Posted on 04/01/2006 6:40:33 PM PST by twippo
SELMER, Tenn. - Mary Winkler was the quiet, unassuming wife of a small-town, by-the-Bible preacher, seemingly devoted to church and family. But now her husband, Matthew, is dead and she is charged with shooting him in the back with a shotgun.
Authorities won't discuss a motive, and church members say they didn't see any indication she was unhappy. But experts say preachers' wives often struggle with depression and isolation, expected to be exemplars of Christian virtue while bearing unique pressures on their private and public lives.
Gayle Haggard, author of "A Life Embraced: A Hopeful Guide for the Pastor's Wife," said ministers' wives can feel isolated because of a misconception about leadership, since they and their husbands are leaders of their congregations.
They can feel trapped, she said, by unrealistic expectations "to live a certain way, to dress a certain way, for their children to behave a certain way."
And ministers' wives often find themselves handling more jobs than they expected to take on, said Becky Hunter, current president of the Global Pastors Wives Network.
"You're not really hired, and yet there is some expectation in most church settings that the pastor's wife comes along in a package deal," Hunter said.
Too often, ministers and their wives are reluctant to seek emotional help from members of their congregations because they're looked up to as leaders, said Lois Evans, a former president of the Global Pastors Wives Network. They can become isolated, lonely and depressed.
"This family needed help," said Evans. "It seems like there was no place to turn to and no place to talk and it became an explosive situation."
Matthew Winkler, 31, was found dead in a bedroom at the couple's parsonage Wednesday night in Selmer, a town of 4,400 people about 80 miles east of Memphis. Mary Winkler, 32, and her three young daughters were found Thursday night leaving a restaurant in Orange Beach, Ala., about 340 miles from Selmer. Orange Beach Police Chief Billy Wilkins said she had rented a condo on the beach after the slaying.
She was charged with first-degree murder and ordered held without bail. Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent John Mehr said authorities know the motive for the killing, but he would not disclose it.
Mary Winkler was working part-time as a substitute teacher and taking college courses to get a teaching certificate as well as raising her three children and serving the congregation as its preacher's wife.
"You know she was weighted down," said Jimmie Smith, a member of Matthew Winkler's Fourth Street Church of Christ congregation and a retired psychiatric nurse.
Defense lawyer Steve Farese refused to talk about the Winklers' private life or if they had personal troubles.
"I can't discuss anything she's told me," Farese said. "But I think you have to look at the entire picture. You can't look at the end of a story and determine what the beginning and middle were."
My mother, who still attends the Church of Christ, believes that all of the people who were baptized as infants or by sprinkling or pouring of water are not really baptized and are not saved. She thinks they are all going to hell.
"Rome imposes its discipline only on men who volunteer to live celibate lives. How is this fundamentally different from the demand of certain churches that their pastors not get a divorce?"
The difference is that Rome is violating God's word. "Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth."
They gave up that second violation. Good for them. Keep going, Romans.
"The Bible does encourage marriage but my point was that celibacy is not unscriptural."
It most certainly is unscriptural - furthermore it's called a "doctrine of devils". That's why it results in so much perversion. 1st Timothy 4:1 says:
"Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;
Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron;
Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth."
There is a difference between following a non-Biblical doctrine that forbids marriage and remaining celibate when unmarried. Do you want me to quote you all the scriptures against fornication????
"There is a difference between following a non-Biblical doctrine that forbids marriage and remaining celibate when unmarried. Do you want me to quote you all the scriptures against fornication????"
What has fornication to do with the subject we've been discussing?
The dumbed down MSM has become fixated the Andrea Yates syndrome. Any number of causes can lead to bathtub drowings of kids, pushing cars with kids in them in lakes, and shooting in the back of husbands.
Medicalize everyone and just do away with punishment.
And so does most other organized religions, ie., not being baptized... So the point I believe is moot.
what difference?
You realize that Andrea Yates wanted to stop having children but her husband kept insisting that doing God's will was to keep having them. Too, her husband also felt it was unGodly for her to keep taking her psych meds which were prescribed to her. She was off her meds when she murdered the kids.
I think her husband was just as much to blame as she was. After all the husband is the head of the home as Christ is the Church. And women are to submit.
You sound like a misguided feminist.
Yates was sane enough to call the cops after she finished killing off the last of the kids. She was sane enough to get a degree. In fact, Andrea is a symptom of a sick society...one that allows women unilaterally to kill its preborn.
Here are 2 sources in helping you understand the Christian relationship between husbands and wives.
http://www.family.org/married/comm/a0019596.cfm
http://www.family.org/married/comm/a0019596.cfm
"actually, the spouse isn't always she"
True. Joyce Meyer has been successfully married for some 40 years despite having the atypical relationship where she is up front in public ministry and Dave is more "behind the scenes." Less visible doesn't mean any less important.
My understanding is that the CoC believes **they** are the only true Christians. The Boston CoC/ICC has a similar reputation for excessively managing members' lives.
I was reading your about me page. So I wondered if you used ductile pipe?
FYI, I am not a he and I don't believe that Baptist are the only people who are saved, contrary to what most CoC's believe about their church.
I think she is a heretic.
"Christians have a higher divorce rate than atheists?"
I have a few theories about that.
1. Many people all already divorced when they enter/re-enter the church. That might skewer the statistics.
2. I know from attending and living on campus at a Christian, SBC-affiliated university that many Christian young adults marry, not out of God's leading, but so they can have sex. They haven't examined what God's calling on their life is, and yet they choose someone to spend that life with.
Most of my classmates thought the worst thing that could happen is for the rapture the happen before their wedding night. This is an argument for the courtship position of waiting until you can marry before you date.
Someone stated that their mother is a member of the church of Christ and believes in certain requirements being met or one is unsaved or not a Christian.
This is not a sign that she is a member of a cult. The word is wrongly used just to insult people with whom some disagree as to what the Bible teaches about salvation and about the church. Just disagree with the lady. Is that too much to ask? Also, labeling entire groups of people because of an individual or personal experience is wrong and can lead to many unfair characterizations and a lifelong, closeminded bias.
No one has a patent on the name "church of Christ". If that is the name on the building, or someone calls themselves that, it does not mean they are a member of a group known as "the Churches of Christ", which has about l.5 million members in the U.S. and quite a few more world wide.
Also, congregations within that group vary somewhat and fairly widely in some cases. They are autonomous and are not ruled by a governing body. Each congregation tries to follow the scriptures and believes the Bible teaches that Christ is head of the church which he built. Elders at the local congregational level, along with deacons, preachers and teachers are how they consign people, and they do this according to what they believe the Bible teaches about it. So there is nobody from an earthly organization who is above the local level telling what they have to do or they won't be "a church of Christ" anymore.
There are other organizations that are often confused with "the churches of Christ". They might have part or all of the name but be very different from that group.
Those who attack {us who believe God decides who will be saved, yet left his word to guide us in what he wants us to do}, are misleading everyone when they claim that "the Church of Christ" say they are the only ones going to be saved. I tell any who care to know the facts that it is the word by which we will be judged and the final word on anyone's salvation will come from God. My Bible tells me that.
At the same time, my Bible says some other things about that which the Lord would have me do. I try to do those and teach the same to others; also where in the Bible they can find those teachings. Funny thing, but my Bible tells me that I should do that, too.
If any disagree with what I show the Bible to teach about something, so be it.
I know the Bible. Rather condescending of you.
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