As the 188th Annual Meeting of the Mississippi Baptist Convention prepared to convene, ministry wives from across the state gathered Oct. 28 for fellowship and encouragement during the Mississippi Baptist Convention Board’s Ministry Wives Conference.
Heather Johnson, a pastor’s wife and assistant director and instructor for Thrive, the Ministry Wives Certificate Program at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and Leavell College, led 76 women in a two-part study exhorting them to be full of joy and filled with peace as they serve faithfully in the church.
‘Commonness to the calling’
“There is a commonness to the calling of ministry that helps ministry wives to connect with each other even if you don’t know each other, even if you’ve never met,” Johnson said. “I like to describe our lives as ministry wives in this way: We are women who live our lives on the fringes of other people’s lives in all the seasons of their lives while trying to live our own lives while the Lord uses our husbands to pour into others’ lives. What a gift and a privilege. What a burden and a joy.”
Johnson began her first session by focusing on the impact a minister’s calling has not only on his life, but on that of his wife and family as well. Referencing the Lord’s calling of Abram in Genesis 12:1-5, she highlighted the faith it took for his entire family to leave everything familiar and step out into the unknown.
“There is a whole family that is making this move, that is going with him,” Johnson noted. “We just don’t know how this thing is going to play out. Not year by year, not decade by decade, not season by season, but we have to learn to trust God with it all, especially in the unknown because He knows. So if we want to live lives full of joy and filled with peace, we need to trust God with the unknown.”
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Megan Young and originally published by the Baptist Record.
