It should be the plot of a rom-com: Two young, driven high school students meet cute as part of a gathering of promising leaders. He thought she was “really pretty and fun and smart.” She thought he was “too cool for school.”

Their romantic connection was not immediate, but eventually the two felt called to each other. They also felt drawn to the same line of work, which can make scheduling time for each other a little complicated.

“We both work Sundays,” explained Christine Myers Parker, lead pastor of Epiphany Lutheran Church in the Cedmont neighborhood in Northeast Baltimore. Her husband, Mark Parker, is also a pastor, serving at Highlandtown’s Breath of God Lutheran Church, as well as a Baltimore City councilmember.

On Valentine’s Day, there’s a tendency to write about love in an aspirational, unrealistic way. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got about marriage is that it’s not just a feeling but a commitment. For it to work, both parties have to pledge to do the best thing for that union, every day, even when it’s unromantic stuff like logistics and spreadsheets. The older I get, the more I admire couples who combine passion with practicality. The Parkers are the best example of that I’ve seen in a long time.

They are both prominent in the community: Mark as the representative for District 1 and a devoted cyclist; Christine as an avid runner dedicated to making her way by foot down every single street in Baltimore.

Together since 2001 and married since 2007, they said their mutual call to ministry has enhanced them as a couple in unexpected ways.

“You don’t have to be a pastor to have a shared commitment to God,” Mark said. “Because that happens to be true for us, it’s a commitment we share, we both understand and make space for each other’s decision-making. From a shared base, it makes it easier to be a bit more balanced.”

“I really enjoy being in Mark’s presence, and I think the same is true the other way around,” Christine added. From the way her husband smiled across their separate Zoom screens, it’s obvious she’s right.

Like any working parents, the Parkers have developed a pretty intricate choreography to make schedules align. During our interview, the Revs. Parker took a moment to very quickly square away how their two children were going to get home from school.

Because they are in leadership positions in separate churches, they don’t get the opportunity to serve together as they once did, most recently as co-coordinators for the synod-wide Lutheran high school leadership development program. But, Christine said, “it was a joyous experience to be able to be a positive example of what a good marriage could look like.”

But not a perfect one. Both Parkers said they want to show that, while a pastoral union may be seen as the archetype of coupledom, “it’s not. Every marriage has its strengths and weaknesses, and has its own journey,” Mark said.

Christine believes one of their strengths is actually their imperfections. “We can rag on each other, like ‘Oh really? Is that what you want to say right now? Are you sure?‘”

The Parkers have the familiar delicious shorthand that long-term couples have, such as when they both laugh at the same time because they know they’re about to tell a really good story, like how they got together.

They grew up in separate churches and graduated from different schools — Mark from St. Paul’s School for Boys, where he wrestled, and Christine from Dulaney High School. Both attended local Lutheran youth gatherings for their synod, or assembly of churches, and were on the planning team for a middle school ministry program.

At one of those gatherings, “we had a late-night conversation and, as sometimes happens, the main thrust of the conversation was complaining about another person I was dating,” Christine said.

An enterprising friend of hers who was paying attention arranged for a double date for Christine to hang out at her house with Mark and a friend of his. “That friend could not come, and I was left with Christine and her friend, which rapidly became just me and Christine,” Mark said.

And that was that. By college, both had decided they were dedicated to each other and to the ministry. Christine noted their denomination has long ordained women and that the first female Lutheran pastor in the United States, Elizabeth Platz, was campus pastor at the University of Maryland, College Park, when Mark was a student there.

I myself grew up in the church, where most of the families who attended served in various roles, both because they felt called to and because they spent so much time in the building it was the only way they might see each other. For the Parkers, and for the many married couples they know who have their own churches, making space for each other just requires getting a little more creative. Their parents both pitch in on Sundays and during the week; Christine has church on Wednesday nights as well. But they both often have Fridays off with “very busy schedules but very flexible as well,” Mark said.

So how do they do it? Like any couple, they adapt.

“A lot of parents experience this thing where you’re like, ‘You’re letting me take this baby home? I have no idea what I’m doing!‘” Christine said, laughing. “You just figure it out. Every step is different. There was the evolution of what was involved in parenting, and what’s involved in scheduling. You’re just people who make it work.”