back to the SBC Foreign Board (now known as the International Mission Board or IMB) in 1954. As a ministry couple, Jim and Peggy received twice the pay as a single missionary. He was responsible for the ministry work; she was responsible for providing the domestic support that would help her husband succeed.

Peggy’s annual reports to the SBC Foreign Mission Board are what caught my attention. She identified fully with the “home and family” designation for her role, describing herself as a “missionary homemaker” and her work outside of the home as flexible and supportive. When she taught for the Baptist Theological Institute in Montevideo, Uruguay, she stressed she wanted to “be able to teach in a satisfactory way whatever I might be called upon to teach.” Also, when her husband later became institute director, she expressed her uncertainty about how his new role would impact her. “I trust that if any added responsibilities are mine because of my husband’s change from professor to director that they will be made clear and that I will accomplish them to the best of my ability,” she wrote.

Yet, regardless of her full- time responsibilities at home with four young children and a husband who traveled frequently, she did a remarkable amount of ministry work. Listen to just some of what she did between July 1954 and July 1955:

In addition to making the usual pastoral visits with my husband I have served as counselor of the Y.W.A.’s [Young Women in Action], director of the Sunbeams [a Christian education program for children ages four to nine] until the last of June at which time a young woman was found to replace me, treasurer of the W.M.U. [Women’s Missionary Union, which was in charge of the Sunbeam program mentioned above], and until January superintendent of the nursery department in Sunday School. In January I gave up my work in the nursery department to become teacher of the class of young women from 17-24 years of age. I was privileged to speak at two of the trimestral meetings of our Women’s Federation. In connection with my part on one of these programs I translated from the English to Spanish a stewardship study book for the Sunbeams. In regard to my language study — for the majority of this past year I have studied with a private teacher having at some times two classes a week and at other times only one class.

At this time, she was the mother of a toddler and around seven months pregnant with her second child. She also continued in her “usual duties” of household chores, cooking, cleaning, and caring for her young daughter. One year later, in her third annual report, she expressed the hope that in the future, when her kids were older, she would be able to “give a larger percentage of my time directly to the work.” By July 1961 she was expecting her fourth child. She had been teaching summer Bible studies, serving as a nursery teacher, teaching teenage girls, serving as president of the associational WMU, serving as treasurer for the national WMU, serving as secretary for an ad hoc group of pastors and missionaries who gathered monthly, serving as leader for a monthly missions study, and working as a counselor to GAs (Girls in Action). But she decided to resign the last in anticipation of her fourth child. As she said, “I have seen the necessity of limiting my church activities” on account of her parenting responsibilities.

But I’m not sure she did limit her ministry work.

Not really.

By 1966 Peggy had completed her master of religious education degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (using their furlough from December 1964 through June 1966 to finish coursework). Also, in addition to the rest of her activities, she was teaching at the Baptist Theological Institute. The amount of ministry work Peggy accomplished and time she invested in supporting the ministry of her husband seems astonishing, especially considering expectations that she would be the primary caregiver in charge of household responsibilities. The SBC mission board defined her duties as domestic. Yet, by her own hand, Peggy felt like she wasn’t doing enough as a missionary. “My two major weaknesses as a missionary are difficult to admit because they are such basic points,” she once confessed. “My devotional life isn’t all that it should be and one of my goals is to change this. My other weakness is in personal witnessing.”

As the children finished high school and, one by one, returned to the US for college, Peggy struggled with their absences. The miles separating Peggy from her children weighed on her until she eventually sought mental health treatment. In 1982 she wrote that “the doctor said I had the classic symptoms of depression.” She took a three-month medical leave, received counseling, and proclaimed “God’s grace” had brought her through. “I still find being separated from all the children difficult and many times I lack the motivation in the work that I would like to have, but I trust and pray that in due season He will honor me with the blessing of happiness and fulfillment in the work once again,” she told the SBC mission board in her annual report.

One child brought her great joy by choosing a ministry vocation. By 1969 Peggy reported that Nancy, the oldest child, was demonstrating “spiritual depth” and “evangelistic zeal.” Peggy expressed hope that perhaps her investments in the home front as a missionary would finally bear fruit. They had. Jim Bartley reported on July 6, 1982, that “Nancy has become our only child in the pastorate. She is pastoring a Spanish-speaking church in Chicago.”

Peggy and Nancy Bartley provide a fascinating example of ministry options available for women even in the early 1980s. When I started reading the Bartley papers, I did not know about Peggy’s ministry as a pastor’s wife or her daughter’s ministry, which included service as a pastor. Nancy’s parents had commented on her faith trajectory in many of their letters, including how she felt called by God into ministry. Of course, despite her SBC missionary upbringing and her own husband’s SBC seminary training, Nancy’s congregation in Chicago (which she saw as a mission opportunity) was mainline Protestant instead of evangelical.

Nancy’s SBC parents were not upset about her vocational choice. They express no condemnation of their daughter’s ministry calling nor her pastoring outside of the SBC. Jim Bartley doesn’t even seem concerned about reporting to his SBC employers that his daughter had become a pastor. Jim and Peggy express only pride and joy.

Isn’t that interesting?

Did Peggy and Nancy know about the economic forces that had been shaping their ministry roles for the past few decades? I suspect Peggy did not know that her role as a pastor’s wife might be disadvantaging the paycheck of her daughter. A 2017 article in the Sociology of Religion journal suggests that the inability of female clergy to “offer the informal benefit of a ‘clergy spouse’” might be one reason that women in ministry are paid less than men. Listen to what it argues:

A “pastor’s wife” was expected to play a role in the life of the congregation, often in an unpaid capacity. Some of their tasks included menial work such as making coffee as well as substantive labor such as being active participants in worship services and assisting with children and youth. This role marked an important and informal benefit to the congregations when hiring a male clergy person. In contrast, husbands of female clergy are not held to the same expectation. In many cases, “the pastor’s husband” does not attend their wives’ services or volunteer to be a more active participant in congregational life. This lack of a “pastor’s husband” may be affecting pay of the women clergy, as they may be receiving less pay because congregations assume they will not be able to offer this informal benefit.

It seems plausible that, given the two-for-one deal with married male clergy, congregations might also privilege male candidates — who brought a pastor’s wife — over female candidates whose husbands would be less engaged for pastoral positions. Nancy became the pastor of a Spanish-speaking congregation. Growing up bilingual in South America would have been a clear asset for her, perhaps offsetting any concerns about her sex that the church might have had. But — despite the fact that Nancy did the same type of work as her father, even taking on a first church at about the same age — evidence suggests that she would have earned less, perhaps significantly less, than he did.

Peggy, on the mission field far away from Baptist politics and furloughing mostly in the company of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary before it was taken over by the conservative faction, may not have known how pastors’ wives like Joyce Rogers and Dorothy Patterson were actively working against women becoming pastors. I do suspect Peggy would have learned that a pastor’s income came to benefit from an IRS tax break since Jim would have met the qualifications for “minister of the gospel.” She might not have known, though, that her daughter would be less likely to receive this tax break. She might not have known “how the parsonage exemption intersects with sex discrimination concerns.” Despite her pastoral office, Nancy would need to prove ordination to claim the tax exemption. Evidence shows that women face more challenges than men in obtaining ordination for the same ministry work.

In short, by the time Nancy Bartley Gatlin became a pastor in 1982, women in ministry faced more economic challenges than men, in addition to the “usual” challenges regarding denominational support. They were discovering that the existence of trained pastors’ wives who came two-for-one alongside their ministry husbands had the potential to limit not only the salaries of female pastors but also their opportunities to be hired.

Pastors’ wives, in contrast, were becoming more visible throughout the evangelical world. By 1992, for example, the SBC had launched the Women’s Enrichment Ministry program for the broader denomination and all six SBC seminaries had established women’s programs. While not focused exclusively on ministry wives, both the denominational and seminary programs taught the concept of biblical womanhood (a theology of Christian womanhood that emphasized female submission and male headship) and developed programming specifically for ministry wives.

By 1997 Al and Mary Mohler had established the Seminary Wives Institute (SWI) at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to prepare “God-called ministers’ wives” for service alongside their husbands. The 2023 Essentials courses were team-taught by faculty wives at Southern and required for all institute students. The assigned readings for these courses were “The Pastor’s Wife” by Gloria Furman (2015) and Christine Hoover’s “How to Thrive as a Pastor’s Wife” (2022). The courses focus on “your calling as a Christian and a ministry wife,” “your influence on children,” and “mentoring, time management, listening and discerning skills, hospitality, starting well/finishing well in various settings and more.” The Leadership Skills for Women course (also required) examines “what leadership looks like for women in the home, the church, and in the community.” Tom Schreiner and T. J. Betts also offered a Bible survey course (also required) that was described as “life-changing” by “two SBTS scholars who have taught grateful student wives in SWI for decades.”

Both Peggy and Nancy Bartley were women in ministry, but only one of them served in a ministry position that the SBC would recognize as a legitimate role for women.

Excerpt from “Becoming the Pastor’s Wife” by Beth Allison Barr ©2025. Used by permission of Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group.