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During twenty-some years in ministry, I've asked hundreds of students two questions: "What did your parents do right, and what do you wish your parents had done differently?" The answers have been a tremendous help to my wife, Gloria, and me in raising our three kids. Although parenting is a huge responsibility, most of us, however well-educated, receive little or no training on how to parent well.

Parenting can be especially difficult for those of us in ministry. I recently asked a gifted youth leader how he was doing personally. He said he felt overwhelmed. Although his ministry was thriving, he worked four nights and sixty to seventy hours each week to keep it going. When I asked about the impact this had on his marriage and family, he said, "What else can I do? This is what's expected of me."

I looked him straight in the eyes and asked, "Where in scripture does it say you are to neglect your marriage and your kids to build a ministry?" It's a question I put to you as well. What is really driving you to live this way, and what are the costs?

As leaders, we are responsible to give ourselves wholeheartedly to the tasks of ministry. However, we're also responsible to manage our time and our expectations of what it means to lead an effective ministry.

So how do we affirm the importance of marriage and family while simultaneously navigating the unending responsibilities of ministry? We don't have the option of choosing one over the other so we must learn to manage these two tensions simultaneously. To do this well, it's important to draw on every available resource. One of our greatest resources is what I call "home field advantage."

I was head coach of a high school football team before I was a minister. Each week I used every opportunity to gain an advantage over our opponents. Home games were always in our favor—every coach knows there's nothing like home field advantage. I reminded players that this was our home field and we didn't want to let anyone beat us in our own backyard. Before leaving the locker room, some players would yell out, "This is our house, and no one beats us in our own house!"

As ministry leaders with families, we need to make this our rallying cry as well. No one and no thing—including the demands of ministry—must be allowed to tank our home lives. To sustain commitments to both ministry and family over the long haul, we need to lean into home field advantage.

Across many years, Gloria and I have learned many valuable lessons—often the hard way—that helped us raise our three children. We've discovered four key home field advantages that we've heavily relied on during twenty-five years of family life.

"'Martha, Martha,' the Lord answered, 'you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.'" (Luke 10:41-42)

Early in our marriage, Gloria and I realized that we needed to "choose what was better." For us, that meant establishing family values. In our current culture, there are a lot of definitions for the term "values." Gloria and I decided that for us, family values are consistent guidelines that every family member chooses to follow. Some of our family values include:

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