As women in ministry, we have many roles. All ministers must balance various roles including teacher or preacher, counselor, writer, custodian, mover-of-the-chairs, bus driver, business meeting moderator, etc. For those of us women ministers who are also married with children we have other roles like primary caretaker of children, maker of mac-n-cheese, clothing launderer, bedtime story-teller, and much, much more.
Indeed, men who are ministers also balance many roles outside of their workplace, but studies have shown that the potential for ‘interrole conflict’ is higher for women since we typically keep many culturally-defined gender roles when we enter the workforce.
Interrole conflict has been defined as a type of conflict that arises when multiple roles of a person’s life seemingly have competing interests and pressures.
A 2008 article from the Journal of Psychology and Christianity (full reference below) reports that there are many benefits to women who pursue multiple roles like career and motherhood, especially when those roles are considered spiritual callings. Major benefits reported are less psychological stress and being less prone to depression. While some women may experience interrole conflict between career and motherhood, those of us who feel our careers are callings from God have less conflict.
In other words, even though we seem to more readily experience this interrole conflict – as woman/mother ministers we are, on-the-whole, happier people. When we know that God has called us to be both mother and minister, making choices about balancing time and energy can become a little less stressful.
As I recently read the article described here I decided that if mulitple roles/callings meant lower stress and depression, then it was okay for me to take on one more role/calling…the call to be me. I may be a minister, mother, wife, event planner, student, counselor, and friend all in the same day, but how many times in that day do I take time to accept the call to be me?
There are things that I like to do – something people typically call ‘hobbies’ which are often a foreign concept to the mom/minister. But I have trouble letting myself take time for these because it takes away from the minister/mom dichotomy which requires so much balance already. But I’m beginning to learn that when we take the time to add in the role of ‘me’, the other roles we balance benefit from having a more complete person enacting them.
So I say thank you to the authors of the article mentioned above. They have taught me that despite the struggles I face in balancing life as a woman/mother/minister, chances are that I will be a happier person because I have not rejected God’s multiple callings on my life. And I say thank you to my husband, who affirms that multiple roles make a healthier woman/mother/minister by regularly reminding me that it’s okay to go play golf!
Article cited: Kerris Oates, M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall, Tamara Anderson, Michele Willingham, “Pursuing Multiple Callings: The Implications of Balancing Career and Motherhood for Women in the Church,” Journal of Psychology and Christianity 27, no. 3, 227-37.
