How I Changed Church Tradition

It is a natural occurrence over the process of time for traditions to become established, either intentionally or unintentionally. Traditions become established in the workplace, in families, in churches, and in possibly any situation where people gather together with regularity.

Someone does something or takes a particular course of action which then becomes a tradition.

This action is continuously repeated and then passed on even to following generations. Everyone happily accepts that this is how it is done without the thought crossing anyone’s mind as to how or why the tradition was commenced or the reasoning behind it.

Tradition is not a bad thing and in some situations is actually a very good thing. For example our family has a tradition where our home is the gathering place after the Good Friday service for enjoying hot cross buns together.

Tradition becomes dangerous though when it eventuates to being set in concrete, unchangeable, controlling and making no allowance for change.

Every church, over time, develops its own set of traditions and some of these are the responsibilities, requirements and expectations for the pastor’s wife.

These are a few of the traditions pastor’s wives have told me are required of them for no other reason than ‘the pastor’s wife has always done that’ : Play a musical instrument, assist in children’s church, visit the sick, prepare communion, fold the newsletter, lead the women’s ministry, have people home for Sunday lunch, have a church key at her house with 24/7 availability.

In my situation as pastor’s wife I inherited a number of traditions from the previous pastor’s wife which I embraced and continued to practice until one day the light dawned brightly that I actually didn’t enjoy a number of the things I was doing.

So after pumping up my courage I started changing and adjusting and training other people to fulfil these roles, which enabled me to be the pastor’s wife who was an expression of myself rather than of a previous generational model.

One of the traditions I broke was I stopped having people home for Sunday lunch after church. My Sunday was pressured enough without adding the additional pressure of having a clean house, preparing a meal for guests and managing tired, grumpy children with guests present.

Another was to cease from standing at the front door of the church to shake hands and chat with congregants as they departed from the building. I much preferred to engage in deeper conversation and pray with people in the auditorium.

Another was every baby born to a church member was given a lovely hand knitted, by the pastor’s wife, jacket as a gift.

Continuing this one was just setting myself up for failure so I delegated baby gifts to a lady who loved craft and incorporated baby gifts as part of the women’s ministry.

The scribes and Pharisees came to Jesus and asked, ‘Why do your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?’

Jesus responded by asking them, ‘Why do you transgress by having traditions?’ (My paraphrase) Matt 15:1-3

I pose the question to you pastor’s wife, ‘What do you do in, for and around your church purely because it is a tradition for the pastor’s wife to do so?’

I pose the question to church oversight, ‘What does your pastor’s wife do, is expected or required to do in your church because ‘the pastor’s wife has always done it?’