This week, we took 25 couples interested in church-planting to a lodge to talk about four things:

• planter’s character and competencies
• planter’s marriage and family
• planter’s core team
• planter’s church

I only snagged one picture, but it was probably my  favorite moment anyway:

At one point a few amazing women shared and taught a room full of church planter and future church planter couples about being married to crazy men called pastors.

They talked about resisting the urge to try to be perfect examples and instead to be examples in their neediness, about serving out of gifting and not because they’re a pastor’s wife, about the inevitable strain certain seasons bring and being aware of those seasons…

They shared stories of very recent hard times that reminded them that ‘pastors-wife’ is not an identity but that they are daughters of a loving King that happen to be married to pastors.