To Truly Love, Intentionally

An Encouragement for Ministry Wives as 2025 Comes to an End

As 2025 comes to an end, my heart feels stirred to encourage you, dear ministry wife, to love. Not a rushed love. Not a forced love. But a true, intentional love.

This does not mean we need to go outside hugging everyone with wild, free hugs. Love does not have to be loud or public to be real. Love is often quiet, steady, and deeply intentional.

God has already placed people around you. The ones He has sent into your life, your home, your church, your season. Those are the people we are called to love well. To truly see them. To truly care.

Scripture reminds us so clearly “He has told you, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: to do what is right, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God.”
Micah 6:8

To love faithfulness. To love mercy. This kind of love does not reduce people to numbers, burdens, or job descriptions. It does not see someone as another task to manage or another role to fill. People are not projects. Souls are not checklists.

If God places one person in front of you, pray for them. Care for them. Disciple them. One soul is never small in the kingdom of God.

As ministry wives, our husbands serve in different positions, in churches of different sizes, with different expectations placed upon them. Yet we share so much more than we sometimes realize. Can we care for one another too?

We live in a time overflowing with resources, books, podcasts, conferences, and a generation that knows how to talk about boundaries. And many of those tools are helpful. But we, perhaps more than most, know this truth well: our first and most important ministry is our home.

Our husband.
Our children.
The people God entrusted to us first.

This is not unclear. Scripture is clear. We should never be surprised by unrealistic expectations coming from church members or even deacons. Sadly, that happens. But it is deeply concerning when those expectations come from another ministry wife.

Recently, in a very closed ministry wives group, I read a post that stopped me in my tracks. Someone shared frustration that they had just hired “a family.” Let us pause right there.

Unless the entire family is on payroll, you did not hire a family. You hired the one whose name is on the contract.

This wife was frustrated that a brand new worship and youth pastor’s wife, with small children, was choosing to care for her kids and her household instead of immediately going out to meet people or help around.

Sisters, this should never surprise us.

It is deeply aggravating, especially at the end of 2025, to see a pastor’s wife bashing another pastor’s wife who has just moved to a new church, is navigating a new season, and is doing exactly what Scripture calls her to do: loving her family well.

Can we stop expecting ministry wives to prove their faithfulness through exhaustion?
Can we stop measuring obedience by visibility?
Can we stop confusing availability with faithfulness?

True love is patient. True love gives space. True love protects the home. True love does not demand what God never required.

As I talk with so many ministry wives, counseling, listening, praying, and often crying together, this plea keeps rising in my heart. Can we love one another?

Ministry is already hard enough. Let us not be the reason it becomes heavier. Let us not add wounds where God desires healing. My heart hurts every time I hear stories like this, stories of criticism, comparison, and unrealistic expectations coming from within our own circles.

And then we step back and ask why church attendance is decreasing. Why are people weary? Why families burn out. Do we really need more research to understand why?

Scripture speaks plainly “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another.” John 13:34

This kind of love protects. It covers. It assumes the best. It chooses grace. It does not tear down another woman who is already carrying more than we can see.

So guard your heart, my sister. Guard your heart carefully. “Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life.” Proverbs 4:23 

May we be women who build and not break. Who encourages and not accuses. Who walk humbly, love faithfully, and reflect Christ in how we treat one another.

Let us truly love, intentionally love, as we step into whatever God has next. For His glory and for the good of His church.

Happy New Year sisters!

Love,

Andrea Anderegg