Editors’ note: Part I of this article was published earlier this week.

Be fun to live with

“Joy” is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). If your Christianity makes you dreary and dull, you don’t understand the ministry of the Holy Spirit nor what Christ has done. If pastors would reflect the joy of the Lord in their ministry, marriage, and home, people around them would be delightfully drawn to the Lord.

While pastors often have to bear heavy burdens, they do their family a terrible injustice when they don’t learn to lay those aside when they walk in the door of their homes. I once asked my wife, Tanya, to tell me her favorite part of the day. She quickly said, “When you come home. You come in the door acting silly, imitating Ricky Ricardo, whispering something in my ear, or wrestling with the boys. It doesn’t matter what might have been happening, you elevate us. If we were in a bad mood, suddenly our mood changes dramatically. You have the power to lift our spirits in a moment.”

Feeling a little proud of myself, I asked her further what was her least favorite time of the day. “When you come home,” she said, shocking me a bit. “If you come in dragging and griping, in a bad mood and aggravated with someone or something, it doesn’t matter how great our moods have been, you drag us down. You have the power to make that moment either the best or the worst part of our day.”

Don’t just spend your time, invest it

A minister has to learn to invest his time wisely, rather than merely letting it pass. He must choose to be present for the events that matter. Some pastors pride themselves on “always being there” for their church members. Adrian Rogers used to say, “The pastor who is always available is seldom worth anything when he is.” Whether dealing with his church or his family, no minister can be there for everything. The key is to be present for the things that have the greatest impact. A pastor can overindulge his church as surely as he can overindulge his children. The key is to set an example of faithfulness, discipline, and integrity.

Because of my schedule, I did not attend all of the ball games, school events, or performances of my children. We would have an honest talk about the event’s level of importance. If one of my sons said to me, “This is important to me. I want you there,” then I would do everything possible to make it happen. By the same token, I sometimes had to explain that because of a previous commitment I had made, I had to be away. I could not break my word.

If children see that ethos consistently permeate their dad’s life, they will understand and support it. In 1995 when my oldest son was 12 years old, the Atlanta Braves won the World Series. Michael was a huge Braves fan, and I foolishly promised him that if they ever made it back to the Series, no matter how old we were or what we were doing, we would drop everything and go. To my abject horror, I watched the 1996 playoffs knowing that the World Series was scheduled the same week our church had scheduled an evangelist for a revival meeting. When they won the right to face the Yankees in the series, I knew I was going to have to keep my promise. Though I would usually never miss a revival meeting for a ball game, a promise was, after all, a promise. To this day I am not sure that the evangelist ever got over it or that my church understood (even though I did my best to explain), but I know my son learned that his dad was willing to keep a promise even when it cost him.

That kind of commitment made it easier for my family to understand when, at other times, I had to miss some events. I often brought them into the decision process, asking them questions like, “Which will have the greatest impact? What are the negative and positive consequences of each choice?” I believe that parents who pride themselves on being there for everything are little different than parents who buy their children everything they want. I want my children to know how high a priority they are to me, but I do not want them to ever think that they are the center of the universe around which everything else revolves. Some crises and needs are more significant than their soccer games, but in the same way I want my church to know that some needs in my family are more important than the WMU dinner.

In all candor, not everyone is going to understand the choices a minister makes. As much as I hate to admit it, pastors need to learn to live with someone’s disappointment. Someone will always have their own opinion about the way the pastor should spend his time, and they will inevitably complain about it when their expectations aren’t met. Sometimes a pastor just has to decide which criticism he is most willing to face: “He’s not always available,” or “His kids sure are bad.”

Include your family in ministry tasks

A friend used to tell me, “Wherever you go, take someone with you.” Following his advice, I always tried to take one of my sons on visits to homes, hospitals, or preaching engagements. I used those opportunities to teach them how to care for people, how to live a godly life, or just to listen to what was on their hearts.

In the same way, I include my wife in my sermon preparation, frequently asking her for advice in crafting the sermon, searching for illustrations, or the best way to relate truth to a contemporary audience. A blessed fringe benefit is that Tanya has become a wonderful speaker herself, able to exegete a passage and present it in an engaging manner. Now that our sons are grown, she accompanies me almost everywhere I go. By including her in my ministry, we have grown closer and my church sees us as a team. I am less likely to face moral temptation or simply to grow distant from her. By including my family I cultivate trust, camaraderie, and competency.

I have always realized that the windows of opportunity with my family quickly close, that I must seize the moment to share in their lives. My sons have grown and begun families of their own. Because I made investments in their lives, now I get to enjoy those Sunday night phone calls from Michael about what he preached, or Thursday night phone calls from Seth about how much his prayer group means to him. Because the Lord led me to invest in them, now I get to enjoy some of the fruit.

No pastor can find the perfect formula for success, a failsafe recipe for balancing church and home, ministry and family, but if he is willing to take as much care for his calling as sailors take for the deck of an aircraft carrier, he can identify and remove the little things that would disable him. If God has called him to shepherd both family and a church, then God is most glorified when he sees that these ministries complement each other rather than compete.

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Hershael W. York serves as Victor and Louise Lester Professor of Christian Preaching at Southern Seminary. He is also the Senior Pastor at Buck Run Baptist Church.