Parenting, Pastoring, and Managing the Roles (plus a giveaway)

Over Thanksgiving week, my wife, girls, and I were in the car for quite some time trying to get to Colorado and back driving through a couple of snow storms.  I actually don't mind the drive too much, because I usually try to catch up on a few sermons and youth ministry seminars.  I was lucky enough to get a CD of the entire 2010 San Diego YS Convention from a wonderful friend at our church who has been working the conventions for years (decades?) and always makes a point to bring back the mp3s for us to enjoy.  Jennifer and I listened to Doug Fields' "big room" talk, titled "Focus on Your Own Darn Family."  (The title is taken from one of my favorite Colorado Springs bumper stickers, and yes, Doug changed the second-to-last word in the phrase.)  He gave three great ways that we as pastors can focus on our family as we serve Christ and his Church.  I highly recommend checking out the whole talk (in fact, I'm giving away five copies for free because I think it's a message every youth pastor needs to hear; more on that at the end of this post).

Aside from giving a lot of great tips for being a parent, spouse, and pastor (such as making sure that being a pastor's kid is FUN--apparently it's possible), it got me thinking about one of my least favorite words: balance.  A lot of people say that raising a family and being a pastor requires balance.  One of the things I appreciated about Doug's talk is that his whole focus was not on striking a balance between family and ministry.  The reason I cringe when I hear the word balance is that it isn't an accurate way to describe what it means to balance different roles at once.  Yes, it can be a good word picture such that if a pastor spends way too much time at church and not much time with family, he might need to take some more time from the church scale and give it to the family scale.  However, managing different roles is not simply a mathematical issue in which we need to divide our time more evenly or wisely between our different spheres of life.

The reason balance doesn't apply is because the spheres of family and ministry overlap and even invade one another at times.  The spheres cannot be kept separate, and if we try to keep them separate, we might be in for disappointment, or perhaps a crisis à la George Costanza.

Allow me to suggest a word that will better help us serve our families and our flocks: sacrifice.  Sacrifice should be a mark of any Christian leader, and sacrifice is the key to managing our different roles in life.  Why?  Let's consider a common scenario that a youth minister might face: imagine that Youth Ministry Yogi has been asked to take on some extra roles at church, such as helping out at the annual Christmas bake sale.  Yogi is already pressed for time and already is spending more evenings away from his family than he would like.  What is Yogi to do?  Does he need some more balance in his life?  Nope.  He needs to sacrifice.  For Yogi, the sacrificial thing to do is to say, "no" to the extra roles.  How is that sacrificial?  Well, if Yogi is anything like most youth pastors, he is a bit of a people pleaser and struggles with a tendency to want to look good and impress people.  Saying "no" is a sacrifice, because 1) The additional roles would bring Yogi some serious praise, and 2) Youth Ministry Yogi really, really likes praise.

Here's my point: when I really examine my heart and motives, saying "no" to things for the sake of my family usually hurts my ego far more than it hurts the people I serve.

But tough thing is that sometimes my family will also sacrifice, just by nature of what I do for a living.  It doesn't happen often, but our date night has been postponed because of a pastoral emergency, and I once spent Christmas Eve with a family whose father had just died suddenly and unexpectedly.  We need to keep in mind that this is not a green light for pastors to neglect their families in the name of "sacrifice."  However, I do hope that our family would be built on Jesus-style sacrificial love, and that when our daughters look back on their childhood, I will have been a father who loved everyone--especially his family--sacrificially.  I still haven't quite figured out how to manage it all, but I'm pretty sure a good starting point is to die to myself and to serve sacrificially my family, my church, and the students I work with.

San Diego NYWC mp3 Giveaway
As I mentioned above, Doug Fields' talk impacted my wife and me so much that I'm giving away five copies of the mp3.  Here's how you can get one:

Send me an email via the "Contact Benjer" page, send me a message via Twitter, or leave a comment on this post (if you use this last option, make sure I have a way to get a hold of you if you win, such as linking to your blog).  I'll take entries through the end of the day Wednesday, December 15th (Mountain Standard Time).  On Thursday the 16th, I'll do the drawing, and then I'll send the download codes to the winners.

By the way, Monica at PSI Digital Media Experts was really helpful in finding a practical way to give away digital copies of the talk.  They have all the NYWC content for purchase, so make sure you check out their website.  It's great for your own personal use or for training your volunteers.

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