Ministry needs, family values, and balance

balancePerhaps the two best-known leaders in the Christian movement from the 1950’s into the 1980’s were Billy Graham and Bill Bright. Both men influenced countless pastors who grew up in those generations and left an enormous impact, especially on the American evangelical landscape.

Both men’s (auto)biographies also reveal a fair bit of tension between family and ministry needs. A couple excerpts…

From Billy Graham’s autobiography, Just As I Am:

As we drove into the yard, I saw a beautiful little child wandering out to greet us. Even after I got out of the car, it took some minutes before I realized that it was Ned [Graham’s son]. I hadn’t seen him for many weeks.

Yes, it took him a few minutes before he realized the beautiful child was his son. Graham talks about the difficulties of being away from home for weeks and months at a time and says the “traveling ministry was a costly investment of [his] time as far as [his] sons were concerned.”

Bright’s authorized biography, Amazing Faith, also talks about the “sacrifice” for Bright’s sons, Brad and Zac:

There were, however, all too few father-son activities for these growing boys; it was in fact a sacrifice for them to do without Dad. By God’s grace they came through with balanced lives. Their mother’s example was especially helpful. Both Brad and Zac would later say they could recall no occasion when their mother bemoaned Bill’s absence. Eventually they concluded that if she could handle his absence patiently and quietly in dependence on the Lord, so could they.

I also recall a prayer Bright said while he traveled the world – something to the effect of, “God, tend to my flock at home while I tend to your flock around the world” – but I haven’t been able to locate the exact quote.

By my observation, a nation of ministers largely grew up with a similar mentality about family and ministry: “God, I pray you take care of my family while I go about the call of ministry.” I’ve seen a number of examples of pastors who have “sacrificed” family, friendships, and/or health for the sake of the call.

Changes in views of ministry and family balance

Also by my observation, several prominent ministers in the next generation have largely rejected these “sacrifices.” In his book Choosing to Cheat: Who Wins When Family and Work Collide? (affiliate link), Andy Stanley says there will always be someone not getting as much of your attention as they want/deserve. He urges leaders not to cheat their families. His solution is simple:

Simply put, you must choose to cheat at work rather than at home.

That’s quite a turn from what we saw and heard from Graham and Bright.

Rob Bell has never been shy to say that he doesn’t do night meetings. He’s busy having dinner with his family at home. And he talks about Sabbath frequently, asking people when is the day they totally disconnect from the world and are present at home.

In my humble opinion, Stanley and Bell are providing far better guidance and influence on this topic than Graham and Bright did. (That’s not meant to discredit the truly great work those men did.) I hope these kinds of influence will lead to a new generation of pastors that prioritizes family, personal health, friendships and Sabbath more than most of the past generation seems to have.

Pastors, whatever your calling, if God has blessed you with a family, you cannot neglect them! That goes, too, for other church leaders and volunteers. Please don’t choose (or let the church convince you) to give more of your time and energy to tending the flock of the church than to tending your own flock.

Doing pastoral ministry and caring for family well – the rub

I recently heard Tim Couch, a former University of Kentucky football player, asked if he had considered coaching. His response (paraphrased as I remember it): “I would love to coach. But I also have two young children, and working in TV lets me be home with them a lot more than coaching would.”

I’ve often wondered how college football coaches take care of their families well, especially if they have young children. From what I understand, they work incredibly long hours, spend a lot of time on the road recruiting, and move more often than young Methodist clergy. Tim Couch’s comments seemed to confirm that it’s tough to do the job well and also be there for family. The requirements of some jobs just don’t lend themselves to being there for family at the most important times.

Andy Stanley and Rob Bell aren’t your typical American pastors. As I understand it, both of them have/had roles with very little pastoral care and almost no work with volunteers. That’s very different from the majority of pastors I know, whose roles require quite a bit of pastoral care and work with volunteers, at least if the job is to be done well.

When you desire to provide good pastoral care and need to meet with teams of volunteers, not to mention any of the other typical church programs and events, you’re usually talking about a lot of nights and weekends. And if you’ve ever had young children, you know that night-time, especially dinner time and bed time, is probably the most important time to be home.

There’s the rub.

And this at least has me wondering — how well can one balance pastoral ministry and family values, especially with young children? The two seem to have conflicting prime times.

What do you think?

You would also be interested in my Modern Pastor Series.

Top 5 for November – porn, capitalism, the stuck UMC, and more

top 5As usual, thanks for your comments and for sharing these posts with others. In the past month, nearly half of my pageviews originated from you sharing these pieces in social media.

Here were November’s top 5 posts:

1. Christians and Pornography – Pleading with professing Christians to stop viewing/reading porn. And defining “porn” perhaps a bit differently than normal.

2. When “Missional Church” gets too outwardly focused – What happens when we take the church’s sole purpose as outreach and witness? A tragic misunderstanding of the nature of the church.

3. Christians, Capitalism, and Ayn Rand – I initially posted this in August, but it’s still in the top 5, perhaps because of some big event that took place in November. My premise: the Christian and capitalist worldviews are incompatible.

4. The Stuck State of the UMC and Some Therapy – November brought more bad news for anyone hoping the UMC will be able to change its unwieldy behemoth of a structure before it collapses. I try to offer some therapy.

5. “What does it take to become a member?” (pt. I, beliefs) – What beliefs should we require anyone to have if they are going to join the church? Which beliefs is it okay to be different on?

Framing the Church’s human sexuality debate appropriately

Human sexuality is a heavily debated topic in the church right now. Sadly, most of the debate involves directly talking past each other. People on opposite sides of the discussion focus on different aspects of the debate and rarely acknowledge they understand what’s being said from the other side.

Though they break down into many smaller camps, the discussions I see break into two primary camps: those who believe the church should be fully open to practicing homosexuals,[1. I use this language here, as it’s the language used in the United Methodist Book of Discipline, which I’m watching debated.] and those who don’t. I dislike all the typical terms used for these two groups, so here I’m going to refer to these groups as the Openness Camp and the Holiness Camp, respectively, based on the primary arguments I tend to hear from each side.

[I’m trying to be neutral with these two identifiers. I’m open to suggestions of better terms and not trying to make any larger statement with them. These terms are not meant to suggest that any camp doesn’t care about openness or holiness. They’re simply to represent the primary argument the group is making.]

Let’s try to properly frame the issues here.

Sexual orientation & Scriptural authority

Holiness Camp, you need to quit talking about sexual orientation in negative terms. Quit debating whether someone can be inclined to homosexual attraction from birth. And for Christ’s sake, don’t even think about excluding anyone from the church or Christian fellowship because of sexual orientation!

You begin with the premise that homosexual behavior is sinful. We’ll get to that later. But you’re doing incredible harm and creating a logical inconsistency for yourselves when you assume that anyone of LGBTQI orientation needs to be “fixed” or should be excluded from church membership or leadership based on sexual orientation.

Attraction isn’t the issue here. If you exclude everyone who is attracted to someone whom they shouldn’t have sex with, you’ll just about empty the church. Nor is the issue about anyone’s inclination to do something that you believe is sinful. Inclinations and sexual orientation aren’t the issue.

Also, Holiness Camp, you’re not helping yourselves to argue that you believe in scriptural authority and the other side doesn’t. Most Openness Camp people will also claim Scripture as authority. They’re interpreting Scripture differently than you are, and that’s a fair debate to have. But don’t accuse them of “not believing the Bible.”

Hospitality/Exclusion

Openness Camp, you need to drop the hospitality/exclusion rhetoric. Stop saying things like, “The church should be open to all people.” You don’t mean it, and you’re going to back yourselves into an uncomfortable corner.

First, if being open to all people means “regardless of sexual orientation,” then I think we should all be able to agree. Yes–full membership and leadership in the church should be open to people of all sexual orientations. See above.

Second, if being open to all people means “regardless of sexual behavior,” then I don’t think you really mean it. Will you allow full membership and leadership rights to someone who openly has one-night stands every week?[1. A note: this is not to compare someone in a monogamous homosexual relationship to someone having one-night stands. This is simply to note that all of us deem certain behaviors–and even certain sexual behaviors–incompatible with leadership in the church.] Yes, we believe God still loves this person. Yes, we believe final judgment belongs to God alone. Yes, we believe Jesus called us to love and hospitality and gave an example of such. But still, you probably won’t give this person full membership and leadership rights. You have lines, too. The “hospitality” and “love” arguments don’t hold up for you. It’s time to drop them (except when the Holiness Camp is violating what I asked them to drop above).

A pastor in the UMC just asked in a Time Magazine article, “If what you understand to be an act of love is declared a sin by the Church, what does that do to your soul, your understanding of morality and salvation?” This is a deeply flawed and unserious question. The Church would say that many things dubbed as “acts of love” are sinful. Extramarital affairs, polygamy, incest…[1. For the sake of clarity, and at the risk of redundancy, this is not to compare a monogamous homosexual relationship to an extramarital affair. It is simply to acknowledge that all of us deem certain “acts of love” as sinful. We’re establishing common ground here. Now we’ll need to press into the harder work of identifying which “acts of love” we would deem sinful. But we all have a line somewhere…] Yes, many people engaging in these things may deem them “acts of love,” but does that mean the Church should be silent about them, or endorse them?

The Real Issue

Openness Camp, some of you were just offended that I used one-night stands in analogy to homosexual practice. That’s likely because you don’t believe homosexual behavior is sinful (many of you would qualify that to say, “if it’s in a committed, monogamous relationship”), but you believe one-night stands are. And that leads us to the two real issues–how the church handles sin and whether homosexual practice is sin.

Let’s handle the easier one first. The church cannot be fully open for membership and leadership to those who don’t earnestly repent of their sins. Persistent, willful sin can’t be ignored. There are thousands of sub-debates that can ensue. “What makes one sin worse than another?” or “Who made you judge?” or “Sounds like a witch hunt.” Those are mostly red herrings. Go back to the example above about the promiscuous person. Will you allow that person to be your pastor? That persistent, willful sin was judged problematic enough that almost everyone will exclude that person from leadership, possibly membership (an issue to get into more later). So we’re nearly all on the same page here. Persistent, willful sexual sin should at least prevent someone from being in leadership in the church. Yes, I said “sexual sin.” I say that because I know of no churches that will stand for their pastors committing obvious sexual sin (e.g. one-night stands or adulterous relationships). My hope is that we’ll go well beyond “sexual sin,” but it seems there’s at least already common ground here.

This leads to the more difficult issue: is homosexual behavior sinful? And for this, we have to do the hard exegetical and hermeneutical work. We need to look at Scripture and the Church’s tradition. I’m not attempting that in this post. But I believe this must be the framing issue for the discussion.

If we don’t call homosexual behavior sin, then all the rest is void. If this is acceptable behavior in light of Scripture and the orthodox faith, then it should have no bearing on full membership and leadership opportunities.

Holiness Camp — you’ve got to quit accusing others of turning a blind eye to sin and/or not believing the Bible. You disagree on an exegetical issue, not on whether sin is a big deal. And your demeaning attitude toward those who disagree with you is, well, sinful.

If we call homosexual practice sinful, then the arguments about hospitality and God’s love only come to bear in determining how we remain hospitable and loving in the face of sin. And the Openness Camp must admit that they don’t fully open membership and leadership rights to everyone, regardless of sins they are committing.

Openness Camp — you’ve got to quit accusing others of lacking love or hospitality. You disagree on an exegetical issue, not on love. And your demeaning attitude toward them is, well, less than loving.

For any of you who really are doing what you’re doing because you don’t care about love or hospitality or sin… you’re wrong. But I don’t think many of you will claim that as your position.

This may all strike you as rather obvious. Yet I think it’s necessary to emphasize a proper framework here, since it seems that the discussion keeps ending up chasing the rabbits of hospitality/exclusion and sexual orientation–or even worse, making appeals to what our culture thinks is best or arguing about how our secular government should rule on gay marriage.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on whether I’m framing this correctly.

BIG NOTE: I don’t want the comments turning into a fight over whether homosexual practice is a sin. I want to know what you think about the framework. I will DELETE any comments that turn the argument here into the question of whether this is sin.

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