Equipped for Pastoral Ministry: Part 2

Review of "Becoming the Pastor's Wife" by Beth Allison Barr

Note to the reader: This newsletter mentions SA.

I was sitting at my kitchen table reading the penultimate chapter of Beth Allison Barr’s most recent book, Becoming the Pastor’s Wife. About halfway through, my heart quickened and my throat constricted. I was reading about how, even after people warned the SBC of Maria Acacia’s husband’s abuse and immorality, he was allowed to continue to serve as a pastor for years in the SBC to the detriment of his wife and his parishioners.¹ Although I did not grow up Southern Baptist, the story felt familiar. Baptist tentacles have a far reach, and I grew up in an environment where “forgive and forget” was a common trope in the story of my Baptist experience.

Then another feeling washed over me—my heart swelled with pride. Tears began to stream down my face. I have only followed Beth for a year now. After I finished The Making of Biblical Womanhood, I jumped at the chance to be on her launch team for this book. From woman to woman, I felt so proud of the tremendous scope of work Beth put into Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, and then taking that work and adding the care and love necessary to turn it into something truly special.

Like a lawyer building a case for a jury, Beth guides the reader from beginning to end, systematically peeling back the layers of what it was like to be an ancient woman serving the church alongside her husband, to how it evolved into the role of the pastor’s wife today within the Southern Baptist Convention. Though the book's focus primarily puts a magnifying glass on the pastor’s wife’s role within the SBC, it is also representative of other conservative evangelical denominations that have marginalized women into roles in the church that deny them opportunities to be ordained and to preach and teach to a “mixed” crowd.

In Becoming the Pastor's Wife, Barr reveals through her extensive research and purposeful storytelling how Christian women in ancient times and the recent past were free to serve as pastors and how they were deliberately silenced in conservative denominations within the past five decades. Many women were and continue to be pigeonholed into ministry work that does not align with the gifts God gave them or the calling they were meant to fulfill. Barr weaves her own story throughout the book and shares stories of brave women who stood firm in their conviction to serve as pastors and fought to preserve that right for future generations.

Beth makes many important points in her book, one of the most salient to me is when she ties in sex abuse scandals with gender hierarchy in the SBC. She says,

“Don’t you find it interesting that at the same moment the SBC was building its male-only leadership model, it was protecting a male pastor who had confessed to clergy sexual abuse? For more than five decades, conservative evangelical theology has been teaching an increasingly restrictive gender hierarchy that privileges male power and authority while subordinating and marginalizing women. The sex abuse scandals that are currently plaguing the SBC are not anomalous; rather, they are the product of a systematic culture that teaches that women are worth less than men. Such a culture teaches it is okay to “forgive and forget” when a man admits to causing harm to a woman and her family; it allows such a man to remain in ministry until his voluntary retirement.”²

To speak to her point personally, when I served as a missionary in Mexico, a male Baptist Bible Fellowship International missionary and pastor from the States who had served in Mexico for over four decades, propositioned me for sex. He was very well practiced—I could tell he had done this before. Each time I saw him, he tried to talk to me or give me small touches on my arm, even cupping my face with his hands once. This time he made it known that he was available if I was. I was humiliated and traumatized, but because of my previous experience with conservative churches, I knew I would never be believed. I stayed silent even though I highly suspected Mexican national women were his prey, too. Last year, when I finally tried to report him, the mission board wanted me to eventually have a face-to-face meeting with him for "reconciliation" purposes (forgive and forget). I was advised by the nonprofit that represented me that this organization was not safe and all their expectations were unreasonable. I wrote them a letter listing the missionary's offenses and begged them to hire an independent organization to investigate his ministry. I don’t know if they ever did. Do you see how the “systematic culture that teaches that women are worth less than men”³ is so dangerous? My religious system taught me how to be quiet and make excuses for men who did and said dirty things.

Thankfully, I am finding my voice now. While I was reading Becoming the Pastor’s Wife, a teacher of mine this year tried to persuade me to join a chaplain endorsing organization that does not allow women to be ordained. I told him I did not think I could join because they denied ordination to women. He said, “Well, you can still get ordained, just don’t tell them.” I wasn’t surprised at all that he said that. I have found that many conservative evangelical churches operate in secrecy. The appealing part of the process was that they made it easy for women to be endorsed by the organization, and there was a promise of a solid career. Other endorsing organizations require anyone who joins to be ordained, which could take about three years for me. It was so tempting to take the easy route, but I’m so thankful that the Holy Spirit encouraged me to walk away from that opportunity and do the difficult work of pursuing ordination. Beth’s book was an integral part of my decision-making in this area. She encouraged me through her own story and those of women who went before me and did the difficult work of advocating for themselves and others to be pastors.

Thank you,

Beth Allison Barr

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I don’t know what it feels like to be a pastor's wife in a conservative denomination, but I do know what it is like to be a missionary's wife. My husband John and I were commissioned as missionaries together. We did ministry side by side, encouraging and comforting one another in the joys and sorrows of ministry. He would tell you that we did the same work, yet only he was considered qualified to be ordained and preach to churches back in the States, simply because he was a man and I was a woman. I am so thankful to be his wife; he has never held me back from doing ministry or told me I could not do something because of my gender. As I stood with him proudly at his ordination service, I know he will stand with me one day. What a gift I have in him.

1. Barr, Beth Allison. Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2025.

2. Ibid, 180.

3. Ibid.