Can you be an effective leader without destroying your family?
It is a poignant week to consider this question—which quite separately a friend raised with me yesterday past email.
I'm leading a workshop on 'Living in the dear of God at dwelling and with family'. As I've prepared for information technology I've found very niggling theological and pastoral reflection (in print) on a theology of pastors/leaders every bit parents and spouses and how those 2 relate, ie a thoughtful expect at a theology of home and family and leadership.
As it happens, there is a great resource in the Grove Leadership series, written by Katharine Loma of (appropriately enough) Care for the Family, calledThe Leader and the Family: Beingness Constructive in Ministry Without Family unit Losing Out.Katharine starts by setting out the reality of the challenge by means of some stories from individuals:
I can recollect her then clearly. I had just finished giving a seminar for church leaders and people were leaving. She sat motionless, seemingly oblivious that the room was at present almost empty. The team began clearing away books and stacking chairs, simply however she saturday there, in some other earth. I walked over and sat downward abreast her.
She began to tell me her story. In some ways, she did not really demand to—I had heard information technology time and once more. Unable to balance the competing demands on her life she felt guilty, isolated and alone. The words tumbled out through her tears, 'It'south such a relief to observe that this is not just me, that others feel the same.' This young woman was a church leader under pressure. In the seminar, I and my young man speakers had unpacked some of the item issues that church leaders face up. We had non given whatsoever like shooting fish in a barrel answers; we had only offered encouragement and promise, combined with some practical coping strategies.
Whilst many others in different walks of life identify with the tension of balancing work and family unit, the particular demands of ministry can mean that if we are not careful the bias is weighted in favour of the church. If we do not intentionally prioritize the claims on our fourth dimension the bias kicks in, with our family taking subordinate place. One wife (it could equally have been a husband) wrote this:
I don't know that I tin can proceed any more. He has get so preoccupied with the demands of the church that distance has come betwixt us. It's as if a third person has entered our marriage. The church has taken over every aspect of our lives—conversation about church even takes place in the bedroom. We have no fourth dimension together any more, but for united states. (pp 3–four)
Having await at the stories, Katharine and so stands back and considers the reasons that these pressures can build, including the nature of the call to Christian ministry, the fact that the longed-for 'slower solar day' never actually comes, the demands of those who shout loudest, unlimited expectations, the sense that we as Christian leaders are somehow indispensable, and the corrosive result of criticism. The one that stood out for me was: 'Success' in Ministry is More Easily Measured than 'Success' in Family Life:
As a lodge we seem to love to rank things in order of merit: best sportspeople, best-dressed women, the fittest men, all-time films, books and fifty-fifty churches. But the problem with rankings is that the process can exist riddled with subjectivity and bias. Who and what we measure out take everything to practise with the people we ask to brand the option and the criteria they put in place.
What is truthful, nevertheless, is that in life nosotros tend to measure what nosotros value. Whatever criteria nosotros choose to measure 'success' (or fruitfulness) in ministry—and however random—it is possible to find a measure that volition mark our progress and, in so doing, eternalize our sense of achievement. Whether information technology is the number of toddlers at the pram service, the number attending habitation groups or the corporeality of money given to mission, we find things we tin measure. Information technology is right to practise this, and to accept encouragement from growth, only the trouble is that success in our family life is much more difficult to measure—and information technology means that ministry is where nosotros default to investing our quality time.
At that place follows a fascinating exploration of the resources in Scripture, and a story about a slightly unexpected insight.
Andy Stanley, pastor of Northward Signal Community Church building, Georgia, has some personal insights on this upshot. Married and with young children when his church was launched, he constitute that in that location was never enough time to do and be everything that was needed of him at church and at home. The demands of the fast-growing church found him giving it his best fourth dimension, with his family having any fourth dimension was left over. He felt like a failure at both church and home.
2 passages from Scripture had an impact on his ministry priorities: Matthew 16.xviii, where Jesus promises that he will build his church building, and Ephesians v, where Paul exhorts the Christians at Ephesus to 'Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ' (v 21), and commands husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church (vv 22–26). Stanley speaks of the freedom that came with the realization that in his call to authorized ministry building he was non commanded to build the church building, simply that in his wedlock he was commanded to love Sandra, his wife. (And if Sandra had been the leader in that location would accept been a corresponding command.)
Katharine and so moves on to seven applied strategies for getting the balance right betwixt family and ministry. These include keeping a sense of perspective of where nosotros are, fostering relationships, specially ones of accountability, how to set boundaries, and investing in positive parenting. Merely her start principle is about setting our priorities.
A colleague at Intendance for the Family used to proceed a large glass jar on his desk-bound full of stones. It served every bit a daily reminder of the story of the professor who presented his students with a jar and a pile of big stones. He put as many of the large stones as he could into the jar and asked the students if it was full. The students, surprised at such a simple question, replied, 'Yes, it'southward full.' The professor and then began to tip handfuls of smaller stones into the jar, which fell into the gaps betwixt the larger stones. He asked the students the question again. 'Yes,' they replied. The professor picked upward a bucket of sand, poured information technology in until the jar was full to the brim, and asked the question a third time: 'Is the jar total?' Thinking that nothing else could maybe fit into it, the students replied that it was. But the professor had i more thing he could add. He poured in some h2o, as much equally he could, until information technology establish its level. The jar was finally full.
The point of the story is, of course, that the order in which the items were put into the jar was vital. The big rocks had to become in commencement. Only then could the smaller stones, sand and water fit around the edges.
Information technology's an illustration I came across many years ago, and have used it in all-age services. Stephen Covey, author ofThe Vii Habits of Highly Constructive Peopleused to make employ of it in his training sessions. The video from i of these is well worth watching, all 12 minutes of information technology, since the 'republic of guinea squealer' he has chosen is absolutely perfect for the part:
https://youtu.exist/Ae-APl2AwV8
There is, of form, one important qualification to this: you won't fit it in the jar if at that place are just as well many rocks. Some of us probably need to endeavour and fit less in. But nosotros all demand to put the most important (not necessarily urgent) things in first.
Katharine ends by focussing on the positive: well-nigh situations of ministry allow a remarkable degree of flexibility and liberty, and control over our own fourth dimension—which is probably why clergy tend to live and then long! The booklet is geared very much to those who are married, and probably with children. For a complementary resources (which speaks more widely) and then do wait at Kate Wharton'sSingle Minded.
But this booklet—available postal service-complimentary from the Grove website—meets such an important need. If you are achieving the perfect ministry/family life balance, can you lot think of someone who might value it?
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