During the 2024 NADYEM Spouses' Meeting, attendees pose for a group photo at the Urban Life Center. The Urban Life Center is an outreach of the Chesapeake Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Photo provided by Desiree Bryant
Community service, fellowship, and relevant training sessions made up the spouses’ meetings during this year’s NAD Year-End Meeting, with roughly 50 spouses of conference leaders in attendance.
Community service has become one of the highlights of the annual NADYEM spouses’ meetings. For the second year in a row, the ministerial spouses partnered to help the Urban Life Center, an outreach of the Chesapeake Conference. Spouses divided into groups and crocheted baby blankets, painted inspirational rocks for the Center’s rock garden, assembled self-care gift bags, and wrote custom encouragement cards.
Each year, the ministerial spouses’ leadership team carefully selects training and seminar topics that participants might be experiencing in their local field. This year, due to the loss of several ministry leaders, preparedness trainings for the loss of a spouse was the central theme. Three ministerial spouse widows conducted mini sessions on varied aspects of loss and emotional processing for both them and their surviving family. They recommended that ministerial spouses put certain essential steps in place in advance of a spousal loss. These women’s willingness to share their experiences and advice was deeply appreciated.
Participants of the 2024 NADYEM Spouses' Meeting paint rocks for the Kindness Rock Garden located outside the Urban Life Center. Photo provided by Desiree Bryant
Continuing with the preparedness theme, other sessions were “What Everyone Should Know about Retirement,” “Tax Preparation for Pastors,” “Wills and Trusts, POA’s, Health Care Directives and Probate,” “What You Should Know About Your and Your Spouse’s Life Insurance,” and “How to Keep Your Family Healthy in Ministry.”
Overall, the meetings and events aimed to provide support and encouragement to the ministry spouse. The following verses summarize the three-day event well: “And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Heb. 10:24-25, NIV). “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing” (1 Thess. 5:11, NIV).
~Julie Norton is the administrative assistant for the Secretariat and Education departments at the Montana Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.