In this Season 4 finale episode of the Ministry Wives Podcast, sit down with my husband Kyle Hoover and me for another Q & A episode. We wanted to give you more details following our episode with the Mandrells. We share about how God transformed our marriage during the COVID season, how that time served as a catalyst for my new book, as well as how God has been walking with us during our current trial with one of our children.

“I would say we did push through, but at the same time I think we gave ourselves permission to not do some of the things that we normally would’ve done, and that’s okay. And, we pushed through with community. We had people who knew what we were going through and knew that we needed prayer and space and encouragement. We didn’t just push through isolated.”

-Christine Hoover

“I think what I enjoyed about the book is that it’s not just a fairytale; it’s a story of trusting the Lord in the midst and believing that God will take care of you and also call upon you to trust him and obey him. I appreciate that it wasn’t just a movie script kind of an ending where it’s ‘they all ended up being happy’. It’s a gritty story of faith and trust.”

-Kyle Hoover

“When I think about the prayers of God’s people for us and the care, it’s like a crowd surfing at a concert. I feel like we in some ways have probably even been protected from more suffering and pain because people have carried us through and lifted us and passed us along. I love that picture because that’s what it feels like. It feels like we’re being carried not just by people, but by the Lord.”

-Christine Hoover

You Are Not Forgotten

How We Love

Crosspoint Ministries

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Wisely navigating relationships between men and women is a vital but sometimes difficult conversation we need to be having with one another and our husbands. In this follow-up episode, long-time ministry wife and Ministry Wife Ministry Partner Amy Petersen helps walk us through the specifics of wisely cultivating these relationships. She stresses the importance of open communication regarding boundaries and how personality and baggage play into those boundaries. Amy and Christine also discuss the role of spiritual health and how it is critical to employing wisdom and discernment in this area.

• Create boundaries that both you and your husband are comfortable with.

• Assessing your spiritual health/maturity is critical for navigating these areas wisely.

• If you do have concerns regarding a relationship, lay them out before the Lord and ask Him for wisdom and then have a conversation with your husband.

“There’s just really no set equation for how it should look. I think that it just needs to be customized based on what you’re comfortable with, as long as you’re healthy. That’s the other piece to this. Am I healthy? Is my husband healthy? Is this other person healthy? Healthiness is huge.”

-Amy Petersen

“I think sometimes in these situations, I might feel some things about somebody, but need to really discern, ‘Is this more of a me issue? Is this something going on with me or is this genuinely something I need to bring to my husband?’ I do think in general, if we have concerns, we should bring it to our husband, but we need to be very clear about what it is that we’re concerned about and what we’re requesting.”

-Christine Hoover

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The Lord gifts each of us and our spouses so differently, and sometimes those giftings require sacrifices of different kinds as we respond to the call of the Lord in a given season. Singer/songwriter Caroline Cobb joins me today to describe her husband’s volunteer position as a lay elder at their church and how she supports him and the local church through that ministry.

• Though a lay elder is unpaid, their time is invaluable and vital to the health of the church.

• As a lay elder’s wife, wisdom needs to be employed to balance supporting your husband as he counsels others but also maintaining privacy of those walking through trials.

• You can support your elder husband and your church through consistent prayer.

“I think when he is sharing with me what he needs support in. So I might not know all the details of a marriage that’s falling apart or who it even is, but I know that there’s a marriage falling apart and that he’s ministering to them. He won’t share their story because that’s their story to tell me. And yet, at the same time, if he didn’t tell me about it at all, I wouldn’t be able to support him and care for him as a wife. So it’s a little bit of a dance and there’s a lot of wisdom that needs to happen there.”

-Caroline Cobb

“As I’m praying for him, this is part of the way I’m serving our church. There’s freedom to serve in so many different ways, but part of the way I’m serving our church is by serving and loving and supporting my husband.”

-Caroline Cobb

Advent for Exiles

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Walking into a church for the first time can be a very scary experience for newcomers. Sometimes it feels just as scary for us to approach and invite them into our circle. Pastor’s wife, author, and podcaster Jen Oshman shares her practical tips for creating a culture of welcome within the church. Jen tells us how welcome helped draw her to Christ, reminds us who Jesus says our primary family truly is, and encourages us to embrace the awkward in welcome culture.

• Treat those who are alone or new in your church with urgency. Stop what you’re doing and intentionally draw them in.

• Ask God during the week, “Who do you want me to have eyes to see this Sunday?”

• Set a tone of welcome among the leaders in your church, and make the hard choice to choose welcoming newcomers over spending time with friends on Sundays.

“Welcome is so much more than a greeting. I need to genuinely go toward people and welcome them not just to Sunday morning, but maybe to my home after church, maybe to another small group leader’s home, maybe to a women’s Bible study. How can I take that extra step to go beyond Sunday morning and welcome them at least initially somehow into my life and into my circle?”

-Jen Oshman

“I think we have lost a vision for our primary family being the family of God, our primary eternal siblings, mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles. It’s not actually our biological family or our nuclear family, but HIS primary family. Our primary family is those who walk with Jesus, those who follow him.”

-Jen Oshman

“It’s just going to be awkward, and that’s okay.”

-Jen Oshman

Welcome: Loving Your Church by Making Space for Everyone

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We live in a broken world full of pain and suffering. We are bound to suffer trauma and grief; how do we navigate that pain as believers? Pastor’s wife, writer and podcaster Danielle Kelly joins the show today to share how God invited her into biblical lament as a lifestyle and how choosing to trust God’s character in the process transformed her life and relationship with Him.

• Biblical lament is more than crying aloud with your grief; it’s grieving with a purpose that draws you into deeper trust in God.

• On the other side of entering lament with Jesus is beauty, joy, and new growth.

• Embrace lament as a lifestyle that will ebb and flow throughout your life. Make space for it whenever it arrives.

“One of the things that God started to show me is that lament is beautiful because I was scared of it. I said ‘Okay, I see you inviting me into this, but I feel like it’s a dark pit that I can’t see the other side of, and I don’t know what’s at the bottom of that pit.’ But Jesus is on the other side and He has lament with a purpose, our lament is not empty. He’s a savior that knows lament well and His invitation is not something He hasn’t walked through Himself.”

-Danielle Kelly

“When you sit in the darkness of lament with the Lord and allow Him to comfort you, to minister to you, to speak to you…then He starts to water you. Then all of a sudden beauty comes out of it and you are able to sing. You are able to worship, you are able to have a different perspective, but it has to go through a process of sitting in the darkness and feeling all the feelings and being there.”

-Danielle Kelly

Dark Clouds Deep Mercy

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On this special episode of the Ministry Wives Podcast, Christine hands the microphone over to Lynley and Ben Mandrell as special guest hosts. Christine and Kyle open up about a very vulnerable time in their life and marriage, the lessons God taught them, and the book that was born out of that season, “You Are Not Forgotten,” out April 23.

“I think the main thing I learned was that God really does see me, and that’s why I wrote this book. These truths are holding me now as we’re going through a whole different season of suffering. I have not doubted God in our current suffering because I know what He did for me when I felt so buried, He saw me and He pulled me out.”

-Christine Hoover

“One thing I learned in that time was that I often thought about ministry as outside of my home, meaning other people that are not in my family. I thought of my kids as part of my ministry, but I rarely thought about Kyle as my ministry, and we just did not carve out time for one another. But I look back now and I see that we were giving of ourselves to everyone else except for one another, and we had to carve out some extensive time to work through these things and to come back together. I would say we haven’t just come back together, but we have a new marriage and a healthier marriage, a happier marriage.”

-Christine Hoover

“I think in marriage, you can just keep going on cruise control. I think having times of dedicated work towards, what are those repeated conflict points that we have? What are the things that keep popping up? Who do we want to be as a married couple moving into the future? What are our blind spots? We need to be intentional with our time and energy to realize that our marriage needs that kind of attention as well.”

-Kyle Hoover

You Are Not Forgotten

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In theory, we should always desire to serve God in ministry to honor and obey him, but in practice, we may sometimes find ourselves struggling with our motivations in ministry. We struggle with what we think we “should” do, wanting to please others, even wanting recognition for our service. Pastor’s wife Krissie Inserra shares how God has worked on the motivations of her heart in the last 16 years of their Tallahassee church plant. Krissie explains how God has taught her who He created her to be and how she recognizes the different seasons of life God has placed her. She also shares the importance of frequent heart checks, ridding her heart of glory-seeking motivations.

• Don’t fall prey to people pleasing behaviors. Ask God how He has gifted you and serve in those areas.

• Be aware of what season you are in. You may be called to operate in a lot of ministry in church or you may be called to operate in ministry heavily within your home.

• Regularly check your heart. Prideful motivations of wanting to be known can creep up unexpectedly.

“If I’m really honest with myself, my motivation can sometimes be so that my name is out there. Why? I don’t know. Because that’s just our human nature. We want to be known. I have to check myself on that all the time.”

-Krissie Inserra

“Those of you just starting in this, you’re probably going to make mistakes and maybe do too much or not do enough and then realize, ‘I’m not going to do that again.’ Ministry is a lot of learning as you go and learning from your mistakes. Praise God that He is a gracious God who forgives and who is bigger than our mistakes.”

-Krissie Inserra

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God calls us to serve in so many different ministry contexts. Sometimes we’ll be called to serve in large spaces with hundreds of people, and sometimes God calls us into small environments with less than 10. Church planting wife Wendy Ortiz shares her experiences serving in small churches both in the US and Puerto Rico. She explains the joys and challenges of small environments, including God’s work in her heart regarding letting go of control.

• Small churches allow a family-like atmosphere as well as an unearthing of gifts that may be overlooked in larger churches.

• Don’t fall into the comparison trap. God will decide how big He wants your church to be. Focus on being a faithful steward.

• Encourage your husband, celebrate every victory, and be intentional about connecting with other church planting wives.

“What would I say to myself? God is going to do what He wants to do. Don’t worry. Just be obedient, do what He calls you to do and help your husband and don’t be an obstacle for him.”

-Wendy Ortiz

“We are a family, so we know each other very well. We may have misunderstandings because our sin always goes out, but it’s just us. It’s just us. We work things together as a family and we can be the church. It’s very personal. It’s very straightforward. The discipleship is more personal as well.”

-Wendy Ortiz

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