Marriage and Ministry: A Q&A With Ben and Lynley Mandrell

From planting a church to raising children and starting a marriage podcast, Ben and Lynley Mandrell share about their marriage and ministry.

By Lizzy Haseltine

Ben Mandrell, President and CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources, and his wife Lynley are no strangers to the chaotic balance of marriage and ministry.

From planting a church to raising four children and starting a marriage podcast, the Mandrells have been through thick and thin together. In the following Q&A, the couple share the raw emotions of their marriage and ministry.

How did you meet?

Lynley: We met at a Christian sports camp in Branson, Missouri. He was on leadership, and I taught tennis. We dated long-distance for 12 months and got married the exact same date as our first date, a year later.

Ben: It was camp love. We hardly knew each other. Looking back now, it was kind of crazy. If one of our kids was on the pace now that we were then, we’d be like, “Slow this thing down.”

What is your ministry background?

Ben: There’ve been three main seasons of our ministry together.
 
Early in our marriage, we served at Englewood Baptist Church in Jackson, Tennessee. After five years of serving as the college pastor, I was called to step into the role of senior pastor. During that season, we were blessed with four babies in 4 years. We went from having no kids to having four small children at a young age. I was 29. She was 25. It was a really great experience, and we saw tremendous growth at the church. But for much of that season, we were in survival mode.
 
After 12 years at Englewood, we announced we were moving to Denver, Colorado, to start a church from scratch with the North American Mission Board. About 65 people moved with us. We launched Storyline Fellowship from our home. Then we moved to an elementary school, then a high school, and eventually, a Walmart building we remodeled and made into a church facility. We were at Storyline for five years.

We thought we’d be there a lot longer, but God had other plans. Four-and-a-half years ago, He called us back to Tennessee where I now lead Lifeway. This is a whole new season for us as corporate life and church life are very different. We’ve had to figure out a new rhythm and a new way of working together.

How has your marriage and ministry evolved through the years?

Ben: Each season of ministry has looked different. When we had babies, I would get up and go to the church at the crack of dawn so I could come home at three o’clock when Lynley needed a break from the kids.

Then I began to see in Lynley this real hunger for more than just being a mom—a desire to have an identity in ministry. When we started Storyline together, it was such a powerful season for us, doing something we built together from the start. As lead pastor of Storyline, I was thankful to have a ministry leader like Lynley working beside me.

As beautiful and wonderful as that was, it was also painful when God called us to give that up and enter a season where I go to work most days and she doesn’t come with me. But Lynley has taken on a new ministry with her spiritual gifts. This is something we never saw coming.

“In pastoral ministry, the hardest decisions are not right or wrong but right or left.” — @benmandrell Share on X

Lynley: When Lifeway relocated from downtown Nashville to Brentwood, Tennessee, a company called Visioneering Studios helped them find a space to relocate and renovate. Through that process, I was offered a job with Visioneering. We do architectural design and construction for churches. My primary role is to relate to the church leaders—and specifically to invest in pastors’ wives—as they work with the architects.

Tell us about your podcast, The Glass House.

Ben: When we moved to Nashville and I started my new role at Lifeway, the identity crisis was so significant for both of us that we attacked each other. That led us to launch this podcast, which is about helping pastors and their wives express emotions in a healthy way.

We found in pastoral ministry that since we had to be seen publicly every Sunday morning, we (mainly me) didn’t address hurts and pain along the way, because it was too dangerous to bring it up on Thursday night. What if it doesn’t get cleaned up by Sunday and the church knows we’re fighting? Over the years, I didn’t handle a lot of stuff. When we got to Lifeway, it became a season for us to address some of these painful, toxic emotions that had stacked up.

>> Listen to their podcast: The Glass House.

What are some challenges of being married and in ministry?

Ben: One is people assume that the husband and wife agree about decisions the pastor makes. There were a lot of times I felt led to make a decision that Lynley wouldn’t have made if she were in my seat. Yet, she had to smile and go along with it.

In pastoral ministry, the hardest decisions are not right or wrong but right or left. A lot of decisions are more logistical—like should we go to two services—but there’s nothing in the Bible that says either way. Husbands and wives in ministry can have a lot of disagreement behind the scenes about what should be done.

How do you balance being married in ministry as opposed to being married to ministry?

Ben: It’s hard to separate the two. It’s a process of learning how to love something without becoming codependent on it or idolizing it. Even in marriage, I can love Lynley to the point where I expect her to be more than she could ever be. I can love the church and expect it to fulfill something in my heart that it was never intended to fill.

“After 22 years of marriage, we're having to say it's OK to feel something. When it comes to sadness or fear, I think those are the two things in church ministry that pastors are not supposed to feel.” — Lynley Mandrell Share on X

What is one way you’re learning to support your spouse in ministry?

Lynley: After 22 years of marriage, we’re having to say it’s OK to feel something. When it comes to sadness or fear, I think those are the two things in church ministry that pastors are not supposed to feel. We were conditioned for 18 years: Don’t feel these things. So, this is brand new to us.

How can others best support you as a ministry couple?

Ben: Every letter of encouragement I receive or every email when someone reaches out to say, “You’ve made a difference in my life, and I want to tell you how,” really impacts me, because on a day-to-day basis, I have a hard time seeing how I’m making a difference.

In the church, the pastor and his wife are more aware of the problems than they are the praises. As church members, remind them of what they’re doing well, it gives the couple confidence that they’re where they’re supposed to be.

As big proponents of counseling, what’s one thing you’ve learned through going together?

Ben: A great definition of vulnerability is when you give someone enough information that they can hurt you with it. It’s hard for pastors to give people information that could be used against them. They only tell their spouse. As much as that creates a close connection, it can also put a lot of pressure on your spouse to absorb all that stuff. Friendship and ministry are hard to come by but so important.

Is there anything else you’d like pastors and their wives to know?

Ben: There are two quotes we try to share everywhere we go. In marriage, we were taught that the conversation is the relationship. The quality of the conversation dictates the quality of the relationship. If we’re going through a season where we’re not having good conversations, we’re not close.

“The quality of the conversation dictates the quality of the relationship. If we're going through a season where we're not having good conversations, we're not close.” — @benmandrell Share on X

The other one that has been meaningful to me is something Mark Batterson said: “Success is when people who know you best respect you most.” It’s really an outcropping of 1 Timothy 3, which says a pastor should manage his own household well if he’s going to manage the church (v. 4). We live in a day where we’re more concerned about what strangers think about us than the people who have the most access to us.

A growing church may not be the only metric to know whether the ministry is healthy. Do I have strong, real relationships with the people around me the most? Or are they growing to resent me because the church is growing but I’m less available to them? Those are some of the questions pastors and wives need to consider more—the quality of their relationships over outward metrics.

For permission to republish this article, contact Marissa Postell Sullivan.