Ministry Life: The Pastor’s Family
The pastor’s family is like any other family in church. They have many of the same needs, struggles, and victories as everyone else. However, the demands on the pastor’s family can be uniquely strenuous and challenging. This is not meant to be a contest for the title, “My Life Is Harder Than Yours.” Believe me, being a part of the pastor’s family can also come with many privileges and blessings, and I don’t want to ignore that. For the purposes of this post, though, I would like to discuss what causes disfunction in the pastor’s family and how to avoid it.
The Statistics
The family life of any pastor should look perfect, right? Well, the expectations are different from congregation to congregation, but most agree a pastor’s home should be in order (Titus 1:6). Perfection, though, is not possible, despite the pressures a pastor and his family may feel to be perfect. Some statistics suggest the pastor’s family isn’t just “not perfect,” but they might be really struggling.
The Marriage
The average pastor’s family is doing all right according to a Barna study published in 2017 which collected data on 900 Protestant senior pastors. For example, the study cites that 91% of pastors are “satisfied” with their marriage. That said, 26% reported having had “significant marital problems” while holding a pastoral position, and 10% were divorced. I would add, anecdotally, that Facebook groups for pastor’s wives are filled with prayer requests concerning struggling marriages, loneliness, and the common complaint of feeling like a single parent.
The Kids
The same Barna study reports on the pastor’s children, as well. Nearly half, 42%, of pastors wished that they had more time to spend with their children. Sadly, 34% of the pastors with kids aged fifteen years and older have at least one child who is not active in church any longer, and 7% reported having a child who has completely rejected the Christian faith.
Overall
Ultimately, the Barna study reports that 48% of the participating pastors claimed that their current position in a church “has been difficult on the family.” Like any study, the findings are not a perfect reflection of every family in ministry. On the other hand, the study paints a picture that reveals a pastor’s job can cause hurt, struggle, and dissatisfaction among all members of the family.
Why does this happen? And more importantly, what can we do to prevent this from happening?
The Pastor’s Family Should Be Christ-Centered
A ministry family putting Jesus at their center should be as natural as breathing air. A pastor’s job completely revolves around Christ, after all! Hopefully, the church called the pastor to his position because he showed godly character and met the biblical requirements for leadership in the church. So, why do we even need to go over this? Because the pastor’s family doesn’t always get this right.
Being In The Word
Pastors are tired. I promise you they are. A typical pastor prepares several messages a week when he has, as my husband does, a Sunday School lesson, main morning service, Sunday evening service, and Wednesday service. Often pastors have extra preaching opportunities throughout the week along with counseling and other pastoral duties. That’s a lot of study to complete in the week, and it is all to pour into others.
None of the study time I have mentioned has been for the pastor’s private devotional time and study. Pastors need to purpose to spend time with the Lord for their own spiritual growth and knowledge. This easily gets pushed aside as they spiritually feed everyone else. By the time the pastor is free to care for himself, he might be so wiped out that he plops on the couch to rest or just goes to bed. Home can become the one place the pastor leaves Jesus out because work is done.
Is the pastor so busy that he himself is not being spiritually fed? Or is he so exhausted that he neglects personal time with the Lord?
Spiritually Leading The Family
More often than I would like to admit, I have witnessed ministry families reaping the consequences of a pastor who spiritually neglected his family. These men are so caught up serving everyone else that their own families are left to fend for themselves.
Children in these homes grow up to resent the church and want nothing to do with Christianity. They are raised in a family that came in second place to the congregation. To top it off, children in these sorts of families are not typically taught why serving the church is so important to their fathers because they are spiritual orphans who have been abandoned by their fathers for the pastoral position.
Instead of stepping up to disciple his children, this sort of pastor leaves that duty to his wife and children’s ministries. This method is unbiblical, and it doesn’t work.
The Fix
The pastor’s family needs to deliberately focus on centering their home around Christ, as a family. It can feel like that’s already happening when so much of life revolves around church activity, but church busyness is not the same as living a Christ-centered life at home. Setting aside time for family devotions, praying together, discussing the sermons at home, and making time for everyone (yes, even the pastor) to sit down and spend time alone with the Word can help the family keep Jesus at their center.
Pastor, don’t forget that your spiritual leadership is needed at home, not just church. Pastor’s wife, lovingly tell your husband if he’s not doing this. He might not even recognize it is a problem. And pray for him. He’s got a lot on his plate.
The Pastor’s Family Comes Before The Church
I’ve been called a “ministry widow” several times over the last few years because I’m a pastor’s wife. It was meant as a joke, but the term is pretty dark if you think about it. However, for many pastors’ wives the term rings true because their husbands are practically dead to them. These women are on their own to raise a family while their husbands pour out all they have in service of the church. So noble. So loving. But so wrong.
Generally, the pastor’s family should take priority over the church. Meanwhile, the family needs to be sacrificial and allow for decisions that put them on the back burner. This can be a delicate balance, and pastors’ families find it difficult to master.
Prioritizing Family Time
To start, this might sound dull, but put time for family in your calendar. My husband finds it much easier to save time for us when we are literally scheduled into his planner. He sees we are written in, and he simply makes his plans around it.
Next, turn off your phone. Really. Turn it off. Thanks to technology, everyone expects immediate responses. The boss used to call your home phone, and you didn’t answer because you were eating dinner or not home. Now, it doesn’t matter what you are doing or where you are. You had better answer. Sometimes being that available is great, but when do any of us get a break and some privacy?
OK, turning off your phone might not always be realistic, but you can silence it during a meal. Also, when it’s on, you don’t always have to answer it. Take a peek at the caller, and let it go if it isn’t an emergency. Allow your children to finish their story or get them tucked into bed or answer your spouse’s question… Then, call the person back. Cell phones, even as a pastor, do not trump the human beings in the room with you.
If time is scarce or your season of life doesn’t allow for a lot of time to be carved out of your day, then minister together. There are plenty of ways to serve that the whole family can do together. The pastor’s family is a ministry team, and the pastor determines how he wants to involve his team. Constantly sidelining his family will create a sense of Us versus Church. Not to mention, it makes the family feel as if they have been deprioritized and devalued. On the other hand, finding a way to serve together will bless others and the family.
Family Isn’t Always The Priority
When it comes to being a pastor, family cannot always be the priority. Maybe we have a nice day planned to spend together, but my husband gets a call that changes the whole day. A member died, someone is hospitalized, there’s been a terrible car accident, the police are at a member’s house for a crisis event, or fill in the blank.
There is a seemingly endless list of reasons for my husband to be needed elsewhere. Is it convenient? No, but it’s part of being the pastor’s family. We need to be flexible. We have to recognize that other people will come before us. That takes humility, understanding, and patience. So, nothing that comes naturally to most of us… Can you see why it is so essential for the pastor’s family to be spiritually grounded and living a Christ-centered life?
The Pastor’s Family Needs Boundaries
Men who end up being pastors are likely to be the kind of men who are always ready to lend a hand. Whether someone needs a ride, assistance moving into a new place, some gas money, or help processing through a difficult situation, the pastor is your guy. What a wonderful attitude with which to go through life! This ready and willing attitude runs into some trouble without boundaries, though. This person becomes a doormat and neglects his family’s needs to meet the needs of others.
A pastor’s boundaries are a little tricky to set up because some congregations believe they own him. In order to avoid some difficult talks later, I suggest clarifying the boundaries before accepting a pastorate. But it’s never too late to create them. So, set those boundaries whenever you need to.
The boundaries a pastor’s family sets will be suitable to their personal needs. I can’t tell anyone what those exact needs are, but I’d like to encourage all pastors’ families to set some. To encourage them, let me share some bad news (typical of me). Ministry families, you are going to disappoint some people. Your boundaries will let others down.
Here’s the good news. You and your family will still let people down even if you have zero boundaries because no one can please everyone. All a Christian can do is walk obediently with the Lord and follow His lead. Our aim is to please God, not man (Colossians 3:23). With that in mind, it is definitely better to have some boundaries in place for your family’s well-being than to not have them in the hopes of fulfilling everyone else’s needs.
Be ready to say “no,” to delegate responsibilities, and to deprioritize some things that are a high priority to others.
Self-Care Is Essential
The pastor’s family is much healthier when they allow for some self-care. No, I’m not talking about “me time.”
“Me time” is often culturally portrayed as a time for selfishly putting off responsibilities and others for self. It can be seen as a time of self-centered indulgence. So, to be clear. I do not mean that. Maybe “me time” means something else to you. That’s OK, too. When I say, “self-care” I’m not referencing me-time. I mean caring for ourselves in such a way that we can be physically, emotionally, and spiritually healthy enough to serve the Lord.
We’re no good to anyone if we are burnt out, sick, fatigued, emotionally drained, or spiritually parched. What kind of self-care might we do to avoid that situation?
1. Hobbies
Whatever you enjoy doing, do it. It’s healthy to spend time doing things that bring you joy and let you blow off some steam or get some of those creative juices flowing. Whether it be sports, crafting, music, writing, or some other pastime, set some time aside for these activities.
It is not selfish to do things you enjoy.
2. Physical Health
Work out. Eat right. Too many ministry families are absolutely unhealthy. They work so hard that they do not allow the time they need to prepare wholesome food and be physically active. Constantly serving others and forsaking one’s basic physical needs takes a toll on a person’s body. The pastor’s family should build time in their schedule to focus on their physical health. We should all be good stewards of everything God has given us. Our bodies, too.
Maintaining our physical health is not vanity. Simply, it allows us to serve others best by feeling our best.
3. Off Means Off
What happens to a child’s toy that runs on batteries if it is left on all night while the child sleeps? The next day the child wakes up disappointed because the toy stopped working. The batteries are dead. Your “batteries” are the same. They can only keep going so long without a break.
The pastor’s family should take time off. I mean off. Unplug. Get out of your home and away from the church for a bit. Of course, this can look like a multi-week vacation, but this can also be a day trip as a family. The only requirement for this time away is that it is truly away.
My family does this as often as we need it. Sometimes we are unable to take time off in a big way. Time and finances are finite, after all. But we make sure to schedule a day that is just us. We leave the house and do something…anything. As best we can, we try not to do church work and, instead, focus on time as a family. Our children have come to love these stolen hours together and look forward to them.
This is the real world, and we can’t always do this. Frankly, we can’t always do anything. I’m describing the ideal here, and I think that the pastor’s family should always be striving for that. Connecting and bonding as a family unit outside of the church context is essential for a recharge.
Final Thought
Christians have a target on their backs. Satan is out to get them. Yes, that sounds dramatic, but it’s biblical.
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:”
1 Peter 5:8
Satan can’t ever take us from God (John 10:28), but he can certainly make us ineffective ministers of the gospel if we stray from the anchor in our faith that we have in Christ. Without a doubt, the pastor’s family will be under spiritual attack. Pastors’ families need to build strong family units which are rooted in the Lord and ready to take the attacks head-on.
Statistically, we can see that the demands and stresses of pastoral work negatively impact families. We don’t have to sit around and hope that we aren’t one of the bad statistics. We know better than leaders from decades ago about the consequences of an unhealthy pastor’s family. Let’s use what we know, and set ourselves up for success.
Pastors’ families, keep Christ at the center of your home, don’t sacrifice your families on the altar of church work, set clear and reasonable boundaries, and take care of yourselves. Churches, love your pastor by praying for him and his family. Root for their well-being and see them as whole people with the same needs as you.
Let me know other ways you think pastors’ families can stay healthy!
Recommended Reading
7 Ways Pastors’ Wives Make It Harder For Themselves
Being A Pastor’s Wife Is Not My Job
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