Recently I met a pastor who has a radio ministry to children. Between that broadcast, the need to answer the correspondence that comes as a result of it, and his ongoing parish ministry, he is working seven days and nights a week. As he was telling me about the great success of his ministry to children, I asked him, “How much time do you spend with your own children?” He replied, “Oh, I don’t have time for that, but they have to understand that this is my ministry.”
A clergyman’s wife asked me a difficult question:
“Can God really bless my husband’s ministry?” Then she told me why she asked. He is a church leader with a responsible position, much in demand in leadership circles, and so busy with Christian causes that he has found it “necessary” to move out and live on his own. She is left to cope with the children, raising them herself. She cried as she asked, “Isn’t he supposed to be home with us?”
These two conversations, coupled with my own pastoral experience, raised anew for me a concern for church leaders’ families. Are we saying often enough to our church leaders, “Your family is your ministry too,” and saying it before a wayward drift begins?
I’ve thought about this in light of my own family, and have realized that in many ways it is easier to avoid family crises outside of church ministry than within church ministry. There are reasons for this.
We can be tempted to build into our concept of church ministry some of the very weaknesses that lead to the breakdown of marriage and family. Clergy do this without realizing what they are doing. I know. I did it, and left the ministry because of it.
In the ministry I was caught by the need to prove myself a good pastor. I taught by my actions and words that God’s work is church work, and I was always trying to do a little bit more. Consequently, I was always on call. Even when I was home I was not mentally there. If the phone rang, I jumped. Just having a necktie on kept me professionally ready- what if a parishioner came by and found me in jeans?
One evening shortly after supper, a retired minister in our community telephoned and asked if I would go fishing with him until sundown. I had intended to do some calling that evening, but this man was elderly and had a heart condition. He could go fishing only if someone went with him to lift the boat into the water and start the motor. I also like to fish, so I agreed to go. An hour and a half later I was home. In the meantime, a member of the congregation had telephoned and demanded to know where I was. I returned the call when I came home, and I found the need was so minor it could have easily waited. But this person circulated the news that the minister was never available, he was always out fishing. Feeling that kind of pressure, I drove myself all the more to prove that I was a hardworking minister. That was a trap, for I never could do enough.
My own problem? Yes, but it is not unique to me. I’ve watched other clergy get caught by it too. Some snap mentally, others burn out and shift vocations, and others, because they are not home building strong family ties, give in to other pressures-including the temptation to find new relationships with other women.
Very few clergy neglect family and home because they plan to; it happens slowly, and part of the reason it happens is that the most intimate relationships are not occurring at home, not because the ministers don’t want them to, but because they have allowed the ministry to become a twentyfour hour job.
We need to be quiet sometimes, relax sometimes, and be with our family. We do the congregation a great disservice if we do not show them that this is important for us and for them too. If we imply that our busyness is the “Christian way,” they may praise us for our hard work, but they will not learn that we have a responsibility to our families and that they do too. No one else is going to supply the needs of my wife and my children. God gave them to me.
In my present responsibilities I travel nearly one-third of the year. I have been asked, “Doesn’t this take you away from your family too much?” For me personally, it is too much. But I’ve asked my family about it, and they say I am not absent as much now as when I served as a pastor or a campus minister. In those days, even though I was around more, I wasn’t really “there.” I was out with people at night and I was working days. I was always “at work.” The phone would ring and I would be gone. It was difficult for me to relax. I couldn’t put on old clothes and declare that the rest of the day was mine, because I felt it wasn’t.
Now it is different. When I’m home I’m home. Though I go to the office every day, and sometimes bring work home in the evening, the work is not open-ended. I can be finished. I put on my comfortable clothes; I putter around the house; I’m there in both physical appearance and mental attitude.
In talking to clergy who have come to grips with the “never finished” problem of ministry and watching how they teach by example the values of family time, I’ve learned some useful lessons:
1. Pastors should demand time at home. One minister I know is very specific about his demands. He says, “I limit the time that I work to fifty hours per week and report to the session how I spend that time. I told them when I was called as minister that I wanted a minimum of three nights a week at home. If I’m going to make a statement to the workaholics in the congregation, then I must make a statement about my own time and family. Ministers have to look at themselves and see how they are doing.”
There are pastors who speak of “family needs,” but the family does not get them or their attention. They just want time for themselves without the family. And an occasional clergyman will use “family” as an excuse to do as little work as possible. But most clergy are not lazy; they work hard. They also want to build a solid home life based on love. That takes effort.
One associate minister, a woman, told me, “Schecluling is difficult. There is a great temptation to allow my profession to run away with my life; a temptation to allow my prideful desire for success, in the sense that the church community sees success, to overrun my other calling as a wife and mother.” But she has learned that “God called me to ministry, but he has also called me to be a wife and mother. This too is a first priority, because this too is Cod’s call.”
2. Fellowship groups of pastors need to plan times in which they talk about the temptations that each faces-social, financial, sexual. This is not a time for triumphalism, a “let me tell you how I did it,” but an honest opening up of problems that we all face and an exploration of ways to overcome them.
A minister in the Midwest stated, “There are six clergy in our group, and we are able to discuss personal needs openly. We have cried together and prayed together; and I know that if I face a problem in my family, I can call on one or all of them.”
A young clergyman, preparing to leave soon with his family for the mission field, said, “We have friends we can go to for counsel. When we were in school one of our professors told us in class, ‘If there is a conflict between a class assignment and your family, spend time with your family;’ I’ll never forget that.”
Another pastor commenting on the regular get-togethers planned by the clergy in his area emphasizes that it is not just a “professional” group. “We meet for breakfast and talk. It helps us to know what to pray for in the other families’ lives.” Describing a similar fellowship group, an East Coast minister said, “I have found great benefit in this, especially a sense of not being alone.”
3. It is necessary to schedule family nights in the church calendar, not for people to go to a church meeting, but to stay home or go out together as families. Churches can covenant for families to be together, play games, talk, pray. It helps clergy when the rest of the congregation is doing this, and it gives a talking point later when people ask, “How did the evening go with your family?” There is reinforcement and learning in that.
Several things happen when family time is scheduled and expected. For one thing, the children know it. One pastor grinned as he said, “I bought my first fishing license because my son wanted us to go fishing together.” Another pastor, whose children are grown, said, “My wife and I joined a community choir together. For us this is good recreation.” Some pastors schedule family times around school events so they can attend them with their children. Others plan picnics or other outings as families, but not necessarily with other people in the church. The goal is family togetherness, not another church function.
The daughter of a minister said, “When I was growing up, I watched a successful pastor lose all of his children to the world, and his wife too. He preached hard and worked hard, but he never spent time with his family. When his wife left with another man, she said of the clergy-husband she was leaving, ‘He’s never home anyway.’ My own dad knew that if you work hard in your ministry but neglect your family, you have forgotten your purpose.”
4. Parish calling and other ministry schedules can be arranged so that neither the pastor nor the same parishioners are obliged to do all of the work. Some clergy admit that they have not always wanted to delegate work-their work was their escape. A minister confessed, “I was using my job to avoid my family. When the children got on my nerves I would say, ‘Well, I have to go make some calls.’ That was legitimate; there were always calls to make. But I wasn’t being fair to my family.”
Clergy tend to start staying home more as they begin to realize their family is a special God-given congregation. A pastor said, “I have to continually remind myself I am not indispensable, not personally responsible for the salvation of the world. I am responsible for touching those lives around me. I find that being a minister is not radically different from being a parent. The serving, care-taking, listening/counseling, being-there kind of ministry at home is as important as pastoral counseling.”
Pastors who do not have staff colleagues tell me that church members can be taught to allow the minister to have at least one night when telephone calls go to a deacon or an elder. A name, number, and date can be placed in the bulletin just as when the pastor is on vacation. A congregation can be urged to purchase a phone recorder for the pastor as an anniversary or Christmas gift. It is expensive, but they can know they are helping him to have a quiet time with his family. Children will accept the demands on a parent’s time and attention the rest of the week when they know there will be no intrusions on their special family times. These times have to be worked at; they don’t come easily.
Looking back, a minister recalled, “When I was in seminary, my children were pre-schoolers. I stopped at the library every day on my way home and checked out one children’s book to read to my children. They knew that I was thinking about them while I was away, and I was compelled to sit down with them as soon as I came home. It gave us a physical closeness as we read the story together.” Then this minister added, “If I am too busy for my family right now, I will be too busy for them ten years from now. And they will learn from me that being too busy for one’s family is appropriate behavior, for I will have taught that lesson by my example . “
One night last winter, my son and I put on our warmest clothes and lay down in the back yard to watch a display a shooting stars. It was a time of awe that we experienced with each other. It was not a long time that we were out because it was so cold, but it was a memorable time. I won’t forget it; I don’t think he will either. But as I thought about that, I realized that I probably would not have done that when I was serving a church as a pastor. I would have been at a church meeting or out making calls, taking advantage of the fact that people who work all day are home in the evenings.
Each of us can minister effectively and still have time for our family. Someday we will stand before God and hear those words, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” We will hear those words not only because we have faithfully served the church; we will hear those words because we have also served the ones God has placed closest to us-our family. They are our ministry too.
Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
