Five Ways to Keep Your Ministry From Becoming Your Mistress

 A few years ago my wife Laurel said one of the most frightening sentences I have ever heard: “I feel like you are choosing HOPE over me.”

She said it in love, but I was blindsided by the comment.  I love my wife.  I love my kids.  But after looking at my schedule, I realized my family was getting leftovers.

I’m not the only one who is passionate about their job or ministry.  But when you love your job, it’s easy to overlook your most precious relationships.  Since this turning point conversation, I have placed guardrails in my life that have revolutionized the way I balance my family and work. These guardrails include:

  1. Ask your spouse how they’re doing.  I would monitor key performance indicators on the health and welfare of our programs at HOPE, yet I rarely asked my wife how she was doing.  Periodically now I do “impact assessments” – ten simple questions that help me know how I can be supporting her better and if our relationship is heading in the right direction.
  2. Limit travel.  We all have many good opportunities and I felt like I had to say “yes” to all of them.   Recently I have limited my travel to fifteen nights per quarter.  By saying “no” to good opportunities, I get the chance to tuck my children into bed and to say “yes” to the best ones.
  3. Tuck the blackberry in a drawer.  One day I was helping my two-year-old son get breakfast while reading a work email on my blackberry. “No phone, no phone,” he said to me.  This was a gut check for me.  Now, I literally put my blackberry in the kitchen drawer until my kids go to bed so I know my focus is on my family. 
  4. Don’t add… multiply.  I used to think about work-life balance in terms of addition: If I was successful at work, I got one point.  If I was successful at home, I received another.   But if I scored a “one” at work, and a “zero” at home, at least I had one point.   But it’s not addition.  It’s multiplication.  If I score a “zero” at home, but a “one” at work, it’s still a “zero” overall.
  5. Remove (or delegate).  Before “the conversation” I had an inflated view of my importance. I felt I had to do it all, but this attitude spread me too thinly and I was too frazzled to do anything well.  Since speaking with my wife, I have decreased many responsibilities, such as the number of staff reporting to me, and delegated everything except the core responsibilities of my role.  It’s liberating: I’m now able to focus on the areas I excel and have more balance than ever before.

The bottom line is it’s not worth it to run a great ministry when your family is neglected.  In fact, it doesn’t honor God.  I am so grateful that my wife had the love—and courage—to confront me about where my priorities lie.

*A few days ago I had the chance to write about The NINES conference.  Tune in to The NINES conference tomorrow, Tuesday, September 27, and hear more of my thoughts (around 4:30 p.m. EST) as well as perspectives from pastors, authors and speakers on key leadership issues.

 

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