Morgan Whitaker Smith, left, is pastor at McLouth United Methodist Church. Andy Whitaker Smith is still in theology school but is the pastor at Winchester United Methodist Church.

Most Mondays, Andy Whitaker Smith, left, and Morgan Whitaker Smith get that rare chance to be together to work on sermon research for each of their next Sunday services.

Mary Newberg Gale will be become the new associate pastor at First Presbyterian Church, 2415 Clinton Parkway. Newberg Gale is pictured in the church sanctuary with her husband, James Gale, an associate pastor in Shawnee, and their 16-month-old daughter, Ainsley Gale.

Mary Newberg Gale and her 16-month-old daughter, Ainsley, prepare to move into her new office at First Presbyterian Church, 2415 Clinton Parkway, where Newberg Gale will become the new associate pastor Sunday.

Moving across the country for work is a carefully orchestrated dance for any family.

Finding the right job in the right place that’ll work for all the right people — mom, dad and child — is usually not an easy task.

Almost always there’s luck involved, maybe even a prayer that things will work out perfectly.

In the case of Mary Newberg Gale, the praying was a given and the luck a nice surprise.

Newberg Gale and her husband, James, are both Presbyterian ministers. When they look for work, it’s not just a question of what could work for each of them or their marriage or their young daughter. It’s a question of where both feel called to work by the Lord.

“If you don’t really feel that God is pulling you together to do something … both the congregation and the pastor get burned out pretty quickly,” Newberg Gale says. “And without that sense of call … it’s us trying to do the work that we should be relying on God to do.”

But she did feel called to Lawrence’s First Presbyterian Church, where she will be an associate pastor and enjoy her first Sunday this weekend. Her husband also felt called to the area, finding a role as pastor at Shawnee Presbyterian Church.

The couple are just the newest of married clergy who have taken up residence in the area. Though these clergy pairs may serve in different capacities, they all share a unique spin on the average household of similarly employed spouses.

“What we do is not a nine-to-five job. It’s pretty much all the time, and it’s not a job that we can ever leave at the office,” says the Rev. Andy Whitaker Smith of Winchester United Methodist Church, married to fellow United Methodist pastor the Rev. Morgan Whitaker Smith. “It’s something that’s always with us. And it’s been very empowering and strengthening to be able to share that life with another person, because it’s a lot different than having a normal job.”

Finding the call

For Mary Newberg Gale, the trip through life in a dual-pastor household began at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga., where she and James were next-door neighbors. They married soon after graduation, meaning as soon as they began their lives together, they also had to find a dual calling. They found it in the small town of Kinston, N.C., a place that allowed her to do a necessary internship and him to do a stint in chaplain training called a clinical pastoral education.

“We said, ‘OK, we’re going to get married. There’s an internship open in Kinston, Kinston is 30 minutes away from Greenville, which is where East Carolina University is and has a hospital that does this clinical pastoral education. We’ll go there, and we’ll regroup after a year of us both doing those things,'” she says.

After a year, Newberg Gale was offered a full-time position at her church, First Presbyterian in Kinston, while James Gale was given full-time work at another Presbyterian church in town, Rivermont, where he had been working part-time while doing his clinical pastoral education.

Their next move proved a bit more difficult. Wanting to find a place where they both could have full-time positions, they worked for a year to get things coordinated in Kansas after Newberg Gale felt called to Lawrence. He actually got his position first, leaving her to keep her fingers crossed that things would work out at First Presbyterian.

“It felt a lot more stressful looking to Kansas, because the first time around it all sort of all just fell together. And it did this time, too, but it just felt like it took longer for that to happen,” Newberg Gale says. “We made the decision that we were coming to Kansas whether or not I was going to be at Lawrence. There was a period of time there where I was talking about being a librarian at the Johnson County Library.”

Commuting and scheduling

Of course, finding a call to the right place isn’t the only challenge of being married clergy. Soon after the job situation is worked out, scheduling becomes a special consideration.

For those who think clergy only work on the weekend, think again, says the Rev. Kent Winters-Hazelton, senior pastor at First Presbyterian, who is married to the Rev. Carolynn Winters-Hazelton, a former full-time pastor who now is serving as a volunteer parish associate at her husband’s church.

“You don’t have necessarily quite a set schedule. That’s also sort of the burden, because you’re always on call. For example, we don’t have weekends free to just go out to do something. And if we’re at two different churches, then we have to kind of figure out night meetings, weekend retreats we’re involved with,” Kent Winters-Hazelton says. “We, in some respects, have somewhat less of a burden because we do not have children, but a young clergy couple with children, that just adds a whole different layer of how do you coordinate and plan and live a life when both of you are being called to jobs that really take a lot of your time.”

Carolynn Winters-Hazelton says often that time is spent away from each other, giving your all to your respective congregations. In the couple’s case, many times that meant living in separate cities — as far apart as Los Angeles and San Francisco — and seeing each other only a few days a month. It was partially because of this that when the couple made it to Kansas after criss-crossing the country twice, she decided not to work as a pastor full-time.

“When I work in a church, it takes so much of my time plus kind of Kent’s life that I never have a personal life,” she says. “I don’t ever have time to do gardening or grocery shopping or get together with friends or anything like that outside of the structure.”

Spousal support

But it’s not just the pastors who have to adjust when engaged in a two-clergy household — the pastors’ respective congregations do as well.

The Whitaker Smiths serve at separate congregations — she in McLouth and he in Winchester. She was a pastor before he was, and the second he began serving his church, she tried to make it known that she didn’t plan on being the typical pastor’s wife.

“For the most part, the pressure I feel to play the traditional pastor’s wife role comes just from people who have never had to interact with a female pastor before, and who aren’t sure what I would or would not be willing to do,” Morgan Whitaker Smith says, giving the example that she never bakes goods for the Winchester church’s potlucks or funeral dinners. “My reasoning is not because I don’t enjoy cooking and baking, or that I am lazy or I simply don’t want to contribute, but rather that this is a role that is traditionally assigned to a pastor’s wife, and I will not allow myself to be defined by those roles.”

That said, the couple is excited that they both are sharing their lives as pastors together, Andy Whitaker Smith says.

“I would say that there’s definitely a lot more pros than cons,” he says to life as married clergy. “We’re pretty much in the same world all the time. I guess one would think that would be a bit agitating at times — I mean, we’re essentially doing the same job and living the same life together — but for me, anyway, it’s been very encouraging because I know that with my spouse, I can share literally all aspects of my life, including my profession. And it’s been a great thing.”