It has long been recognized that spouses of seminary students—and in particular wives of future clergy—need focused opportunities for education, spiritual formation, and development of psychological balance in order to prepare them for their ministry within the Church and for their distinctive ministry as clergy wives. The seminary will address this need by offering the spouses a voluntary, three-year, non-credit course of study. The format of the program will be a bi-monthly, two-hour course that extends over the three years that the wives of students are on campus. A number of class sessions during the three-year period will also include the wives and their husbands, so that they might share in the benefits and responsibilities of the program as couples. An appropriate acknowledgment of course completion will be presented to the wives who fulfill the course requirements. (For details, see “Goals of the Wives Program” in the Appendix.)Goals of the Spouses Program

The goals of the program enumerated below—in considerable detail—represent an ideal that is not always achieved even by the full-time students of the ministerial degree program. Therefore, it is understood that this list is intended to guide the program coordinator in the task of preparing the wives of future clergy for their distinctive ministry.

The program is designed for seminary faculty to teach the coursework in the area of “faith preparation,” and for clergy couples and others with the requisite expertise or life experience to be responsible for the areas of “spiritual formation,” “development and maintenance of emotional, mental, and physical well-being,” and “program resources.”

Faith Preparation

• To understand the saving gospel of Jesus Christ, in particular, the meaning of “salvation” in the Orthodox Christian context and the place of the Crucified Christ in human history.
• To understand the Orthodox Christian approach to Scripture, the canons, the writings of the church fathers, and ethical and moral issues.
• To understand a basic time-line of church history.
• To understand the structure and meaning of the Divine Liturgy and other common liturgical services.
• To understand the pastoral and liturgical duties of clergy husbands.
• To understand ecclesiastical structure and protocol.
• To understand basic similarities and differences between Orthodox Christianity and other Christian churches and major religions.

Spiritual Formation

• To learn how to form and retain the life of Christ Jesus within the soul.
• To learn how to read, absorb, and apply Scripture.
• To learn how to select and apply appropriate spiritual reading.
• To discern how to select a father confessor for oneself and one’s children, and to identify the proper relationship with a father confessor.
• To learn how to pray: personally, and if necessary, publicly.
  Development and Maintenance of Emotional, Mental, and Physical Well-Being
• To discover and maintain one’s unique image within the Body of Christ, resisting the temptation to lose one’s personality, either by absorption or isolation.
• To discern and define one’s vocation as a clergy spouse, including the discernment of the boundary between the clergyman’s duties and the clergy wife’s duties.
• To explore basic family dynamics and to understand dynamics that may cause tension among immediate family members.
• To manage familial tensions, either from the immediate family or extended family, that arise simply from the acceptance of the vocation to the priesthood.
• To learn how to grow a vibrant, dynamic, life-giving marriage, and how to maintain the marital bond in peace.
• To learn some parenting skills that will help raise clergy children in a healthy, safe family environment.
• To identify stresses and challenges peculiar to clergy couples and clergy children and to learn coping skills to work through them.
• To recognize symptoms of anxiety, depression, and addiction in themselves and in their spouses, to pinpoint the causes of these maladies, and to identify resources for healing of these difficulties.
• To learn basic negotiating, communication, listening, and conflict-resolution skills, vis-à-vis the immediate family and extended parish family.
• To learn organizational / time management skills.
• To understand basic financial principles, and particularly, points of tax laws that apply to clergy families.
• To explore the various models for the relationship between the clergy family system and the parish family system.
• To explore how the dynamics of the clergy family affect the dynamics of the parish family, and vice versa.
• To create an awareness of the importance of physical well-being, as related to spiritual and psychological well-being.

Program Resources

• Provision of a bibliography specifically designed for clergy wives and clergy families, periodically updated.
• Sharing knowledge of existing programs designed to assist and support clergy families.
• Providing a panel of Orthodox clergy wives from different jurisdictions, to share their unique perspectives and experiences.
• Providing a panel of Orthodox clergy and clergy wives from various settings, e.g., parish mission, foreign mission, established parish, and military chapel, and supplying resource material related to those various settings.
• Developing and sustaining an electronic newsletter or site available to wives of SVS alumni, so that a viable link remains to share resources and experience among wives of our graduates.
• Developing a distance-learning program for clergy wives who are in settings apart from the seminary community.