Quick Tip: Don’t Forget Your Family

Ministry is an interesting career for a variety of reasons. We work weird hours. It’s really difficult to explain what we do. Weekends don’t exist in the traditional sense. We are highly involved in people’s lives. We have one to two days a week that are bigger than all the others. Two days out of the year are like our Super Bowl. Our phones and emails always seem to be going off. Work never seems to be done because something always comes up and discipleship never stops.

But let me ask you a question: how often do you bring work home? Or perhaps the question is better asked this way: how often does work distract you from or take priority over your family?

Please understand I’m not trying to call anyone out or be critical. I am trying to challenge our perspectives and to make sure we are focused on where we need to be first and foremost. We have to remember that our priorities fall in this order: God, self, spouse and family, community, and then church. You may read that and want to push back, and I hear that. But why? Why do you want to push back?

I think it’s often because our systems and priorities are out of order. The reality is our relationship with God is our first priority and then the outflow has to be to our primary relationships which are our families. Community should be next because I would argue if we can’t care well for our immediate communities, we have no business caring for a larger church body.

But the point of this post is to challenge all of us to keep our priorities in check, specifically with our families. When we are home, our family should be our focus. We should leave work at work. Our laptops shouldn’t come on vacations. Phone calls shouldn’t interrupt family time.

This may seem hard, but we need to honor our priorities in the right order. That means we need to share our priorities with our staff teams and church. We need to ask for help and accountability. And we may need to take bold steps like turning on “do not disturb” or removing email apps from our phones. Taking these steps will help us grow closer to our families and show our spouses and kids that they matter the most to us, as they should.

Now I get it. There are always exceptions. But don’t make the excuse that exceptions are the norm. Never sacrifice your family for church. The church will always exist without us, but our families won’t.

At the end of the day, the question we need to ask ourselves is this: am I the husband/wife my spouse needs me to be and deserves, and am I the father/mother my kids need me to be and deserve?