Missionary Marriage Issues: Marriage or Ministry?
- Approximate Time Commitment: 20 minutes
Why write a book about issues in missionary marriages when so many books about marriage are available? The reason is because married couples living in cultures other than their passport culture face some issues that make marriage more difficult than it is for people remaining at “home.”
The booklets found in this series cover many issues that married couples struggle with in the mission field. Each booklet has been read and edited by Bob and Norma Jean Erny, who have read each chapter as it was written. They were each married more than 40 years to their first spouses, and after those spouses died, they married each other, giving them more than a century of marriage in three marriages.
Resource Description
Article
When faced with competing demands and “impossible” schedules, missionaries may feel trapped into making very difficult choices. They may feel like they have to choose one thing over another, often forced to choose one good thing over another.
Marriage or ministry?
On April 4, 1793, William Carey thought that was the choice he had to make as he took his 8-year-old son and boarded a ship to become a missionary to India. He was leaving his pregnant wife, Dorothy, and their other two sons. He did not want to leave his wife and break up his family, but he apparently believed he had to choose between marriage and ministry. When he could not reach India at that time, he returned home and was able to convince Dorothy to come with him, but his ministry was still more important than his marriage. Things did not go well with his marriage in India. After Dorothy’s death in 1808 William married Charlotte in 1809. By then he realized that he did not have to choose between ministry and marriage but that he had to blend ministry with marriage. William and Charlotte were able to build a loving relationship in ministry. After her death in 1821 William said that his wife’s death was the greatest loss a man could live with. Today probably no church or agency would allow anyone to break up marriage and family to go the field. However, even today some people still believe that the choice has to be between marriage and ministry. If marriage and ministry schedules conflict, some choose ministry over marriage thinking that they must make an “either-or” decision.
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