The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

It's been the best of times, it's been the worst of times, this life in ministry. God has been constant, good, and faithful. All of my best times have been wrapped up in Him.

But I haven't been constantly good and faithful. Ministry is typically the best or the worst of times depending on me--my attitude, my actions, my responses. And if I'm aware of God's consistency, goodness, and faithfulness to me.

Here are the worst things I've done, when ministry has been the worst of times:

• When I've tried to negotiate a different circumstance from God
• When I've compared myself with others
• When I've competed with others, if only in my mind
• When I've looked at what's not going well rather than what God is doing
• When I've just gone through the motions and not allowed God to check my heart
• When I've blamed my husband for any difficulty in ministry
• When I've looked for affirmation and approval and even encouragement from others 
• When I've held on to resentments instead of forgiving
• When I've ignored the Holy Spirit's nudging 
• When I've just pushed through rather than resting
• When I've said yes to something only because I know someone wants me to
• When I've focused on tasks rather than relationships
• When I've daydreamed about leaving ministry 
• When I've judged people who are different than me

Here are the best things I've done, when ministry has been the best of times:

• When I've surrendered to God's calling on my life rather than fighting it
• When I've recognized and used my spiritual gifts 
• When I've been consistent in reading the Word each morning
• When I've celebrated how God is using others
• When I've sought to understand God's love and grace for me
• When I've given myself grace
• When I've trusted the Holy Spirit's power in me
• When I've loved people (and given them grace)
• When I've allowed people to see me cry and question and struggle
• When I've brought outsiders in
• When I've invested myself in others through discipleship
• When I've asked the hard, uncomfortable questions
• When I've gone away with my husband
• When I've opened up my home 
• When I've asked more experienced women for help or wisdom
• When I've thought of myself less and considered others more
• When I've said thank you to those who are laboring alongside us
• When I've shared the gospel

There are likely many more experiences and lessons to come, but I know now that my attitude, my heart, and my surrender to God are at the core of it all. When I am resistant to God and my heart gets hard, it is the worst of times, but when I am moldable clay in the Potter's hands, it is difficult because of the self-death it requires, but it is always the very best of times.

What are your "best" and "worst" things?

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Rest and Renewal

Every Sunday that Kyle preaches, he stuffs his notes into his preaching Bible, comes home, and sticks it in one of our kitchen cabinets. Eventually, the notes come out of his Bible and pile up in the cabinet until I clean them out, put them in order, and file them away for safe keeping. 

I love looking at those stacks of paper. They represent hours and hours of study, preparation, thought, prayer, preaching, and love. They speak of what God has and is doing in our church. They remind me of how God has grown me through my husband's faithful expository preaching. They even recall special visitors and events, as he writes little reminders to himself at the top of each sermon of who to introduce or what to announce.

I cleaned out the cabinet again last week, piled up sermons on Joshua, Luke, advent, and commissioning elders, and took a picture:

This picture says so much. These papers represent about a year in the life of our church, but it also speaks to more. Our church will celebrate it's fifth birthday in September, and these five years have been marked by blood, sweat, and tears. In addition, this summer marks my husband's fifteenth year in ministry, and through those years we've gotten married, served at an established church, had children, met incredible people, and seen God do unbelievable things in church planting.

It's time for reflection and renewal. It's time to rest. It's time to stop producing and simply be. It's time to receive rather than be responsible for others receiving. It's time to reevaluate priorities and listen intently for God's voice. It's time to be Christians and not professional Christians.

So on Saturday our family will be leaving for an eight-week sabbatical to pursue these very things. Our church is graciously sending us out and we are excitedly going. We plan to read, rest, play, and rest some more. I personally am eager to hear anew from the Lord, because I sense that He is shifting my paradigms in some way. I look forward to discovering what that looks like exactly.

The picture above represents my husband's work, but this blog very much represents mine, not just as a writer but as a minister and a mom. So while Kyle retreats from work, I will too. I am so thankful for you, my readers and friends, and that you give me an online space to do something that feels like worship to me. Thank you for reading and championing The Church Planting Wife this year. I look forward to sharing with you what God teaches me when I return in mid-August.

So what will you find on the blog this summer? Each week, you'll see two posts. One will be an oldie but a goodie, and the other will be a new post that I've prepared ahead of our sabbatical. Please know that I will not be interacting in the comment section, but you are invited to continue interacting with one another.

I would appreciate your prayers as we go into our sabbatical. I am tired. My mind and heart need sharpening. Our family needs good time together. Most of all, I crave a deeper intimacy with God. I look forward to coming back into normal life, ministry, and writing with a renewed heart and mind. I look forward to coming back to you.

Have a great, grace-filled summer!

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Unshakeable

I'm honored to welcome Shari Thomas as a guest blogger today. Shari has been at the forefront of helping and assessing church planting spouses.

“Is it always this hard?”

A church plant in our city had steadily been growing when a key leader became sexually involved with others in the church, covertly seducing new believers into a questionable life style. When the story came to light, too many were already involved. Sides were taken. The church closed. When my husband and I met with the planting couple, they were heartbroken.  One of the first questions we were asked, “Is it always this hard to plant a church?” Obviously we will each face different hardships in ministry and in life in general but my answer is “Yes, it’s this hard!”

The following Sunday I was greatly encouraged by several points from Tim Keller’s sermon on the early church’s response to suffering in Acts 4:24.  The points are his. The explanations, mine.

A sign of a real Christian is that we continue to serve God especially in suffering.

If we are only serving God for what we get out of it then we are just in it for the benefits. We know we’ve fallen into this category when we bring a list before God of what we have ‘sacrificed for’ him. Or we inwardly think we deserve better treatment because, after all, we are God’s servants.

Serving God in suffering doesn’t mean we aren’t bothered by what is happening or that we don’t wrestle with God about it. 

What it does mean is that we still turn to him, like Job. We take our wrestling, our anger, our questions and our sorrow to him.  One of the best practices I learned in church planting was about true worship. Worship entails the real me engaging with the real God. I learned I could take my doubts, my unbelief, my rages and all my emotions to God. I could set my case before him. I could wait for him to meet me.

We acknowledge that a sovereign God has allowed the suffering.

In Acts 4:28 the Christians say that God allowed what had occurred.  They knew that nothing had happened that was outside of his control. They respond to God in what is happening rather than asking to be taken out of it.  Yes, there are more times than I care to admit that I’ve asked God to take me out of the suffering.

We become unshakable.

The place where the early church is meeting begins to shake, but they had become unshakable (vs 31). How so? Matthew 27 and 28 talk about two quakes, one when Jesus died and the second when he was raised from the dead.  Jesus was and is the One shaken on our behalf!

Ultimately, we don’t have to be shaken by what is befalling us. Notice I use the word, ultimately. Typically, our first response is one of fear. (If God were not aware of how fearful we are, he wouldn’t address the topic so much in scripture.) Fear is part of being human. However, it doesn’t have to stop there. If we remember that he is sovereign, our worry begins to dissipate.

After much prayer and counsel, the couple I referred to earlier, decided to continue serving God by replanting their church. I’ve had the privilege of walking alongside the planter’s wife in this journey. I’ve noticed something amazing occurring: She is becoming unshakable!

--

Shari and her husband, John, have partnered in church planting both nationally and internationally since the early 1980's. She conducted research on the stress and satisfaction levels of church planting spouses in the U.S., developed the Church Leader Spouse Inventory used in many church planting assessments, and in 2005 founded Parakaleo, www.parakaleo.us, a ministry that provides coaching, training, and network development for spouses in church planting. She has a passion to see families thrive in the ambiguous and often turbulent life of ministry She is known among her family and friends for her piercing transparency, speaking before thinking, and enjoying life to the fullest with her husband and three kids. She resides with her husband in Manhattan, NY.

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The More You Know

The more we know God and what He thinks and says, the less it matters what others think and say about us.

It's almost unexplainable, the sense of satiation and completeness that invade the heart when our eyes are fixed on the cross. At the cross of Christ, God declares not only that we are forgiven, but that we are family. He calls us children, beloved children. There is a tenderness and enduring love that characterizes our Father God.

I know when I am not fixed on this grace, because I am almost obsessed with what others think of me, and my estimation is that they look at me with condemnation.

I know, in fixing my eyes on others, that I am turning from an ocean of approval and belonging found in Christ to a puddle of imperfect love found in people. But sometimes the approval of others drives me, and it drives me right into anxiety, fear, and self-sufficiency.

As I read the Word, however, in an almost tangible way, God puts His hand to my face and lifts my chin to look at His grace. And then I am at rest again. It is well with my soul.

Because the more we know God and what He thinks and says, the less it matters what others think and say about us.

We must get this right, we must look to His grace toward us, because there is a second part of this, another side to the people-pleasing coin, and it's this:

The more we know what God wants for us, the less it matters what others want from us.

Too many times, we don't see grace in God's heart, and so we don't go to Him for the approval and love He offers freely. We are blind because we don't know the very heart of His gospel.

When we grasp grace, or at least attempt to grab hold of the ocean, we recognize that our focus has often wrongly been on what we think God wants from us. He wants our service. He wants our holiness. And so we try and try again.

But grace shows us God's heart, and what we see is that His heart is for us, and that He wants the best for us, and that everything flows from this heart.

And if God is for us, who can be against us? If God is for us, we only want to be for Him, we only want to rise to be who He created us to be.

And the more we know what God wants for us, the less it matters what others want from us.

Every single day, we must turn to look at the cross and remember what was done there for us. We don't just remember the agony, but we look at what Christ accomplished for us. He opened the door of the holy and holies and introduced us into an intimate relationship with the Father God who loves us perfectly.

And so the only way to freedom is to swim in grace's ocean and to know the heart from where it flows.

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Book Recommendation: Glimpses of Grace

When I had our first baby and settled in as a full-time homemaker, my husband came home from work each day with interesting stories and details of growing relationships in his ministry, but I quickly started dreading when he’d turn to me and ask, “What did you do today?” I managed a shower, and I changed countless diapers and nursed, that’s what, and somehow that felt both productive and completely inane at the same time.

Sometimes, on our walks around the neighborhood after dinner, he’d ask another question: “What are you reading in the Word these days?” I’m grabbing small bites before my eyelids close on me, and I can’t keep anything in for more than five seconds, that’s what, because my post-partum brain feels like a sieve.

But I wanted more. I wanted to know that my life wasn’t over and that God was at work in me and in our home. I distinctly remember thinking that all I had learned in my years of spiritual growth and sanctification leading up to that moment were being tested. The sleeplessness, self-sacrifice, and mundane were drawing out what God had already taught me in His grace. Gospel application happened countless times everyday. And, most significantly, I recognized that my home and my baby would be both my proving ground and my further education in the gospel.

This idea—that the home demonstrates and crystallizes the gospel—is the message of Gloria Furman’s new book, Glimpses of Grace: Treasuring the Gospel in Your Home, and why I resonated with it so much. The book acts as a rich theology book, encouraging women to think critically about why and how the gospel applies to the mundane of life.

I read it a few weeks ago, but I’m still mulling over what Gloria says about the spiritual life in the midst of the mundane. She puts words to what was true for me in the baby stage of motherhood: “I had allowed my spiritual life to be relegated to any easy chair with a cup of hot coffee in a quiet house without any noise or clutter or life.” She then says, “I believe it is helpful and necessary to retreat to quiet places to pray and read God’s Word. But silence is not necessary for you to have a vibrant relationship with God. Your spiritual life is not restricted to early mornings before the noisemakers in your life wake up. If you feel that God meets you with you only when the house is empty or quiet, you’ll view every noise and every noise-maker as an annoying distraction to your communion with God.”

I hadn’t thought of it quite like that, and it convicted me. God isn't just available to me in the quiet morning. He is available to me in every chaotic moment of my day, but do I turn my attention to Him? Do I see interruptions as opportunities or annoyances? The truth is, as Gloria points out, that God and His gospel are at work in and around me every day, if I just have eyes to see it.

God is available to you, too, and, when you give yourself to Him and to the transforming power of His gospel, you will find the joy and perseverance you need to thrive in the mundane.

You can find Gloria online at Domestic Kingdom or on Twitter.

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Your Differentness is Your Opportunity

I met a doctoral student in February whose dissertation is about the contribution of church planting wives to the church plant. He told me several interesting tidbits from his research, but the one that stuck out to me was about how church planting wives see themselves. He found that, when asked if they were the same as other women in their churches, church planting wives seemed eager to agree that, yes, they were. They were no different than the average church member. But his research showed that, in reality, their roles, duties, and the expectations placed on them were very different from other women.

I understood this dichotomy immediately. I can hear these women saying the same things that I say to myself: I'm no different. I'm just a typical church member. This is, in essence, my wishful thinking: I don't want to be different than everyone else. I want to be an average church member where average church member things are expected of me. Or even my feelings of inadequacy about being a church planting wife: I don't feel very good at this. I am not gifted for this. I should feel "different" from typical church members because I'm the church planting wife, but I don't.

In his research and in my interaction with church planting wives (and pastors' wives of all kinds, for that matter), I see this desire to belong to the church's community, to be seen as normal and like everybody else. I see this push-back on being "different" or having different expectations placed on us simply because of our husband's job.

I get that and have felt all those things. But in reality, we are different. Our needs and struggles aren't different, but there is just something almost unexplainable about this role that sets us apart from the typical church member. And I've discovered in my own life that being different when I don't want to be can either be a source of frustration and resentment, or it can be an opportunity.

When I choose to look at my differentness as an opportunity, I see that my options to influence, lead, minister, share, make a difference, help, and change things for the better are almost limitless. I have doors open for me just because of my role that aren't open for other people.

I find also that as I walk through those doors and use my gifts within my role, I build relationships. Within those relationships, I build trust and, within that trust, I can share my own needs and struggles and receive the ministry of those within the church community. I become less different.

But when I get scared about taking advantage of the opportunities given to me or get resentful of my differentness, I become more and more isolated and alone. My role becomes a mini-prison. I become more different.

Where are you on this?

Are you scared to fully leverage your role as an opportunity for ministry? It helps me to remember that God called me to this too, that it's not just for my husband. If He called me, He has something for me in this. He wants to use me and my gifts.

Are you isolated by your resentment of being different? The only way out is to change your perspective, to embrace your role as an opportunity. As you do this, you invite people into relationship with you, and you help create the own environment you are looking for to share yourself.

May God help you see yourself, your role, and your church with new eyes today. May He help you embrace your life as one big opportunity.

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Ready Or Not

With summer coming quickly, I needed to remind myself of the truth of this old post....

At Field Day yesterday, I told Reese's kindergarten teacher that I'm looking forward to summer, especially because I'll have all my boys home with me each day. She seemed surprised by my statement, quickly adding, "I'm so glad to hear that. I don't usually hear that from moms right before school gets out."

The truth is that my joy and attitude about summer with my boys is a new development. In the past few weeks, end-of-the-year fatigue has set in as we've gone from one activity to the next and one ministry opportunity to the next. With fatigue has come frustration over whining kids, looming deadlines, overwhelming schedules, and an unending parade of needs. As summer has approached (school lets out on Friday), my dread has risen at the thought that summer might be a continuation of the craziness.

I get like this, I must say, when my priorities are out of whack, when I'm allowing everyone's needs or desires (or my own needs and desires) to take precedence over my primary ministry: my children. They are, after all, blessings, not burdens to be squeezed into the last moments of my day. I'm experiencing this tension between ministry and family more now that my children are growing older and cannot be toted around on my hip; now that they are more acutely aware of who and what get my attention; and now that the ministry responsibilities are greater.

I spoke about this with a friend, telling her how I'm trying to fit too many things into my life and how summer will certainly make my brain explode. She smiled knowingly and succinctly summarized summer: "It's a perfect time to enjoy your relationships with your children. Don't let it slip away." She should know: her son leaves at the end of the summer for college.

After that conversation, I thought about my own children leaving for college, about what's important. When they get older, past these days when they love being together and with Kyle and me, what will have mattered are the very things, in my haste, that I'm overlooking today: relationship, affection, listening, affirmation, time together as a family.

I went home and looked each of my children directly in the eye, marveling at these young men growing up before me. Do they know, really know, how much I love them, how they are more important to me than my phone or my computer or the people in our church? I told them right then and there as I held their freckly faces and stubby hands.

Looking at them, my heart shifted. My life is not all put together nice and neat and there will be things other than my children that require my time and attention in the coming months, but, in that moment, I knew.

I'm ready for summer.

Are you ready for summer with your kids? What are you focusing on with them this summer?

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When You're Not The Cool Church

Our friend in ministry told us a story once about manning his church's table at a college ministry fair. Because his table was assigned just outside the student center, he was stationed in the blazing hot summer sun and, as a result, stationed to a table where no one wanted to be.

To make matters worse, just inside the sliding glass doors--the doors that opened with a whoosh of air conditioning--was the table for The Cool Church. Each time the doors slid open and our friend looked in, raucous laughter spilled out and students gathered in hoards around their table. As our friend told it, he felt on the outside looking in, like the junior high kid wanting to be invited to the cool kids' table. And his church's table wasn't the cool kids' table.

We laughed together about that story because we've been there, too. We know what it's like to not be The Cool Church, The Cool Pastor, or The Cool Pastor's Wife. We know what it's like for people to leave our church in search of greener pastures or to follow the crowd to the latest and greatest church in town. We know what it's like to be openly compared to other churches and fall short in the comparison. 

Most of us are not at the cool kids' table, and when we're not The Cool Church, it can be frustrating and annoying. But it can also reveal our hearts. What I've found is that hearing about how great other churches are can, if I'm not on guard against it, create a sense of competition, pride, and even self-condemnation in me. I too easily turn to criticism, judgment, and jealousy of others rather than to gratefulness at God's movement and a sense of partnership among churches.    

It's like I think only one can win. Or like it's about winning in the first place. 

And this is probably why we've never been The Cool Church--because God has had to do a lot of work in my heart. 

The main thing He's taught me in our average-ness is to fix my eyes on Him rather than on others. When I do this, He leads me to consider some questions. How is He using our church? What are our strengths as a church? Why does He have us in our city? Because there are answers to those questions. They may not be glamorous, but there are good things happening in and around us. The same goes for me. What are my specific gifts? Why does God have me in the church that I'm in? There are answers to those questions, too, and, although not spectacular, they are positive answers.

The second part of this is that when my eyes are on Him and I take these questions to Him, He reminds me that I am not responsible for making myself or my church "cool", but I am responsible for my faithfulness. Am I being in faithful with what He's given me in the place where He's put me? That's all I can do, and that's all I'm supposed to do. Sometimes faithfulness doesn't result in measurable responses. Sometimes (most of times?) faithfulness happens in the unseen.

The Cool Church and The Cool Pastor are being asked the same questions. God does different things with different churches and people, but in the end, He's looking for our faithfulness in what He's given us.

Perhaps you're not The Cool Church or The Cool Pastor's Wife. Maybe God is protecting you from something your heart can't handle. Or maybe He's just not all that concerned about your cool factor in the first place. But there is one thing He's most definitely concerned with.

And that's your faithfulness to Him. 

How do you fight comparison and competition when people talk about or leave for The Cool Church? 

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The Fruit of Motherhood

My oldest child, Will, turned 10 on Sunday.

Ten.

Ten whole years of him, of me as a mom, of more than Kyle and me in the house. Will was born after a difficult labor and after I was whisked away to the operating room. They showed him to me while the doctor stitched, and I couldn't see anything but a blur of tears.

In the recovery room, I moved the blanket back to see his fingers and toes. His legs were skinny. At 10, they still are, and if you look at him from behind, he looks exactly like my dad, who also had a birthday on Sunday. In these 10 years, under those skinny legs, he's grown up tall and strong.

There were days in these 10 years when I didn't know if we'd make it here. There were years when he didn't talk, when I had to tell him to tell me that he loved me and teach him how to hug me. There were years when he couldn't answer a simple question, when there was no curiosity, when there was little hope.

We took his friend with us to celebrate his birthday. His friend. He has a friend.

I watched him from behind as they bowled together. His legs are still skinny but his shoulders are broadening. I feel like he's mine but yet I'm watching him become his own person. Something is happening. He's growing up, yes, but this is the year that I can feel something else happening.

I can feel the fruit of motherhood starting to grow up big and strong.

Because in those years when it was quiet and when hugs were forced and when there was a disconnect between us, I didn't always love motherhood. I loved my son, but I didn't love motherhood. Because parenting a special needs child can feel like working really hard but not having anything to show for it.

It's very humbling.

And so very sweet. I suppose it's just that the sweetness takes a little longer to dig down into. And it's also that, through this little boy, God has altered my idea of what motherhood actually is. Motherhood is not raising a boy to play quarterback or planning elaborate birthday parties. It's not about helping our kids make friends or having them in the "right" circles. It's not about activities or education, although these are important.

No, motherhood is the everyday responses and interactions with our children. Motherhood is a matter of the heart, of mine and of what I'm imparting into my children's hearts.

This boy made me a mother and, by God stripping away everything I thought motherhood meant, taught me how to be a mother.

I feel him growing up under those skinny legs, growing into something I couldn't have begun to imagine on the day I peeked through my tears at him.

And I feel me growing up too, growing into the fruit of motherhood.

It's so sweet.

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Church Planting Wife: What to Expect

As we prepared to parachute plant, my husband read countless church planting books and talked to a few experienced planters to get their perspectives and wisdom. I picked up one or two of his books and even read over his shoulder a few times, but the strategies and how-to's that filled the books didn't seem pertain to me at all. What exactly does the wife of a church planter do? I shrugged my shoulders and plunged into church planting with approximately zero idea of what to expect and a few vague predictions of what this endeavor might mean for me and for our family life.

Wow. I probably should have talked to someone or done something to prepare other than jumping in blindly. Because what happened in the first few years was nothing like what I had imagined or expected. And because it looked so different, I thought I could possibly be the worst church planting wife ever.

To save you perhaps a year or two of confusion and questioning your sanity, I'll do what the church planting books filled with ideas and strategies didn't do for me. I'll tell you what you, the church planting wife, can expect in the first few years. Here goes:

It's going to be hard. Hard work. And discouraging, want-to-give-up hard.
You already know it's going to be hard, but you're thinking it's going to be hard for a little bit and then miracles are going to happen that erase any discomfort or difficulty. This miracle probably won't happen. Instead, it's going to take ongoing, intense hard work for multiple years to get this thing off the ground. This hard work is not reserved for your husband. Your work and responsibility level will be different than your husband's, but church planting will require almost an equal amount of hard work out of you.

There will be times that you will want to give up or get out from under the burden that you're carrying because of how weary or discouraged you are. You may question yourself, your husband, and God. You may wonder if you will ever see fruit from your efforts.

And these are all good things, part of the process of sifting you and crafting you into the minister that God wants you to be. If God has called you to this work, He is calling you into a process of refinement that is both difficult and sweet. Expect it and embrace it.

You're going to have a paradigm shift.

The end result of God's sifting through the difficulty of church planting is a paradigm shift. You can expect that God will give you new eyes for people, toward your own heart, and, especially toward Him. You will learn that, just as John 15 says, you truly cannot do anything apart from Christ in you. You will learn to depend on the Lord in a way that you have never been challenged to before. You may realize that your faith has never been truly tested until this point. 

At some point, you will recognize that Christ and His gospel are the only things keeping you in the process, working hard, striking up one more conversation, and having one more family over. And you will recognize the infinite worth of Who you've given your life to and Who you're working for. 

This is both difficult and sweet. Expect it and embrace it.

You're going to face spiritual warfare.
Spiritual warfare is real and you will face it in church planting, although you may not recognize it when it comes. It probably won't be a community leader or an unbelieving neighbor shouting at you in the street or picketing your church, although I guess you can't rule anything out. The spiritual warfare you'll face will primarily be with your own flesh and it will primarily affect your marriage. You'll face deep discouragement together and the enemy will try turning you against one another through resentment, anger, blame, blurred boundaries between ministry and marriage, or just plain exhaustion.

Be on guard for spiritual warfare; look for where it comes. The sooner you learn to recognize how the enemy attempts to drive a wedge between you and God and you and your husband, the sooner you can call a spade a spade and flee from the lies into the truth.

This is not something to fear, just something to recognize and see it as something that drives you into the powerful arms of your Savior. This is both difficult and sweet. Expect it and embrace it.

You're going to be called upon to do a variety of things, things that you may or may not want to do or be gifted for.
You are starting a church. There isn't a secretary, a children's minister, a janitor, or, if you're like us, there isn't even a building. There are lots of needs and jobs to go around, but few hands to fill them. Expect to be asked to fill a few roles that you don't love and don't necessarily want to do. Prepare yourself for this because you want to do these joyfully until you can hand them off or delegate them to someone else, which you should do as soon as possible.

This is both difficult and sweet. Expect it and embrace it.

You will know God in a new way.
There is so much you will learn by stepping out in faith, but the best thing you will learn is that God is faithful and capable of doing supernatural work that you yourself cannot do.

This is sweet. Expect it and enjoy it.

Experienced church planting wives, what else can a new church planting wife expect?

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