The Altar of Family

I remember years and years ago, when I was in college studying for ministry, I heard my dad make a comment that has stuck with me all these years. My Dad was an active elder in our home church in Russellville, South Carolina. He had a preacher friend who was the preacher at a church not too far away. That friend of his often complained about the fact that, in his words, “ministry doesn’t give you much time for family.”

Unfortunately for this preacher, my dad knew that this particular guy took Thursdays off every week, and nearly every Thursday, he met up with some friends to play golf. My dad wasn’t anti-golf by any means, but he did ask the preacher something like, “What if you spent some of your day off with your family rather than playing golf?” The preacher had no answer.

Fast forward to about ten or so years ago, I had a well-known preacher from the Christian church world come to Point University and speak in chapel, do a couple of sessions with students, and then meet with the biblical studies and ministry faculty. I wanted him to answer this question: “If you were hiring a Point graduate to be a part of the staff where you preach, what would you look for?”

I won’t mention this preacher’s name since he was speaking to a private group, not public, but he had great things to say. Among the most memorable was, “Preachers in the generation before us often sacrificed family in the name of ministry. Today, too many are sacrificing ministry in the name of family.” That statement deserves lots of thinking on the part of those of us who claim that we have answered God’s call in our lives to ministry.

Having spent my entire working life in the church and the academy, I just don’t think one needs to sacrifice family in the name of ministry, nor ministry in the name of family. But my observations tend to confirm that well-known preacher’s idea. It sounds so righteous to insist that I can’t live up to my job description and expectation because I’m a parent! And it can sound so spiritual to insist that my family understands that I do ministry and don’t always have time for them.

But are either of those options necessary? I don’t think so!

I hope neither my two children nor my late wife would say that I ignored them in the name of doing ministry. Vicki often said, “Had it not been for the Shamrock” – our local “meat and three” restaurant in Tyrone – we might not have survived!” But what she meant by that was something like, “We find ways to do things as a family – like eating together – that we need to do, but Wye can still make it to the hospital to visit a sick person, or the funeral home to be with a grieving family, or some meeting at church he needs to attend, or I can go to some rehearsal I need to attend.” Vicki often took the girls with her on Saturday mornings to the church while she practiced the organ for the Sunday morning service. They had the run of the building, and I can’t see where they grew up somehow marred by that Saturday morning routine – which was often met by Dad showing up in time to go to lunch together.

I’m certainly not saying that we had a perfect family. But . . . Vicki had a full-time job, served as the paid organist for the church, and engaged in lots of other ministry activities. I was the full-time preacher of a church where we typically had a congregation in the mid-300s on Sunday mornings, while also teaching a couple of classes at Atlanta Christian College (now Point University) every semester. We found a way to make family and ministry work together!

One more memory. In a sermon one Sunday morning, I said something like, “James Dobson may be a good psychologist – I’m not smart enough to judge; but he isn’t a very good theologian, and I am smart enough to make that statement.” By the way – that was back when churches like ours used a Focus on the Family bulletin insert once a month on Sundays. We were one of those churches! I got chewed on a bit at the door that week.

But is it possible that parachurch groups, like Dobson’s and many others, actually led us to drift a bit when it comes to the place of family in a Christian’s life? The relationship between men and women in general, husbands and wives in particular? Read carefully; I’m not discounting the importance of family. Anyone who remotely knows me knows how much my family means to me. Some of the most comforting words that have been said to me since Vicki died nearly a year ago have been something like, “I admired your marriage and family so much.” This is not some anti-family tirade you’re reading!

However, to use family as the reason for doing less than your “ministry job” calls for or as the explanation for your goldbricking approach to work . . . well, that’s just not biblical! 

I’m greatly blessed to have many friends in ministry who have modeled both/and and not either/or when it comes to ministry and family. May their tribe rise and thrive as we move into this rather strange and new post-COVID world, where the church and its ministers will need to “shine like as lights in the world”  (Philippians 2:15)  in the midst “of a crooked and twisted generation.”

Family cannot be the altar upon which we worship!