David Sunday, my pastor and fellow elder who models what he preaches, writes at TGC:
As my friend Mike Bullmore says, God has a design for your family and ministry so that faithfulness in the family enhances faithfulness in the church, and faithfulness in the church enhances faithfulness in the family.
These callings can seem to be in tension with one another, but it is a dynamic tension in which we can experience God’s goodness. God never separates the assignments he gives us from his sanctifying process in us. He is at work within your family ministry to sanctify you for your church ministry—and he is at work within your church ministry to sanctify your family.
He goes on to talk about the opposite errors of (1) sacrificing family on the altar of ministry and (2) idolizing family to the neglect of ministry, and then writes:
Both these pitfalls—sacrificing and idolizing family—spring from a common error: they see ministry and family as taking from one another instead of enhancing one another.
What if, instead of bristling at the inherent tensions between our ministries in our families and ministries in the church, we embraced the fact that this is a healthy tension? Indeed, there are many situations when doing God’s will involves tension. A “balanced” Christian life still involves tension, fatigue, and difficult decisions. If we expect anything else, we will inevitably experience frequent frustration.
A wiser course is to embrace the tension as healthy, and to believe that God’s goodness is at work in the tension. How? By believing that our families belong to God to be freely submitted to him to be used for his purposes, to glorify his name through the advancement of the gospel of his Son. There is a way to walk faithfully in your responsibilities to our families and still “spend and be spent in the service of our bountiful Master.”
Your ministry and family are not designed by God to take from one another, but rather to enhance one another. You do not separate your life as a husband and father from your life as a pastor—in fact, you believe that through your ministry as a husband and father, God is using you to shepherd your church, and through your shepherding of the church God is equipping you to build up your family.
Especially if you are in vocational ministry or preparing for it, I’d encourage you to read the whole thing.
