Husband-wife pastors juggle family, congregation
DETROIT — It’s a picture-perfect Sunday morning.
The white steeple of Clarkston United Methodist Church pierces a clear, blue sky. Inside the sanctuary, the blue walls echo nature’s serenity and cocoon 140 or so churchgoers.
Summer casual substitutes for Sunday best, and even the ministers shed their robes in the summertime heat.
The Rev. Amy Mayo-Moyle, the church’s associate pastor, reads the Lord’s Prayer and makes announcements, highlighting the congregation’s upcoming “Fun Car” event. She draws chuckles from the congregation when she shares that her daughter wanted to know if there would be clown cars, too. Allison Mayo-Moyle, 8, sitting in a nearby pew, covers her face, chagrined.
It’s a moment — parent embarrassing offspring — often shared with family and friends. But Mayo-Moyle’s husband, the father of their two children, isn’t in the pews, or anywhere near. That’s because the Rev. Michael Mayo-Moyle is presiding over his own ser
vice at First United Methodist Church of Byron, about 45 minutes away.
The only time these two married ministers are at the same service is during their cherished summer trip to a Methodist clergy family camp, held in August in northern Michigan.
“That’s the one time we sit together as family,” says Amy Mayo-Moyle, 36. “And we’re just parents dealing with squirrely kids.” Clergy camp, she says, fosters a “feeling like we’re going to be OK. Our marriage is going be OK. Our kids are going to be OK. Our congregations are going to be OK.”
As more women enter the ministry, the phenomenon of the clergy couple grows.
In some mainline denominations that ordain women — United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran, Presbyterian Church USA and Episcopalian — the number of clergy couples swelled about 15 years ago, said Scott Thumma of the Hartford Seminary, Hartford Institute for Religious Research in Connecticut.
But in some evangelical, African-American and non denominational churches, clergy couples are more common and the number is growing, said Thumma.
The Salvation Army has long placed husband- wife couples in ministry together.
In July, two husband-wife teams were named to top positions for the Salvation Army’s Eastern Michigan Division.
In the Presbyterian Church USA, an estimated 16 percent to 22 percent of married ministers are married to another minister, according to Deborah Bruce, a church researcher. About 35 percent of 13,264 ministers are women.
Margaret Harms, an executive assistant for the Southeast Michigan Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, identified seven clergy couples working locally.
To glean from others how to grow a healthy family in the fishbowl of church life, Amy Mayo-Moyle helped start a clergy family camp.
As associate pastor of the Clarkston, Mich., church, she and her family live in a nearby church-owned home. Her husband’s pastorship comes with a residence, but the church is renting it out.
When their two children, Allison, 8, and Ben, 4, were younger, the couple hired a baby-sitter to accompany the kids to church, switching weekends between each parents’ church. Now that the kids are older, they often go to the same Sunday school service twice on Sundays while Mom ministers in the sanctuary — “the lesson is really reinforced.”
Amy Mayo-Moyle strives to make sure her kids “aren’t an accessory to my career.”
Michael Mayo-Moyle, 37, who was a hard-rock DJ before entering the seminary, says clergy couples have to make sure there are boundaries.
“You’ve got to make time for each other, so it’s not just about church,” he says.
