Between Ministry and Family

In calling me to get married, God called me to divide my time and energy between home and ministry.
— Larry Osborne

George Whitefield, the greatest evangelist of the eighteenth century, once wrote happily, “I believe it is God’s will that I should marry.” But he was concerned: “I pray God that I may not have a wife till I can live as though I had none.”

Whitefield, it seems, granted his own wish.

During his week-long honeymoon in his bride’s home, he preached twice a day in the surrounding countryside. Other than two trips with him, his wife, Elizabeth, remained in their London home during his constant travels (he crossed the Atlantic thirteen times in his ministry). Once he was away from her for over two years.

When his 4-month-old son died, Whitefield did not stop ministry; he preached three more times before the funeral and was preaching as the bells rang for the funeral service itself.

From Whitefield’s perspective, marriage and ministry were a troublesome mix. He sometimes spoke about marriage as if it were less of a blessing and more of a curse. He once wrote, “O for that blessed time when we shall neither marry nor be given in marriage, but be as the angels of God.”

As for his wife’s part, she seemed to have been equally unhappy, though she unfairly put the blame on herself: “I have been nothing but a load and burden to him.”

A man who lived with the couple in their later years put it as tactfully as any: “He did not intentionally make his wife unhappy.”

The call of God is a powerful force, which if not monitored, becomes all consuming, ripping us away from our earthly commitments. Neglecting spouse and children, of course, is never intentional. But it happens, too often and too easily.

The Fuller Institute of Church Growth recently conducted a survey among clergy, finding that close to 80 percent believed ministry adversely affected their families; 33 percent identified it as an outright hazard.

None of us wants to be a success at church and a failure at home. But it often seems as if the requirements of successful ministry and a successful home life are at odds. Both demand enormous attention and energy. Both are vitally important. Here are some strategies I use to try to give due attention to both.

Front-End Alignment

Every schoolteacher knows the importance of being tough with students the first week of school: the boundaries must be established on day one.

The front end of a pastorate is also the place to properly align church and family expectations.

When I candidated at North Coast Church, I set a precedent when I announced my wife would not be participating in the congregational question-and-answer period planned for my candidating weekend. I explained that she would be glad to stand when introduced, but I did not want her invited to join me on the stage. Nancy has never enjoyed public speaking (in fact, the very thought terrifies her); this seemed the right time to clarify that. My announcement drew some puzzled expressions from members of the pulpit committee, but they agreed to go along.

The temptation, though, is to do just the opposite. In the early effort to win the hearts of our people, we let the congregation heap on us expectations we know we can’t live with in the long run — visiting every member, being at every meeting, accepting every invitation out. Later, when family pressure gets too great, we try to back away, upsetting people who don’t understand our sudden reluctance.

Another way I’ve learned to protect my family on the front end is by making it difficult for people to meet with me in the evenings.

If someone calls the office and wants to schedule an appointment, the conversation often goes like this:

“Pastor, I need to talk with you. I need some help.”

“Sure. What’s the earliest date you could schedule an afternoon meeting?”

“I can’t meet with you in the afternoon. I don’t get off work until 5:00 or 6:00.”

“Well, I try to avoid evening meetings, if at all possible. Otherwise my kids would never see me. What’s the earliest time you could get off work?”

“I don’t know, perhaps 3:00 or 3:30.”

“Great, let’s make it 3:30.” Then I will often add, “I appreciate your flexibility.”

Once in a while, though, someone will call who insists an afternoon meeting is impossible.

“Really?” I’ll say. “They won’t let you off any earlier?”

“Oh no. There’s just no way my boss will let me.”

That’s the time I suddenly become available. “Okay, I’ll see you at 6:00.”

The result is that everybody is happy: the person needing my attention, my family, and me. It’s always easier to give something away (like an evening) than it is to take it back.

Feedback You Need

I regularly check with my spouse and children to monitor how ministry is impacting them. I find my children are more likely to give a straight answer than is my wife. Spouses can feel unspiritual — as if they’re taking us away from God’s work — for complaining about our being gone so much.

So once a year I sit down with my wife and simply ask, “Do you feel like a pastor’s wife?”

If she says, “No,” then I say, “Good. We can do this for another year.”

Here’s what I mean by “pastor’s wife”: one who routinely copes with a missing husband, makes do with an absent father, and lives with unfair congregational expectations. If that’s how she’s feeling, I need to know, so I can make some changes.

Such feedback helps me make important decisions. At one point, I was tempted to leave our present church for another. I wasn’t feeling particularly successful at the church, and weathering the storm seemed daunting. I had received an attractive offer from a much larger, more well-known congregation.

I asked Nancy if she wanted to make the move.

“No,” she replied. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable with the expectations of such a high-profile ministry.”

Her view played a large role in my decision to stay put.

The process also applies to my children.

After I published my first book, I asked my son, “Would you like me to write another book?”

He paused and then asked, “Will it take as long as the last one?”

“Yes,” I replied. “It will probably take several months to write.”

“Naw,” he finally said. “When you write, you never play with me.”

I thanked him for his honesty, but his comment hit me hard. I thought I had done a terrific job of juggling church, family, and writing. I had crammed the whole thing into three months. But my kids see life differently, as I had to be reminded. Eventually, I decided to put the project aside for awhile. As much as I enjoy it, I don’t want to write at the cost of my son saying as an adult, “Yeah, but he never played ball with me.”

Doing the Unthinkable

While growing up, two of my friends were pastors’ kids. One loved what his dad did for a living; the other hated it.

Why such a difference?

My disillusioned friend put it this way: “My dad always cancels me for the church.” If a pastoral emergency arose just before a promised fishing trip, his father put the fishing poles back in the garage. If someone died while the car was packed for vacation, the vacation was delayed or canceled, with no compensation time given to the family. Church always came first.

The boy’s father never thought to say, “I’m sorry, as important as this meeting is, I have a more important appointment with my son. You’ll have to finish without me.”

I’m not advocating we cancel every church appointment that conflicts with family, but spouses and children do need to feel they are priorities. Sometimes we need to cancel ministry for family. It doesn’t have to be often. A few symbolic gestures go a long way. For the golfer, all it takes is one birdie to forget all the bogies on the score card. In the same way for my family, occasionally canceling a church appointment to be at a ball game or school play speaks volumes about their importance to me.

My own father modeled this principle. A public school administrator with the potential to become district superintendent, he chose to limit his career in order to spend more time with us. Instead of climbing as high as he could, he stopped when he graduated to elementary school principal. His decision freed him up to be home evenings and so to play a major role in his children’s lives. It’s one of the main reasons we not only loved him as our father but also followed him as our model.

The Tough Side of Success

Ironically, to our families, success may pose a greater threat than failure. Families tend to rally around each other during adversity. But success can do the reverse — it propels the successful one into wider and wider orbits of influence, often leaving the spouse and children marooned on the surface below.

Elsewhere in this book, Knute Larson comments about the price of success: “I’ve worked hard all my life to get to the place where I can work hard.” We, too, can work hard to achieve success only to find we have to work harder once it’s achieved. It’s not easy stepping off the success elevator. But we must, because the greater our success, the more demands and opportunities pull at us. And the harder they pull, the more difficult it is to carve out the time the family needs. Here are three ways I combat that tension.

• Wear your heart on your sleeve. A few years ago, our family found itself trapped in crisis. I was preoccupied — or obsessed — for nearly a year with the moment-to-moment concern about a crisis building program. Having suddenly lost our lease, we faced the real possibility of having nowhere to meet.

The local schools were booked up, we were short on cash, and the city was breathing down our necks. Locked in the hub of crisis management, I didn’t have time even to assemble a building committee. I functioned as pastor, developer, and general contractor.

With the church’s future hanging in the balance, I was uptight, sometimes discouraged, despondent, and worn out. But I didn’t try to hide it from the family. I wanted my children to see the downside of life as well as its upside. My family needed to accept that the church — and consequently their husband and dad — was facing a crisis of serious proportions. Life wasn’t business as usual. I want to prepare them so they’re not unduly disappointed or disillusioned by the hard knocks of life.

Though I didn’t spare my children pain, I did help them avoid an overdose of misery.

During that dark year, every so often I’d call a halt to my preoccupation and for a brief time zero in on my kids. I surprised them by pulling them out of school to see a ball game or by going to a father/son or father/daughter weekend at a retreat center. In the midst of the crisis, I tried to communicate to each of them: “Things are hard right now, but I haven’t forgotten you. I still love you.”

• Pass up some great opportunities. Recently, having foolishly said yes to too many good offers, I was frazzled. After an exhausting trip to the Midwest, I slumped down in my favorite chair and asked my wife, “Did the kids miss me?”

“Not really,” she replied. “You’ve been gone so much this last month, they’ve stopped noticing.”

Craaack! I had just been whacked alongside the head with a baseball bat. But she was right. When opportunity knocks, I can find every excuse to answer the door, and consequently my priorities can get waylaid. I find it hard to pass on a great opportunity simply to remain a good dad and husband. But I must.

Learning to pass up some opportunities is a discipline I’ve had to develop over the years, and I’m still learning.

• Remember what’s important. When ministry is succeeding, it’s easy for the family to get caught up in the euphoria. While we ought to enjoy the prosperity God grants us, we need to guard our family identity so it doesn’t become too wrapped up in the church.

My wife seems to be on top of this temptation. She cares about my work, but her feelings don’t skyrocket or plummet with the offering receipts or attendance graphs. During one of the most difficult periods of my entire career, she’d often jolt me out of my introspection, saying, “We made the mortgage payment, didn’t we?” or “All the kids are healthy, aren’t they?”

Children are another matter, however. They run a greater risk of identifying too closely with my ministry. Our church has enjoyed a season of growth recently, and invariably on the way home from church, one of my children will ask, “How many were there today, Dad?”

“Numbers don’t really matter, Son. I’m more concerned about people’s spiritual growth,” I usually reply — though they’ve obviously picked up that I’m pretty dedicated to church growth. So my caution rarely stops my son; he’ll peek at the attendance book later on and then say, “Dad, how does that compare with last Sunday?” It’s not only me but my family that has to work on keeping Christ, not the church, at the center.

Resentment Busters

Prevention is nice but it doesn’t always work. Resentment toward ministry can seep into the chemistry of any pastor’s home. Here are three antidotes that help restore my family’s attitude when I sense my ministry is poisoning their souls.

• Stop griping. People in all walks of life complain about their work. I’ve listened to those in the construction business gripe about the ebb and flow of the economy, the pressure to get bids in, and the long hours. Others who hold high-profile business jobs complain of the enormous stress of fast-paced urban living.

Nearly every vocational group believes they’re in a high-risk profession that threatens the ties of family. Maybe all of us are right: work is part of the curse. But I’ve decided to make the best of it, and Lord willing, not instill corrosive attitudes about work in my children.

So instead of complaining about ministry, I frequently remind them how fortunate I am to have a job. And I’ll point out how my flexible schedule allows me to attend their Little League games when other dads cannot. When someone offers us tickets to a game or invites us to a special event, I note that these privileges are part of the perks of ministry.

• Let them do what they want to do. Though my wife shuns public speaking, she’s perfectly suited to a ministry of hospitality, even to large numbers. She thrives on hosting large groups in our home, from welcome desserts to pastor’s classes. Some months we’ll have three hundred or more people pass through our home. So while I’m quick to protect her from expectations that would put her in an uncomfortable or awkward position, I’m just as eager to turn the spotlight on her strengths, encouraging her involvement in areas where she flourishes.

• Be at home what you are at church. While growing up, I noticed that many of the troubled pastors’ kids were those living with hypocrisy at home. At church, their fathers might have gotten rave reviews, but at home their tempers drew rage reviews. Gentleness, patience, forgiveness at church; anger, humiliation, and shame at home. Their fathers’ double lives crushed their spirits. As a result, some of my friends grew up with the cynical attitude: “If people only knew.…”

I work hard to align my private behavior with who I am at church. Just as I confess my shortcomings to other believers, I apologize to my wife and children when I make mistakes or disappoint them or blowup. More than anything else, I want to be genuine. And I’m always amazed how well that “sells,” not only in the pulpit but at home too.

You Made the Choice

Paul advised members of the Corinthian church to remain single in order to devote themselves entirely to the Lord. He observed that married individuals naturally have divided interests. He didn’t say to the married, “Undivide your interests. Forget about your wife and family, and devote yourself exclusively to the Lord’s work.” Instead, he encouraged singles to stay single so they could give maximum time to the church.

But those of us who are married already have made the choice. We need to recognize what Scripture recognizes — in calling us to get married, God called us to divide our time and energy between home and ministry.

Devoting less time to ministry in order to attend to my family, then, is not only okay but expected by God. Since realizing this, I’ve felt more at peace about the time I spend with family, especially when I’m tempted to feel guilty because I’m skipping a meeting at church or putting less time into sermon preparation.

William Carey, the “Father of Modern Missions” and missionary to India, was a successful leader who chose to marry, but he couldn’t bring himself to divide his interests. His family paid dearly.

One day Carey, at the time a cobbler and schoolteacher in rural England, suddenly announced he had volunteered to become a missionary to India. His wife, Dorothy, having not been consulted, refused to go with him. Carey was so intent on ministry, he decided to leave his pregnant wife and two small children and take their oldest boy with him, though he planned to retrieve the rest of his family later. Before the ship could depart, he succeeded in talking his wife into joining him immediately.

But in India, she was miserable. While he tried to get his ministry up and running, she was neglected. She became increasingly ill and his children unmanageable. Eventually Dorothy became mentally ill, and only the parental care of another missionary couple brought the children into line.

This is not to disparage Carey’s ministry — he did remarkable things for the history of missions. But he wasn’t a model husband and father. It’s a stern reminder to me that in marrying, I chose to divide my interests, time, and energy. That means, at times, my ministry will suffer for the sake of family; at other times, family will suffer for the sake of ministry. Neither will be all it could be alone.

But it also means that at life’s end, with God’s help, I will be considered a success at both.