Pastors and Parents

"So how do you make it work?"

This was the question that pulled us together.  Standing in a hotel lobby on a beautiful January morning in Orlando, several other young pastors and I talked about living in the tension between pastoral ministry, schedules, self-care, and most of all - family.  How do we make it work?

It was a wonderful conversation that happened - funny enough - through the combined connections of Facebook and the Fellowship of Presbyterians.  Each of us came to Orlando for the annual gathering of the FOP, which was wonderful and rich.  We all wanted to find peers and colleagues with whom we could ask that tricky question: how do we make this work?  We came from very different ministry contexts - major cities, rural churches, from the Southwest to the Northeast.  So how did we get together?  I put up a post on a Fellowship discussion forum on Facebook, wondering if anyone else was interested in meeting up in Orlando to talk about the family/ministry tension.  Because of our shared commitment to gospel-focused mission and ministry - made clear by our alliance with the FOP - we all "got" each other and could share freely without having to wonder about where the others' theological convictions might be grounded.  Pastors worry about this kind of thing.  :)

The biggest thing we uncovered was that there is no "best" way to make these competing duties work perfectly in our lives.  One of the people from our group has found that working late at night is the best fit for their family.  Another suggested keeping a record of your daily activities, both for ourselves and our sessions' review, so that we stay accountable for the schedule-flexibility afforded to us in our callings.  One thing was clear: having the discretion of a pastor's schedule is a privilege, and the danger of using that discretion to spend too much time away from family is real.  My hope is that we'll continue our conversation at future FOP gatherings, keep in touch from time-to-time, and most of all, to pray for each other as we seek to follow Christ and share his Word in our ministry contexts.

Solo Dei gloria,

Travis