Spiritual leadership begins at home. In dealing with the family, remember that you have been blessed by the Lord, not beatified. Don’t expect them to stop asking you to carry out the garbage.
Paul W. Carlson
What is a healthy, hectic home? What does one look like?
Consider these four snapshots from ministry families, three of them historic, one contemporary.
Despite appearances, being a Christian leader does not eliminate family strife. Husband-and-wife arguments over ministry issues are at least as old as Moses and Zipporah.
William and Catherine Booth, for instance, founders of The Salvation Army, were both highly opinionated. Before their marriage, Catherine set four rules to govern their relationship: (1) never have secrets; (2) never have separate purses; (3) talk out differences to secure harmony rather than pretend differences don’t exist; (4) never argue in front of the children.
The fact that two of the four refer directly to differences of opinion is not insignificant. Only eight months into their marriage, Catherine wrote a letter to a friend, praising her husband’s preaching: “My precious William excelled himself and electrified the people. You would indeed have participated in my joy and pride could you have heard and seen what I did. Bless the Lord, O my soul.”
The next paragraph, however, was written with bolder, less refined, penmanship: “I have just come into the room where my dear wife is writing this precious document and, snatching the paper, have read the above eulogistic sentiments. I just want to say that this very same night she gave me a certain lecture on my blockheadism, stupidity, etc., and lo, she writes to you after this fashion. However, she is an increasingly precious treasure to me, despite the occasional dressing down.”
Has there ever existed a ministry family that didn’t lament the heavy time demands? More than four hundred years ago, Martin and Katherine Luther struggled with his need to be gone so much.
Once while he was traveling, Luther wrote home: “To the saintly, worrying Lady Katherine Luther, doctor at Zulsdorf [the home of her inherited farm] and Wittenberg, my gracious, dear wife. We thank you heartily for being so worried that you can’t sleep, for since you started worrying about us, a fire broke out near my door, and yesterday, no doubt due to your worry, a big stone, save for the angels, would have fallen and crushed me like a mouse in a trap. If you don’t stop worrying, I’m afraid the earth will swallow us. Pray, let God worry.”
Katie, at times, also struggled with Martin’s presence. He would often have students around the dinner table, plying him with questions and taking notes, while Katie would sit at the far end surrounded by the children. When she found out the students intended to publish their notes, she wanted to charge them for their note-taking privileges. Martin refused. Eventually the students published 6,596 entries in their various versions of Table Talks. If Katie had had her way, she would have had a guilder for each.
Martin’s sense of humor was often called on in domestic situations. “I would not exchange Katie for France or Venice,” he said, although once, after Katie had contradicted him in front of dinner guests, he said, “If I should ever marry again, I should hew myself an obedient wife out of stone.”
But Martin deeply valued family life. Before his marriage, he sometimes spoke of matrimony as a necessity for the flesh. Afterward, he saw it as an opportunity for the spirit. And he often quoted the saying, “Let the wife make her husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.” Separation only increased Martin and Katherine’s appreciation of a healthy home.
Most ministry families have a love/hate relationship with sermon preparation. They realize how essential — and how demanding — it is. And they often find themselves playing a part, intentionally or otherwise, in a sermon’s development, as Susie Spurgeon, wife of the prominent London pulpiteer, discovered late one night.
Charles Spurgeon would finish preparing his sermons on Saturday night. One evening things did not go well. He mulled over a text for hours. He had consulted commentaries, prayed, jotted down ideas that didn’t go anywhere, and now was becoming frustrated. “I was as much distressed as he was,” said Susie, “but I could not help him.… At least, I thought I could not.”
Finally, Susie urged him to go to bed. She would wake him at dawn. He would be able to think more clearly then.
But during the night, Susie heard him talking in his sleep. She listened. It wasn’t gibberish. “Soon I realized that he was going over the subject … and was giving a clear and distinct exposition of its meaning with much force and freshness.… If I could but seize and remember the salient points, he would have no difficulty in developing and enlarging upon them.”
She lay in bed, “repeating over and over again the chief points,” and fell asleep about the time she was supposed to waken Charles.
When he awoke and noticed the time, he was irritated. “You promised to waken me very early. See the time! Why did you let me sleep? I don’t know what I’m going to do this morning.”
Then Susie told him what had happened during the night and repeated to him the main points he had made in his sleep.
“You mean I preached that in my sleep?” He could hardly believe it. “That is just what I wanted. That’s the true explanation of the text.” From the explanation Susie furnished, Charles went into the pulpit and preached a powerful sermon.
Little wonder, then, that when missionary David Living-stone once asked Spurgeon, “How do you manage to do two men’s work in a single day?” without a pause, Charles responded, “You have forgotten that there are two of us, and the one you see the least of often does the most work” — a response that could be echoed a great number of pastors’ homes today.
More recently, Episcopal rector John Yates of The Falls Church in Falls Church, Virginia, tells a story that shows how family life can directly affect the worship hour itself:
“Young children don’t take Communion in our congregation, but they do come to the rail, kneel, and receive a blessing from the pastor (in this case, me). When my twin daughters were four years old, they came to the rail, and I laid my hands on the first and quietly began to recite, ‘Susie, may the Lord bless you and keep you …’ Other people were kneeling nearby during this reverent moment.
“In the midst of my blessing, she suddenly exclaimed loudly, ‘Daddy, I’m Libby, not Susie!’ The whole congregation looked up, startled, and then burst out laughing.
“Afterward the senior warden, the man who heads our board, said to my wife, ‘I know we expect John to work hard, but I think we need to help him find more time to be with his family.'”
What can we make of these brief snapshots of life in ministry homes?
We immediately recognize that ministry families are not flawless. But flawed doesn’t necessarily mean unhealthy. The goal of ministry-oriented homes is not perfection but faithfulness.
Another fact that quickly emerges is that healthy ministry families don’t all look alike. If anything is clear in the results of the research for this book, it’s that there is no single, right way to structure family life in ministry. The models are as diverse as the personalities of each parent and child. This book reflects the diversity of roles and strategies developed by today’s pastoral families. But two things they share: a commitment to minister and a commitment to build a healthy home.
Gigi Tchividjian, who grew up in a ministry home as the daughter of Billy Graham, tells about a conversation with her 4-year-old son in which they were discussing what a home was. His conclusion: “A home is a place where you come in out of the rain.”
That’s not a bad definition for any home, but for ministry families, it’s the essential goal: to make the home a place of security, warmth, and reassurance — not only for the members of the congregation, but for family members as well. The following chapters point the way to that kind of ministry home.
Copyright ©1988 Christianity Today
