Balancing Ministry/Work with Family – Discipleship for Dads

What if your wife feels like you’re not prioritizing your family enough compared to your work—especially ministry work? The dads answer a listener question about balancing the needs of your family with the needs of the body. They discuss how your wife and children share in your calling…integrating family economy with ministry work to establish a symbiosis…being discerning about the real importance of common family activities…and how to know when you’re working too much.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome, friends to Generations, Kevin Swanson with you today. Another segment of Discipleship for Dads with Tom Strausser and Danny Craig, usual suspects. Good to have you in the studio. Yes. Okay, today, very important and convicting. This always has to be convicted. I was thinking about the same thing, Kevin. It's like beginning. And then we Wait a minute. That's good though. That's good. That's good. Rewind. Let's do that kind of stuff. Okay. This one's about balancing ministry/slash work outside the home with the needs of the family. Okay, like I said, it was going to be convict. Okay. First of all, a couple of inputs to the program at mail at generations.org. Really appreciate this from Joel, 25-year-old husband, Kansas. Since before the Lord blessed us with our son, I've been involved in our local church with a youth ministry, Sunday school, helping lead church worship from time to time, as well as assisting with projects in the church. Recently, our church raised funds for a playground. It brought up some strain in my wife's heart as she feels like the church obligations are pulling me too much from the home. She's told me she doesn't feel I'm absent from home, but that I'm not prioritizing them over the church. I try to explain that we have an obligation to our local church and that in serving our local church body, I'm also serving our family as we try to foster a culture of discipleship and service that our children will benefit from by God's grace for years to come. Very interesting. I mean, I he's really dealing with this important uh relationship of family and church. But we're gonna draw and work on this as well. But but is the family important? Is the church important? They're symbiotic. And we're gonna get to that in just a moment. But let's get right to this question of how much time do we put into church slash work versus family? And how do we know when we're walking over the edge? By the way, one more input, uh fella said, Yeah, I would like a counsel on how to spend more time witnessing, not take away time shepherding of our own families. And he thinks he's called to witness and to evangelize. But uh, what is a proper home life balance when it comes to ministry outside the home? So so these are the sorts of questions that are posed here. And from the outset, I think we need to talk calling first. This this came to my mind. Some callings require singleness. If you're gonna spend a fair amount of your time in prison, like that's your calling. Apostle Paul, right? His calling. I I'm guessing he understood for the present distress. He refers to this in 1 Corinthians 7, was it? If you're gonna spend some time in prison, like a little bit more time in prison doing Princeton ministry, probably a call to singleness, which which is as an interesting point. Evangelicals and Protestants have been pretty soured on the whole idea of a calling to singleness. Now, I I think that's just wrong. I think they they've gotten into another ditch. I actually believe that some men are called to singleness, like the apostle Paul was. And there's nothing wrong with that. Now, to impose it on everybody is not right. But um at the same time, 1 Corinthians 9 5 says, Do we not have a right to take along a believing wife to ministry work? And evidently to to missionary type work. Because he here here Paul is talking about taking this believing wife along with you, as other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas have have done. Evidently Peter was married, and I believe he was. We know Peter was married. So there is a calling. And now if you're married, you share a calling with your wife, and secondarily with your children. And and I think that's important from the front end of this. As C. T. Studd gets married, I think he did on the mission field. His his wife pretty much understood at this point something of what would be required of pioneering missionary work, which is the kind of stuff that he was doing. Um now we can talk about C.T. Studd, but not exactly, probably the best example of a guy who balanced out marriage and missionary work. But but I think we have to be together on this. We have to share the calling from the outset. Thoughts on this?

SPEAKER_03 4:18

Well, even in his example, as odd as it does seem to me that he was away from his wife for uh what was it, 14 years? It is interesting that as they speak of it in the biographies, they were still unified in the calling, and she was still very much engaged in the ministry work. So that separation didn't fundamentally break down their uh sense of common mission.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Yeah, they had both crawled on the altar and just let it burn. Uh, but we're all to crawl on an altar. Yeah. And part of that altar is serving family, raising children. And I believe they did raise their children together. Now, one of the drawbacks, I think, to a lot of that early missionary movement was they actually sent their kids off to boarding school. Yeah. And that turned out to be a pretty negative experience for many kids. So uh again, we're, you know, I I I don't want to adjudicate everybody's situation here, uh, but I do want to come to some you know helpful principles uh for those that are listening to the program. But Todd, how do we balance out church life, ministry life, and family life?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Yeah, we we know that we are called, if we're in marriage, you're called to that. And that's obviously to be very, very high priority in your life. We're also called to love the church, invest in the church. So it is a bit of a both. Um, I think, you know, some of the examples you read, there there has to be a sensitivity to that is how how am I ministering in these particular particular areas? And in calling, there is there's a you know, there's a oneness in marriage. So how how are we participating in this oneness of calling together? And there's gonna be roles, like even if you think of like a pastor, somebody that's a pastor, maybe a full-time pastor in a church. Well, the wife isn't the pastor, so she's gonna have different roles, but she's there, she knows the calling of her husband, and she's obviously supporting that and coming alongside, and there's gonna be that. But but they see what they still do is is gonna be a little bit different, yet there's a oneness uh in in the calling together for what God's called them to do.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

I love the idea of integrating family into your family economy, yes, which we talk about almost every other program. We have to restore family economy. Right. Without the restoration of family economy, this whole thing is gonna be imbalanced. So we have to understand the family as a lean mean oikonomia machine. We are unified in a family economic vision.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

So I think this is really critical. Now, when the children are younger, it's harder to integrate a two-year-old into like this guy's you're working on a playground for the church. It's hard to bring your two-year-old down and say, Okay, we're working this project together, boy.

unknown 6:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

It's much easier if you have a 14-year-old, much like what you've done. Sure. Uh I see you out, you know, uh cutting grass in front of the church with your sons on a Saturday.

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Um, it's much easier uh later on as the kids get older. So I think just remembering that in the early years, you may not be able to integrate uh the children as much into the economy. Therefore, you may not be able to bite off quite as much as a family economy when the kids are younger. I mean, I I can understand that. Um that's good to think about. Here's here's the other thing. We're trying to reform both family and church. You know, which is more important, family or church? Now, they're both important. They both must be reformed, they must be renewed, restored in a statist age or in statism. We're in an age of statism, individualism, and isolationism. And and the isolationism is in the non-integrated form of entertainment. You know, everybody gets their own electronic form of entertainment and they're plugged in. There's very little family integration into the entertainment thing or gathering around the piano singing together uh throughout the evenings or something like that. So I think the goal is to integrate your family into church activity. And this whole age segregation thing is another thing that has just blown up the family and destroyed the possibility of a family in a healthy way integrating into church uh activities. Rather, it's just one more way of segregating family life. And we can't do this. In other words, we have a social situation that is counterproductive to the restoration of family and church. Yeah. So I think these are the things we're up against. Therefore, uh, we have to reform both. We have to reform family life. We have to reform church life. We need to start something like a organization of a family integrated church kind of thing. Oh, wait, that's already thanks. Thank you, Scott Brown. Scott Brown has already established that. Okay, right. But are you with me here? I think we're up against these social problems that makes it very difficult to integrate and to achieve the balance that we're trying to achieve here, Danny.

SPEAKER_03 9:12

It reminds me of 1 Corinthians 16, 15, where Paul speaks of the household of Stephanus. Uh, and he says that they devoted themselves to the ministry of the saints. And I think that's a beautiful picture that here's a household that's devoting themselves to the ministry of the saints. And so to think of the ideal church and family relationship as symbiotic, uh, we're investing, we will be invested in, and our family health is very much connected to the health of this body. And that's that is an area where the homeschool movement has struggled.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Let's take an example. I'm going to focus on you right now because you started a ministry in your home on Wednesday evenings. That's a great example.

SPEAKER_02 9:54

Yeah, it's a good example.

SPEAKER_01 9:55

Because we've been more blessed by it than I think we've been blessed by it. Has it undermined your family life or contributed to it? Are you with me? Yeah. Are you able to be involved in a church prayer meeting in your home and still benefit your family at the same time? I actually hear your kids praying. They all pipe in and pray in the prayer meetings.

SPEAKER_03 10:19

Yeah. And I think that their prayer life has substantially grown as a result of that Wednesday night prayer meeting. So no, I uh, you know, selfishly, we decided to host it in our own house because that's how what happens. We we knew that that would be part of what would make it doable for us. Uh and so I think it it that's a good example of something that's been symbiotic. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Todd, other examples. How do we do this symbiosis and not undermine family life by church involved?

SPEAKER_00 10:48

Yeah. I I think one of the things that maybe families run into is there's a lot to do in the world. There's a lot of, you know, organizations you can be part of, sports you can be part of, other events and things and rec even recreation, uh, which is a big thing here in Colorado. But, you know, this is what we're called to. We're called to our families and we're called to the body of Christ. We're called to a particular body of Christ to minister there, to invest into that, like you're to the symbiotic relationship you're talking about. It means we're gonna have to put down some of those things. I mean, they're just you can't do it all. You you know, if if you're consumed by other things that are pulling at you in your time and you're running around having to do all these activities, there's probably not gonna be a lot of time left for the church. And I think we really need to be thoughtful about that. You need we need to set up our lives and figure out what are these big building blocks that God's calling me to. Well, clearly to my family. I think the second one's the church. I mean, you know, you gotta have a job or business. I'm not saying you don't have that, but the church is is uh is is very, very important. It's a good thing to invest, it's more important to invest in the church than traveling sports. I'll just say it. But those kind of things can take families away and then they go, Oh, I don't have time to do this or that. I don't know how to integrate. Well, yeah, we need to we need to operate rightly.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

So within the church, I think we have great opportunity to integrate family life into church life, ministry life. Yes, and we should find ways to do that. Probably harder in some areas. It's harder when you're going off to work. You can't really integrate your family into your work life if you're going off and working for the corporation. Uh but but I think also evangelism may be a little more difficult. Although we we've done street evangelism, brought our kids with us, but again, teenagers.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

But let me let me just say this if all you can do is go to church on Sunday, then then do it. Be consistent, show up on time, you know, example that, like be there for the body of Christ. And like we tell our children, you know, hang out after church and and and and encourage people, edify the body, pray with people. Just involves that.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

Is there a downside to going to church with your family sitting in the same pew together on a Sunday morning and a Sunday evening together as a family?

unknown 12:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:56

Is that disintegrating? Is that going to be have a negative effect upon family life? I can't imagine.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Can't think of any.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

No, I can imagine that dad running off to church meetings constantly all by himself, that could do it, yeah. Doing evangelism ministry all by himself over and over again might be a little more counterproductive to family relationships. So I can't.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

And if if dad's gonna be called to that or do that, he's going to have to set down other things in life, right? So, okay, he can run off to church meetings, but he's he's set down half of his business or something, so he's with the family in those times. But even with the ages, I just encourage dads to get creative. I mean, when our little, we had little, little girls, and I mean, they could, you know, they're two and three, but you know, we can still take them to the nursing homes, the care homes. And I tell you, those people love to see them. I mean, it was like the biggest, most edifying thing you could probably do. Show up with babies in a nursing home. They just loved it. I mean, there's things we can do.

SPEAKER_01 13:54

Your family was big time in elder care ministry. I'd appreciate that for those years.

SPEAKER_00 13:58

There are things we can do, even in all stages of life to integrate the family. And then, you know, fast forward five years, they we go to the nursing home, they're playing their violins. I mean, that it's just it can there's so many things you can do.

SPEAKER_03 14:09

I'm convicted even as I say this, but part of it has to do with uh the proactive training of your children so that they can be helpful and useful. And so it's important to get that order right. Uh, don't jump in so fast that you've missed the fundamentals, that you don't have children who are well ordered, who can be a blessing at nursing homes. I mean, that's a great example, but it's not necessarily a given, right? These things take training and preparation. I I think, though, of the practical example uh of my parents, when I was five, I was the youngest, my sister was 18 at the time. We moved to Russia. And one of the things I really appreciate was my dad was so intentional about finding ways, particularly to integrate my older siblings into the ministry, the orphanage work. And I think that was tremendously impactful. My brother, uh my sister was 18, my brother was uh 16, another brother was 14, and they were all, even in their teenage years, involved in caring for and working with those children. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

So the modern institutional approach may have to be adjusted if we're really gonna integrate our family economy into uh family ministry in the church, uh especially if you got a heavily disintegrating approach that uh is so characterized by our culture today. Now, I just just uh just a word on pastoring because you're a pastor, I'm a pastor, Todd, speaking to Todd. Uh you're a pastor, wannabe. Okay. But uh in in in the running, right? Um but you know that's taking it to a different level. And I do want to say man, you better count the cost.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

And I think you know, we've made a lot of mistakes in the past. I have. I have made a lot of mistakes in the past. Not cautioning men to what they're getting into. Because uh you've you've got to you've got to you've got to keep the first Timothy 3 4 in the in the forefront. One who rules his own household well, having his children's submission with all reverence. For if a man does not know how to rule his own house, how will he take care of the church of God? Right. And so first things first, and and even as a pastor, we retain the the absolute responsibility and right to if if if we're heading off to a church meeting and there's something not right in our homes, what do we do? Make a U-turn, go back home, park the car, go into the house, and and shore up the things that are going on in the house. We have to, we have to, we have to be sure that that our home is in good order before we think about getting involved in church leadership. And pastoring is tough. Your family takes hits. I guess I wish I had known more of this early on. You're signing your family up for taking hits because there's no way you can isolate the family from the body. Uh, you know, and I think what happens though is that there is a tendency to isolation, or there's a tendency to try to protect yourself. Or sometimes your children might grow bitter towards the church. And so so if you're going to be involved in church leadership, you have to up the shepherding of your children through uh these tendencies to want to pull back, to not love, to no longer engage the one another's in the body. And uh and and we need to, as fathers, equip our children to this. And I see this with my wife as well. She'll sometimes pull back a bit. Well, there's pain. There's people do difficult things to pastors and to their families, but we need to be so forgiving and so loving that we can keep coming back into the fray and be willing to uh to to to be hurt again, one more time. And that's hard, that's difficult. It takes this shepherding to a different level. So I just that's a side note. Any other side notes on PS4?

SPEAKER_00 18:06

It's just something that we as a family have to continually be speaking about, not only in a marriage, but also as the children grow older, just being able to openly speak about the the commitment that it is. And and as much as what I found, as much as possible, like we were just talking about before, to to to be involved in the church as a family together, not that, oh, this is dad running off doing his own thing. It's like no, our family is is called to be part of this body, and uh and and how are we doing that together, really? It really I think it really helps an understanding.

SPEAKER_01 18:42

And and you know, we have these debates and these conversations all the time among various pastors. And how much do we share with? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And some people say you share everything, some people say I just share anything at all. Um, but it's every family is different. Yeah, every spouse is different, every child is different, and uh and we have to be be careful with those things as well. Um any other thoughts on church ministry? I want to move on to just kind of the general question of uh how do you know you're not spending enough time with your kids or your family?

SPEAKER_03 19:10

But just some practical uh consideration would be to sit down with another couple involved in church ministry and say, hey, this is the question that we're dealing with. And yeah, you know, moms do tend to be more protective of the home dynamic, which I think is appropriate. Uh and husbands tend to be a little bit more out there. That's that's probably appropriate, but helping uh adjudicate some of that through the wise counsel from another couple, I think, would be really, really helpful. We've we've done that. Uh sat down and just it's that that that created a space for my wife to express what she was feeling and me to express what I was feeling in a way that was safe and open, and then uh we got some sound counsel around that.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Here's a great question. Uh I think we need to draw an application to right away. How does Dad know if he's working too much? That's a great question. And the first thing that came to my mind is relationships. You just got to monitor relationships, you gotta figure out where the relationships are. And uh are they growing cold and distant? Are you having a hard time communicating with your teens right now because you have not spent the time, you haven't got the passport? Um and this is where I fell down. I can see I was spending too much time in ministry. I I I was integrating my children, they were coming with me to conferences. I mean, even when I was in counseling sessions with people, I'd have them, you know, at a different table at a restaurant.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Right.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Um so and I traveled constantly with my children. But I think we we I needed more one-on-one time with certain of my children. Yeah. Um, I shorted up a couple of times, but I do think that monitoring relationships in the home, relationship with your spouse, relationship with your kids, really, really critical. Um, and by the way, also ask your wife, am I working too much? Yeah, how are my relationships with the kids? She she's more probably attuned to the relationships than you are. So that comes to my mind. How do you know? What's the metric for whether I am just way too absorbed in my work?

SPEAKER_03 21:17

Well, I I'm convicted as I think about this. And to your point of monitoring relationships, the most important one is for me to monitor my relationship with the Lord. Yes. Am I living a Martha lifestyle in which I'm uh cared about, uh my my heart is uh drawn towards many things and many cares of this world? Uh or am I focused on the one thing that is needful? And so I think for me and maybe other men, there is a selfish ambition that can creep into our motivations for work. And so uh I have to be constantly evaluating why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Is it really for the family, or is it really for me? Is it Really, for my personal sense of value and accomplishment and pride and power and power. So, and that will show up in my relationship with the Lord and then with my wife and then with my kids. But uh I think evaluating my heart motives is starter for me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Ask your wife. I mean, ask your wife uh what what she what she thinks. And you know, as you're as you're praying together, it should come out in terms of you're saying in relationships, I think, which is critical in your relationship with the Lord. But also, I think, you know, a man can proactively ask that, and uh, he can have his wife and he can have brothers as well, and understand that balance. Because I think there's also going to be ebbs and flows. There's times where, you know, work ministry is going to demand more, there's times where it's going to demand less. And how are we, but for the family, keeping, you know, a consistent level of love and attention. Um, that's what I think is what we're called to do. The ministry and job can get busy, but it doesn't mean we get a pass on loving and edifying and nourishing all of that and cultivating that. We have to continue to do that. Healthy family, healthy church.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

We need both. We do. We do. When you begin to see that your church is a little less healthy, do you lean in a bit more or do you lean out? You follow me here? We need to buy into the church as well. Yeah, we need to be as concerned for the church.

SPEAKER_00 23:28

Yeah, we care about the church. So, but I again I think it it can happen in simple ways as a whole family. If if if a church is challenged, one of the I mean, you're just doing a lot of hospitality, just have people over. That's actually gonna help a tremendous in a church. Huge, huge tremendously. And it's like you do that as a family, you do it in your own home. You it shows it's not particularly challenging to do. It's it's not like flying to another country or something, just do those simple things. Um, you can you can pray as a family for the church, that's tremendous, you know. Uh, you can have like we'd have a little whiteboard of little prayer requests, and you can have a child assign a child to keep track of that and how we pro that person doing. And I mean, there's all kinds of ways you can do that together and lean into the church. And I think it is important to lean in. There's lots of small ways to serve.

SPEAKER_03 24:17

Yeah. Uh, we have a food pickup. And uh, I was just talking to Megan about this yesterday, and she says, Yeah, whenever when I try to structure the day so that we can help clean up. And this small thing, and that's something that all of our kids can always.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Yeah. Um, I guess I I I want to end this on the question of priority. Yeah. Because priority is the big issue, right? What's our priority? And then speak to the average Joe, an average Jill who are listening to the program and saying, you know what? I need to know what's my priority? Is it family? Is it church? Is it work? Is it my relationship with God? And I think we would all say it's a relationship first with God. That's number one. But after that, what comes next? Are these of equal priorities? Are they differing priorities?

SPEAKER_00 25:11

Is one lesser than the other? Thoughts on that? Here's how I view that. Um, you know, and we we often take um marriage vows. And and vows are a big deal to God. I mean, Ecclesiastes says if if if if you can't fulfill a vow, don't even take the vow, right? And and in our church, we actually take vows for church membership too. We covenant together. So, okay, so I've taken two vows. These are two very important things. Here's why I say the family, and here's why. In my family, in my marriage, it's just me. I'm the only guy. In the church, praise God, I've covenanted with a body. And you know, I I can't be there for every single thing, every single time. And I don't know that I'm called to that, but there's the whole body of Christ. There's other brothers and sisters.

SPEAKER_01 25:51

And don't forget, your family is part of the body. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:54

So you're actually you've got a chunk of it. Yeah. So if my family tanks, that doesn't help that doesn't help the body. So I've I I've got to do the answer is yes. I've got to invest in both. I've got I've vowed to both, but it's what particularly am I called to do? You can you can see that, you know, the actually the New Testament's wonderful explaining a husband, this is what you're to do in this context that you've been given. And here's what you are to do as a church member, right? You are you are to love, you are to edify, you are to receive, you are to build up, you are to encourage, right? It's different than you are to wash by the water of the word, cultivate, and nourish. You see, he's given us different things, so I know what to do, um, but I've got to engage in both.

SPEAKER_01 26:32

And I think the bottom line is faithful in small things. Yes. Faithful in small things. Let's be faithful with the little church, the micro part of the church that's meeting every day in my home. I need to be faithful with that first. That's why healthy families make for a healthy church because we're all part of that church body.

SPEAKER_03 26:52

I was thinking of concentric circles. The first circle is my family. Uh, but I I need to work out from that circle too, because that's one of the reasons God has given us a family is to be uh an edification to the church. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Well, friends, you've been listening to an ongoing conversation. I have a feeling we're going to continue this conversation as we go because uh we're all trying to identify that right balance, the right priorities that God has placed upon us as husbands, as fathers, and as members of the body of Christ in the local church. And and please, please, please be a member of a local body, right? That's so critical. The idea that we were lone wolf Christians doesn't work. Does not work. No, no. You do not church hop and be sure, and be sure, and be sure that you select your bunch of sinners and hang with them. You know, it's not going to be perfect. It might be even more imperfect if you join it, but uh, but be a part of the local body and uh and do the one another's and begin with those one another's on a daily basis in your own family life. That wraps up this edition of Generations Friends. You can um email any of your questions, comments, additional ideas for this discussion at uh mail at generations.org. This is Kevin Swanson and Todd Strasser and Danny Craig inviting you back again next time as we continue to lay down a vision for the next generation. This has been a production of the Generations Media Network. For more information, go to generations.org/slash media.