*Adapted from chapter 5 of Shepherds on Guard. Now available on Amazon.
A little over a year ago, a friend of mine reached out wanting to have lunch. He is a fellow pastor serving down the road. Although he didn’t explain why he wanted to meet, something in his voice told me he really needed to talk to me. While our lunch began with ordinary small talk, he quickly turned the conversation to what he needed to talk about. He began to share about his two loves: family and ministry. But sadly, he explained how he had neglected his wife and children over the past year because of ministry. He admitted that he was close to losing them if things didn’t change quickly.
My friend didn’t wake up one day and decide to neglect his family. It was a slow process consisting of one compromise after another. Meetings replaced his kids’ ballgames. Counseling replaced family dinners. Phone calls replaced game night. Visitations replaced date nights. Unfortunately, neglecting his family became easier over time. Forty-hour weeks became fifty, then sixty, then seventy. Before long, his family was lucky to see him one night a week. With tears in his eyes, he admitted how badly he had failed them. Now he was afraid he would lose them.
Like other pastors before him, my friend let ministry replace his family. He sacrificed his family on the altar of ministry. For the sake of a “successful” ministry, he neglected his family. Sadly, he forgot that his own family was his primary ministry. God’s first calling on his life involved caring for his family. Ministry requires a lot of time and attention, and if we are not careful, it’s easy for ministry to replace our family. And the truth is, all of us are susceptible to this temptation.
Here are three practical ways we can guard ourselves against neglecting our family while remaining faithful to ministry.
Stop Talking About Ministry So Much
This is one that I have to be careful about. I’m driving down the road, eating dinner, or at the ballfield, and suddenly, I find that I’m talking to my family about something church related. Ministry is important. It’s my calling, and I love it. But a clear sign that something has become an idol is that we can’t stop talking about it. My family loves that I am a pastor, but that doesn’t mean they want me to talk about it all the time. There are appropriate times and inappropriate times to talk about ministry, especially when it comes to our family.
One of the simplest ways we can care for our family is to turn off the church talk. Sure, there will be times when it’s good and helpful to talk with our spouses about something bothering us or to our kids about something positive happening. But when we insert ministry into every conversation with our family, it teaches them what’s most important to us. When I am with my kids, I talk about the stuff they care about. When I am with my wife, I talk about stuff she cares about. This simple act goes a long way in helping them know I value them more than my ministry.
Don’t Just Tell Your Family They Are a Priority, Show Them
There’s a famous adage, “Talk is cheap.” This certainly applies to making our family a priority. We can tell our family they are a priority all we want, but it means nothing if our actions don’t back up our talk. I can tell my wife that our date nights are a priority, but if I constantly “reschedule” them because of a meeting, my actions speak louder than my words. The same goes for my four kids. I can tell them that their band performances and dance recitals are more important than church work, but they know what’s most important if I am always missing their special events for church functions.
Our families deserve our undivided time and attention. They don’t deserve distracted time and attention because our mind is still connected to our work. When we are with our family, we need to prioritize them. This isn’t always easy, but it’s worth the effort. In the big and small things, show your wife and children they are a priority.
Guard Your Time
In ministry, there’s always another phone call to make, meeting to hold, and person to visit. Many people in your congregation don’t mind you spending sixty to eighty hours meeting the church’s needs, but your family will mind. Whenever we put something on our schedule, we tend to guard it. Therefore, in the same way we make and guard time to prepare our sermon each week, we need to make and guard time with our families.
Of course, emergencies will happen that will require us to step away from a planned event with our family to care for something urgent. But emergencies should be the exception, not the rule. If we want to properly care for our family, we must guard our time with them. We must guard our time so that meetings, sermon prep, and phone calls don’t regularly cause us to miss time with our family. Schedule time with your family and guard it!
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Thankfully, my friend immediately repented of his failures and worked hard to restore a healthy relationship with his family. It took time and intentionality, and now, he fights hard to guard himself against making the same mistake again. His family is worth the effort, as are ours. God has graced us with our families, and we must treasure and care for them. Our families must be a priority. Don’t neglect your family.
