David and Helen Seamands would be the first to admit there's no simple formula for raising a Christian family. It takes hard work, knowledge of child development, and firm convictions all forced through a grid of Scripture and constant prayer. "Even with all that, we don't pretend our way is the only right way," says David. "We realize it's only through God's grace that our three children (Sharon, Steve, and Debbie) have grown to Christian maturity and have three fine families of their own."
The Seamands have spent the last twenty years of their ministry at Wilmore United Methodist Church, Wilmore, Kentucky, a small (5,000 population) college community that's home to Asbury University and Asbury Theological Seminary. "We have 1,500 members, but over half are students, so we have a constantly changing congregation. It's challenging, because in a real sense we're a small church with a worldwide reach."
Before becoming pastor at Wilmore, the Seamandses spent 16 years as missionaries to India, where two of their three children were born. "Our children have lived in a ministry home all their lives, and reflect on it with great fondness. We're thankful to God for that," says Helen. "It's been a good experience for us and for them."
The Seamands share their good experiences in married and family life by leading Marriage Enrichment and Engaged Discovery seminars for couples seeking to enhance their relationships.
LEADERSHIP editors Terry Muck, Dan Pawley, and Paul Robbins talked with David and Helen Seamands about raising a family in the environment of local church ministry.
LEADERSHIP: Is the pastor's family so different from other families?
HELEN: Yes, it is. A couple going into the ministry get that feeling from the first time they step inside the door of the parsonage. In a sense, the parsonage is symbolic of the problem: you look around and see a house someone else owns, someone else has decorated, and someone else maintains. It makes you feel you belong to someone else. You begin to suspect the pieces of your life are already cut out for you, that your life is prefabricated.
DAVID: As Helen was speaking, I thought of those T-shirts that say, "Property of the University of Kentucky," or "Property of the University of Minnesota." Pastors and their families should wear T-shirts saying: "Property of First Church." That's the feeling you often get, and people don't hesitate to remind you of it.
LEADERSHIP: What did you do to help your family adjust to the uniqueness of pastoral life?
DAVID: We had an advantage because we grew up in Wilmore, and Helen's father had been minister of this church when she was in grade school. So we knew what to expect. We made two decisions: first, we would be David and Helen Seamands; we would not change to fit the mold of what this community might expect of a pastor. Second, we would not crucify our children on other people's convictions. Through much prayer, we had come to our own conclusions about the lifestyle issues. For example, going to the movies was prohibited when we were growing up. We came to the conclusion that with the advent of television, movie attendance was now a matter of choice, not a prohibition. We trained our children to choose good movies just as they choose good books. We knew that was a touchy issue in this conservative town, but we stuck to our hardwon convictions.
LEADERSHIP: How long did it take you to arrive at those convictions?
HELEN: Being in India accelerated the process, because when you are out there, you soon find out what is really important and what is not. After we had been there a few months, we realized that here were five hundred million people who were not a bit interested in the long list of sins we'd been raised on. We ran out of sins in India. Five hundred million Indians don't dance, smoke, chew, or go to movies, and haven't the slightest interest in these things. We soon began to throw away a lot of peripheral things and to say, "Well, what is the real issue, the real battle here?" We came back to the centrality and supremacy of Jesus Christ.
LEADERSHIP: How did the church in Wilmore accept your determination to be yourselves?
DAVID: It made them wonder. In my first sermon, I quoted from Bonhoeffer, Niebuhr, and I don't know who the third one was, but they were all supposed heretics. A lovely lady came up after the sermon . . .
HELEN: The wife of a seminary professor.
DAVID: . . . and very sweetly said, "You're very new, and we understand, but there are certain people we do not quote in this church." I said, "Well, I'm sorry, but I believe all truth is God's truth, so you'll have to get used to hearing some strange people quoted from the pulpit."
That was symbolic, because some of the more conservative people were shocked about our attitude toward our kids. They were convinced that in a short time they would all be lost. Some have never understood. Our children, by God's grace, are all in Christian service now, have all married Christian mates, and have fine Christian homes. An older person actually expressed to us years later, "You know, we don't understand how this happened, because we thought you were very permissive."
LEADERSHIP: Did this strain the relationships between the congregation and your children?
DAVID: I don't think so. Our children look back on the people in the church with great affection. This relationship is another unique situation the pastor's family faces. In no other profession do the people you serve have a better chance to affect the religious development of your children. The children see firsthand the sins of the saints. If Dad worked for IBM and the boss treated Dad unfairly, the son would say, "Well, the boss is a Scrooge." But in the church, that Scrooge professes to be a good Christian. There's always the chance, if you're not careful, that this apparent hypocrisy may sour your children on religion. Two things are important to help forestall this: try to get the kids to understand the humanity of people, and practice a good, healthy sense of humor.
HELEN: Under some circumstances we learned to make a joke and have a good laugh about it. For example, one time we went away on vacation, and one of the neighbors, a parishioner, came and cut down a tree in our yard. When we asked him about it, he said he did it because he didn't like the tree. I mean, why not? The parsonage belongs to the congregation-that's the reasoning. If we had become sour or angry, our kids would have picked up on that. So we made it a joke.
DAVID: Helen and I never would have been able to bring about some of the changes for the better that we have been able to bring about in the church and community, if our kids had not turned out as well as they have. The ministry of our children and the quality of their lives backed up some of the seemingly permissive things I was saying from the pulpit.
LEADERSHIP: I)id you both arrive at this philosophy of child rearing at the same time?
DAVID: Helen was ahead of me in the process. I was more traditional, one of God's frozen chosen. Her Christianity was much more practical, and I used to put her down for this. I posed as the spiritual one, unimpressed by her practical faith. Then the children came along, and I began to see that she was the one teaching them concrete ways of relating the Christian faith. I began to have a deeper appreciation for her spirituality.
HELEN: During those early years in India, I had a lot of time by myself because David had to be out touring in the villages. Sometimes for weeks at a time it was just me and the children. I grew deeper with the Lord because he sustained me through those times of loneliness. Our children were raised on books; besides the Bible we had the Book of Knowledge, Black Beauty, Louisa Mae Alcott, Winnie-the-Pooh, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, and many others. One of the most important things we took with us to India was a piano, because I like to play old hymns. I memorized The Methodist Hymnal during our time out there and the words of those great hymns became precious to me and the children.
DAVID: To this day, when our kids visit we'll gather around the piano to play and sing those hymns. It's an important part of our life.
LEADERSHIP: When you returned to the States, did you feel pretty comfortable with how you wanted to raise your children?
HELEN: Yes, we'd been through the formative years. Sharon was seventeen and ready for college, Steve was thirteen, and Debbie was ten. Back here, the problems came in adjusting to a new cultural pace.
LEADERSHIP: What were the problems?
HELEN: Well, David felt pressured to be a good pastor, so he was out of the home more than he should have been at that time in our lives. Also, we missed the good things of India-the fellowship we'd had with people, the unhurried pace of life, and our open home. It was easier to entertain there. When we moved to Wilmore, everyone was caught up in doing their own thing. I fixed up the house just the way I wanted it, and then waited for people to come by. Nobody came. Most of the other wives were working, and it was hard to find another person I felt free to open my heart to.
DAVID: It was difficult, and I don't know that we coped very well. Helen didn't find anyone with whom to share her inner turmoil; she was very lonely. Those were rough days in our marriage, stormy, at times.
HELEN: I've found that the lack of having some person close to share with is common to many ministers' wives; they feel they can't let down their hair. That's one of the most painful things about being in the ministry.
LEADERSHIP: Did you find it necessary to confront David on occasion about the amount of time he was spending in the church?
HELEN: Constantly.
DAVID: Not more than once a week. (Laughter.) And she still does. She's my cruise control. One of Helen's gifts is to keep my feet on the ground, to prevent over-commitment. My chief gifts are preaching and counseling. Helen, on the other hand, has an amazing sense of discernment about people, a keen sense of character. I have learned to trust her intuition.
LEADERSHIP: Helen, how do you keep yourself spiritually strong so you can be David's stabilizer and help keep everything in perspective?
HELEN: I try to spend devotional time every morning with the Lord. That starts the day off right. If I miss that, then the whole day is out of kilter. When the children were younger I had to get up early for this, but now that our family is out of the home, I wait until later in the day.
LEADERSHIP: Did you practice a family altar with the children?
DAVID: We came out of homes in which family devotions were rigidly observed, so we began that way. Well, with little children, devotions can be such bedlam you wonder if any spiritual value results. We were constantly disciplining the kids. Sometimes we just stopped, and then we had to get over the guilt of missing devotions. When the kids were teen-agers, schedules were wild; everyone was different, and getting them together was impossible.
Gradually, Helen and I began to see that table talk was just as important as a regular family altar. We began to major on this. We were very strong on having at least one main meal a day together. At that meal we ran the whole day's events through a Christian sieve; everything that happened that day was discussed. We were a very open family, and slowly, subtly, everything was dealt with in light of a Christian world view. I remember our oldest daughter telling about her first kiss. What was she, twelve or something like that?
HELEN: A little older than that.
DAVID: Well, okay, maybe a little older than that. Thirteen or fourteen, but she could hardly wait to tell us.
LEADERSHIP: How did you come to terms with the fact that your children sometimes would embarrass you as a pastor?
DAVID: We made an early decision that our kids would know they were our first priority. We always told them that whatever they did, we would not spiritually and emotionally blackmail them in order to maintain my reputation as a pastor. The best example of this was an incident with our younger daughter. Debbie announced one day when she was fifteen that she wanted to attend the school dances held on Friday evenings. Well, that was the first time our philosophy of freedom of choice was really put to the test. The college community and the church frowned on dances. We sat down and told Debbie all that was involved. She said, "Yes, I know all that, but I still want to attend the school dances." So, with great fear and trepidation, we backed up her freedom to make this choice.
HELEN: Several at the church knew about it and there were some raised eyebrows, but no one said anything to us.
DAVID: This went on for a few weeks, and then one Friday evening, Debbie came home early from the dance. I said, "What's the problem?" To our great joy, she replied, "Oh, Daddy, those just aren't my kind of kids." And that was the end of it.
LEADERSHIP: What were the really hard times of your family life?
HELEN: Our son Steve was born with a clubfoot. That involved a lot of unpleasant surgery. Because we were in India, it meant long separations for David and me while I traveled back and forth between India and the hospitals in America. But that became a rewarding thing, because we saw his foot straighten, and he became a championship tennis player.
DAVID: Probably the hardest time was the death of our second child on the mission field. He died of fulminant bascillary dysentery. "Fulminant" means to strike like lightning. He was a healthy little baby, but in just a matter of a few hours he was gone. I was on tour and it took quite a few hours to get a telegram to me. I had to beg, borrow, and steal a car to get back. I got home about one in the morning, but he was almost gone by then. It was a very traumatic experience and left scars on our oldest daughter. She went to bed one night and her brother was fine; the next morning he had disappeared. We made a bad mistake. Instead of fully explaining to Sharon what had happened, we said, "Jesus took him. He's gone to be with Jesus." Jesus became a scary person to Sharon; he snatched her little brother away. It was a very deepening experience, but we are still going through the healing process on that.
HELEN: We learned a lot about ourselves and our ministry.
DAVID: It was an interesting experience from a missionary standpoint. Fifty percent of all Indian babies die before the age of five. We had been told that in missionary training school, so we knew it with our heads; but when ours died, we knew it from experience. The people knew it too. Hundreds came. They said, "Oh, we lost one. We lost two." The doctor at the hospital where we took our son had a child die from this same disease. The walls came down between us and the people; instantly, we were one with them. .
LEADERSHIP: Could you describe the faith that fortified you in difficult family times?
DAVID: We believe God makes his covenant with families, not with individuals. This belief guided our prayers and teaching with our children. They felt part of a covenant family and it affected their behavior. My son recently told me, "Dad, do you remember when Grandpa baptized me as a little baby in India and you took a picture of that? Well, when I was a teen-ager, I ran across that picture again, and during many times of temptation I would look at that picture and something would say, 'Steve, you can't do that, you've been baptized.' " Now what he was saying was, "I'm part of a covenant family. This temptation is not an option. This decision has been made for me."
Another illustration of this is the time when our daughter Sharon and her husband went down to get a doctorate in parasitology at a southern university. They drifted from God and almost blew their marriage. Night after night, Helen and I prayed on our knees, reminding ourselves of God's covenant. God kept his covenant in some beautiful ways. He sent a lovely Catholic friend into Sharon's life, and that was a very positive influence. We'll never forget the call about three o'clock one morning when she asked, "Daddy, can you come down?" I said, "I'll be on the next plane." I flew down, and that was the beginning of their way back.
HELEN: Another part of our philosophy was to be firm with our children when they were small, and then give them freedom at what might be considered an early age, ten or twelve.
DAVID: As a pastor, I see many parents whose kids control the family. There's this cute little girl, just a doll of three or four, but she's breaking up the furniture; and a little boy of five who's a little dictator. Everyone is saying, "Isn't he cute?" The parents think, "When the kids get a little older, they'll know better, and we'll pull in the reins." Those parents are in for a horrible shock. It works exactly the opposite.
HELEN: I remember when Steve was about five years old. We were determined he would go to Sunday school at a mission retreat we were attending in the mountains of southern India. David took him to the Sunday school room, but he immediately turned around, ran back to David, started crying, and rebelliously said, "I'm not going to stay." David took him outside, spanked him, and said, "You're staying." Steve still resisted. It took five spankings before he settled down. I was standing up on a hill looking down on this scene, and I couldn't believe my eyes. In fact, I wanted David to stop. But that was the end of it, and we never had any more problems about Sunday school.
DAVID: It was a turning point in Steven's life. He'd been starting to take over the family.
HELEN: A year or so ago when we were talking about this in Steve's presence, he said, "Isn't that funny? I can't even remember that." Yet we think that experience was a turning point in his life.
LEADERSHIP: Recently a minister friend of ours related his wife's comment to him about their children. "Our children hold you on too high of a pedestal; they're idealistic about you. You are the preacher, and you are always making these spiritual proclamations. They see that, and they've put you up here and they've put me down here, and I'm tired of it."
HELEN: Our children were like that too, for awhile. After they grew up, especially our oldest daughter, they began to see their dad's feet of clay and began to appreciate their mom more.
DAVID: It hit our son especially hard. I fell off his pedestal, and he's had to make quite an adjustment. Now I'm back where I always should have been, somewhere in the middle, But in the process, they gained a much better appreciation for their mother.
LEADERSHIP: Is it something that goes with the ministry, and, if so, how can we help the younger couples who are going to face this kind of problem?
DAVID: I don't think you can avoid it. Mother is often the one who says no because she tends to correct the little things at home. Mother often clashes with the daughters about what they wear and what they do. She's the ogre and Dad's the saint, and Dad becomes a martyr because he has to live with a person like her. The typical comment is, "Mom's so uptight, and you seem to be so relaxed."
LEADERSHIP: Did your children feel free to talk to you about their feelings?
DAVID: We were very open on letting them express whatever they felt: anger, resentment, disagreement. We encouraged that, but we had standards of behavior they were to live by; we drew the line between expressing feelings and unacceptable behavior. For example, we mentioned that our son Steve was born with a clubfoot, and after several surgeries that handicap was overcome beautifully. But I remember a great crisis when he was going out for a Babe Ruth baseball team. He became hysterical the night before they chose the team; he was afraid he wouldn't make it. I knew he would make it if he tried, but when I encouraged him he became angry and put on a tantrum. I said, "Steve, you are going to try out for that team. I understand your feelings. I know you're afraid you won't make the team, but this isn't the way to deal with it. We're going to love you even if you don't make the team." There were strong feelings, emotions, and language expressed on both sides. By the way, he did make the team.
LEADERSHIP: What is the number one rule for raising a family in a ministry situation?
DAVID: The number one rule is to make your marriage and family top priority. This means planning prime time together as a couple and as a family.
LEADERSHIP: Would you comment on the phrase, "It's not the quantity of time, it's the quality of time that counts"?
DAVID: It's basically untrue if it's stretched beyond a certain point. A certain quantity of time is a prerequisite for the quality. A young lover wouldn't get by telling his fiancee; "Well, honey, it's not the quantity, it's the quality. You have my undivided attention for the fifteen minutes a week I give you." Our kids don't fall for that either.
LEADERSHIP: How would you evaluate your triumphs and failures with regard to finding enough time for your family in the midst of a busy ministry?
DAVID: Well, I have mostly failures, and Helen has mostly triumphs.
HELEN: During the time Steve was in high school David should have spent more time with him. He didn't give him regular blocks of time.
DAVID: And our son resents this. He's told me so with great gusto several times. He learned from my sins, and he is very careful with his kids. He's doing a much better job at it than I did. I have to credit Helen because she took a lot more regular time with the children.
LEADERSHIP: Looking back, what ministry activity should have been rethought in order to create blocks of time for your family?
DAVID: I overcommitted myself to counseling. I should have said no to some of the chronics and lesser needs, and made more time for my children. I should have started training lay counselors years ago. By themselves, pastors can't keep up with the counseling needs in today's church.
LEADERSHIP: What is the second rule for raising a family in a ministry situation?
DAVID: An equally important time for Helen and me was learning to pray together as a couple-not the family altar, but just the two of us. This has become a key factor in our lives. We're amazed over the number of ministry couples who have no prayer life; they're embarrassed to pray with one another.
LEADERSHIP: Why the embarrassment?
DAVID: They have not learned to communicate deep feelings in their marriage. If shared prayer is going to be meaningful, you must communicate deeply with each other. Helen and I have prayed over our disagreements, when we were at an impasse, or when the children began to stray, as one of them did. During those times our prayer life together took on great new depth and meaning.
HELEN: Many times we've prayed late at night together over special needs and situations.
DAVID: And the children know that. It's amazing the number of phone calls we get to this day from our kids requesting prayer. They know of our prayer life together.
LEADERSHIP: So the first rule is making family your first priority; the second is shared prayer with your Spouse. Is there a third?
HELEN: We're very strong on showing unconditional love for your children.
LEADERSHIP: Isn't it difficult to help one's own children understand that your genuine concern for their spiritual development is separate from your ministry commitment to help other people develop spiritually?
DAVID: Yes, I have struggled with that, and I think the answer is to give them the privilege of disagreeing. I remember when Steve came home from science class one day and announced he believed in evolution. I knew this was partly for shock effect, but it led to some good conversations, and we allowed for his disagreement. You make your children see they are special to you by allowing them to be different. Most preachers' kids are too smart to be real prodigals. They know the life of a prodigal is a dead-end street. So the only way to get a minister parent's attention is to disagree on religious matters. The trick is to not over-react.
LEADERSHIP: From what you've said, it seems like the key to working one's way through this and some of the other inevitable problems faced in raising a ministry family is the solidness of the husband-wife relationship. Could you talk about what you earlier referred to as "a stormy period" in your marriage, and what you learned from it?
DAVID: The first ten years of our marriage were very stormy. I was unable to express my emotions. I felt anger was a sin and to express feelings was wrong, so I repressed them. Helen could express her anger, get it all out, and it was done. She helped teach me how to express my feelings, to tell her I loved her, to express tenderness, and to express anger as well. It took time, though, and in the process we had a great deal of conflict that affected our children, particularly our oldest daughter. She has had to struggle with more inner conflict than the other two.
LEADERSHIP: How would you describe each other in terms of your individual personalities?
DAVID: We're very different. Yet we are both strong, assertive, bull-headed, stubborn, and opinionated. The thing that saved us was a basic commitment to each other.
HELEN: We were willing to go through those times to get what we have now. There was no back door in our dream house marked divorce. Something that really held me together through the difficult times was my feeling that David's calling was my calling, and if I failed him, I was failing God.
LEADERSHIP: Isn't that an unpopular philosophy today, especially among those who feel that the pastor's spouse needs to develop more of a personal identity?
HELEN: It's unpopular, but I wouldn't change it a bit. If the wife doesn't feel that, the ministry will be much harder for her.
DAVID: We believe this strongly, and it's one of the reasons we're adding premarital seminars (called Engaged Discovery) to our Marriage Enrichment seminars. We live close to Asbury Seminary, and every day we see young people making marital choices we know will be disastrous down the road. The place to hit this problem is when the young minister chooses a wife. Granted, she may want a career of her own to find self-expression. We're quite open to that; a woman's personality ought not be squelched. But the young minister must choose a mate who says, "Yes, I may need a career, but basically, your call is my call." Vocational unity is just as important as spiritual unity.
LEADERSHIP: Were you consciously aware of this before your marriage?
DAVID: Yes. I received my call to the ministry and the mission field in high school. After just a few dates, Helen knew I was called, and that if she was to consider life with me, that call was part of it.
LEADERSHIP: So the wives-to-be have some responsibility also?
DAVID: Definitely. Too many deceive themselves by thinking, "Well, I love him so much that I'll go along with him." They don't fully realize the price to be paid as a pastor's spouse. Many young men have been misled during the courtship by a young lady who says, "Oh, sure, if you're going to be a pastor that's fine," but doesn't understand the demands of the pastorate.
LEADERSHIP: What are the most frequent problems seen in young couples who come to the seminars?
DAVID: Lack of communication. The basic cause reflects a culture that does not train us for the indepth communication necessary in a marriage relationship. In Ed Wheat's book, Intended for Pleasure, his first advice to newlyweds is not to buy a television set for the first year of marriage. The art of conversation and communication must be cultivated.
LEADERSHIP: Do you recommend ways in which young couples can improve conversation?
DAVID: Well, 1 recommend they go to a seminar that develops communication skills. There are hundreds of them on the market. David and Vera Mace have a little book called, How To Have A Happy Marriage. It's a little workbook that requires four hours a week for six weeks. They practically guarantee an improvement in relationships.
LEADERSHIP: What other problems do these young couples bring to you?
HELEN: Lack of time together, because the wife is usually working to help put the husband through school. But a bigger one is a communication problem that arises because the guy is all hung up in books and theology, and shows little interest in the practical things of the home. He is attracted to "the ministry" because he loves studying the Word and digging into theology; he conceptualizes everything. The kind of girl most attracted to the life of a minister's wife is a warm, loving, people-person; she sees everything in terms of relationships. When these two get together, they have little common ground for communication.
DAVID: She dies on the vine emotionally, because the husband is unable to express to her what he's really feeling; so he preaches a biblical principle of marriage at her from Ephesians 5. A minister who comes to Marriage Enrichment is tough to handle because he cannot get in touch with his feelings-he has to play the role. Instead of sharing himself, he preaches.
LEADERSHIP: Does he begin to think his wife doesn't have a very good mind because she doesn't seem to grasp those things that are so fascinating to him? Does he decide that she is intellectually and perhaps spiritually underdeveloped?
DAVID: That's it! That's the way I used to treat Helen. I patronized her and preached at her. Many times Helen used to say to me, "David, how can I fight you and God?"
LEADERSHIP: Did you really feel God was on his side?
HELEN: I didn't always feel God was on his side.
DAVID: But I made her feel that way. In a sense I said, "Well, I'm serving the Lord; therefore, I can neglect you and the kids. This is sacred service. Are you asking me to give that up to do more mundane things? That is very unspiritual." Just last night I had an example of this. A midnight call came from another state. It was a wife saying, "Well, the kids and I are planning to leave in the morning, but we just thought we would call you for a last try. I've nagged him to death. It's partly my fault, I know, but he's in another world." Situations like these start from an unwillingness or inability to share deep feelings and admit weakness.
LEADERSHIP: What do you do now to keep communication lines open between yourselves?
HELEN: We have prime time for each other; every Monday is our day. David doesn't let anything interfere with that; it's our day together. If there are any differences we need to work out as a couple, we take time together on Monday to do it.
DAVID: We have educated the congregation about our day. We put it in the bulletin occasionally: "Please do not disturb the pastor and his wife on Monday, that is their day. Trespassers will be forgiven in an emergency." It's amazing how people respect this. If they call us for an emergency, the first thing they say is, "I'm sorry to disturb you on your day." Rather than resent it, they have thanked us again and again for setting an example, for showing that our marriage is a priority.
HELEN: It has made it much easier for me to see David give so many hours to counseling and parish problems without resentment, because I know I'm going to have my day with him.
LEADERSHIP: Now that the children are grown, has the empty-nest syndrome bothered you?
HELEN: Yes, in the last five or six years, I have felt very alone. David is fulfilled and busy; he has been at the peak of his ministry during these last few years. I sometimes feel self-pity, and I have to battle that all the time. I've worked through a lot of it in the last year. Being involved in the Marriage Enrichment seminars has helped. Keeping myself busy and ministering to people is the best remedy.
DAVID: We've been in this church for twenty years. We're battling whether we should stay longer. Can I stay fresh, can I still keep preaching after twenty years of sermons? It's a demanding church in a college and seminary town, and most of the faculty come to our church. Can I keep up the quality of preaching required? Those are my insecurities. I have a great horror of becoming stale in the ministry. But then I count our blessings-a good church, committed children, and a wonderful marriage- and I can only get down and pray, "Lord, how did it happen? You must have us mixed up with two other people."
LEADERSHIP: Have you developed goals as a couple and a family through the various stages of your life?
HELEN: I don't think we had any real conscious goals, do you?
DAVID: I was curious to see how you would answer that. No. Outside of an overall goal of good ministry, it's been, "Well, what's God's will for me today?" We're very non-goal oriented.
LEADERSHIP: No goals of becoming denominational leaders or of bigger and better churches?
DAVID: No. I remember a crisis with this on the mission field. We were stuck in an out-of-the-way place during a record monsoon; it had rained for fifty-six straight days. You couldn't go out, and I did a lot of thinking: "Here I am in the middle of nowhere wasting my life. With all my great talents, this is absurd." The voice of the Spirit spoke to me very clearly, "David, if you stay in this isolated village the rest of your life, that is not your business.
Your job is to take care of the depth of your ministry. My job is to take care of the breadth of your ministry. If I want to spread you around, that's my work. You just dig down deeper." That was a turning point for me in terms of life planning.
Copyright © 1981 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
