Bishop Rick Lewers and his wife, Janene will be our special guests at this year’s Ministry Wives conference
Rick and Janene Lewers
These days, the Lewers spend a lot of time together, travelling around the Armidale diocese and enjoying the ministry of “just showing up”. Rick preaches and meets with church leaders while Janene runs Safe Ministry and SRE (Special Religious Education, formerly known as Scripture) training courses. Rick and Janene also enjoy teaching an SRE class together in a rural village school. And hospitality in their home continues to be a very normal part of their ministry together.
When asked to write a paragraph on the minister’s wife in 2017, Bishop Lewers wrote…
“Other than Christ Himself, the greatest God-given gift to a clergyman is his wife. She is to be loved by him and cared for by him, before any other parish responsibility and when a parish loves them both enough to honour that, then great ministry will generally follow. ”
So, we asked him to share how he and Janene safeguarded their marriage. Somewhat cryptically, he said, “GOLF”. The Lewers do enjoy fitting in a game of golf together… but Rick explained it’s actually an acrostic - God, Time Off, Love and Fellowship - and it’s an acrostic for resilience ministry, not just marriage. We believe the healthier your relationship with God, the healthier will be your response in marriage to so many issues.
When it comes to God, we both try to spend time with our heavenly Father each day and listen to the preaching of Simon Manchester and others while driving. We both read commentaries in our quiet times and encourage each other.
Off means off. Taking time off is crucial and when you’re off, be off. You can’t be resilient if you’re always tired. Equally if you are not off when you’re off, you won’t be present in the things you enjoy or more importantly, for the people you love - and that’s a recipe for joylessness. When off, we encourage our clergy to be present with their families and to date their wives.
Love! Being loved and loving is the best medicine for so much that can damage us. Knowing you are loved by God is wonderfully securing and worth constant meditation on when things are tough. Knowing and remembering that all you do springs from love also makes work more than the tyranny of duty. Janene and I, of course, promised to invest in loving each other and our growing family and the returns on that investment has a place of belonging when things are tough in ministry.
Fellowship with others is also important, but in terms of resilience, by “others” I do not mean everyone. I mean spending time in fellowship with those who want nothing from you but the joy of friendship and who fill you up. The kind of people who make you laugh till it hurts, enjoy good food and a serious chat with no agendas. Fellowship among our clergy family can be one source of this kind of encouragement.
Rick will be speaking on the story of Joseph at the conference. He says, “It will be interesting at a Ministry Wives conference, to talk about a story that is so full of dysfunctional men! But like all Biblical stories I expect that it will bring all dysfunctional people to the one man who was not - the one who died on a cross, at the hand of dysfunctional people who meant it for evil - but God meant it for good.”