It’s not a secret that student ministry is demanding. The title Minister of Students often means more than just being a pastor. You may also need to be an accountant, bus driver, communicator, counselor, event coordinator, facilitator, fundraiser, janitor, mission trip leader, recruiter and more.
With so many expectations and responsibilities placed on youth pastors, balancing a healthy ministry and family life can be a daunting task; but it’s our duty as servants of God.
So how do we balance our ministry expectations with our family obligations? Here’s a short list of tips to help you value and honor those who are closest to you.
1. Make Jesus Your First Priority
A balanced family and ministry life starts with our personal relationship with God. If we are connecting with Him constantly, our plans will begin to reflect His plans.
2. Put Family Time on the Calendar
It was September, and I’d spent time mapping out the entire school year calendar for our youth ministry. I was feeling good about where we were headed and showed the proposed calendar to my wife. Surprisingly, her first words did not to affirm my great planning, but instead asked me the troubling question: “Are we planning to take a family vacation this year?”
In my excitement about the ministry year ahead, I’d neglected to consider family commitments. This placed my family in the awkward position of scheduling family time around ministry, when it really should be the other way around.
In my early years of youth ministry I struggled with expectations from pastors, youth parents and others to be the best I could be. I rationalized that because it was for God, I needed to give more and more. What I discovered was that more was not better. In fact, less was better—for the ministry and my family.
I asked my former youth pastor and friend Brad Branson how his family has survived 25 years of youth ministry. Here’s what he told me:
“Probably the best advice I ever received in this area was to plan your family calendar before you do any ministry planning. This includes birthdays, anniversaries, vacations, family outings, time with each child, dates with your spouse and getaways. After that, when you go into ministry planning you can say that date doesn’t work for me and renegotiate the ministry date. If something comes up that is non-negotiable, you can decide if you are going to say no or if you are going to adjust your family calendar.”
Calendaring a family night and date nights with your spouse may seem silly; but if we don’t proactively put family time on our calendars, our time likely will be filled with something else.
3. Make a Commitment
Life will throw us curveballs, and sometimes we must drop everything and respond to a crisis. However, outside of emergencies, we really must stay committed to our family time. Think about it: Would we ever cancel summer camp because something else popped up we wanted to do? Of course not!
I can remember cancelling a date night with my wife because I decided to go to a student’s football game. Thankfully I have learned how to make better choices over the years.
We must make our family more important than our other ministry demands. Ministry is about people, and at times we will need to drop everything and serve people; but don’t forget, our families are also people and deserve our full and undivided attention. When your family members know they are the top priority, they will be much more forgiving and understandable when you have to rush out on an emergency.
4. Turn off Your Cell Phone
I already can hear your protests. “What if there is an emergency?” OK, so leave your cell phone on; but please turn off your text, Facebook, Twitter, etc. notifications.
What good is a night with your family if you spend half of it having conversations with people outside your family? When you have family time, don’t just be there physically—be engaged. This is still a challenge for me. Thankfully I have a wife who cares more about protecting our family then allowing my time to be sapped by virtual conversations.
5. Include Family Members in Ministry
Each church and family is different; as much as is appropriate, allow your family to participate in ministry.
My wife loves student ministry, and the two of us love doing ministry together. Because of this, sometimes our date nights may include going to dinner and catching a youth drama production or watching a student participate in a sporting event. We are enjoying being together and at the same time supporting a student. However, this must stay balanced, as well. Be sure to take your spouse out away from ministry sometimes, too.
Don’t be afraid to bring along the kids. Allow them to hang out in the youth room after service, attend weekend retreats, go to camp and serve alongside you. The trick here is to know when it is appropriate and when it is not appropriate for your kids to be around.
At a recent Simply Youth Ministry seminar, Doug Fields said, “Your family may be the only healthy family some of your kids get to see.” Allowing your family to be part of the youth ministry can be a ministry in itself. When you have that mindset, the planning required to involve your family is well worth it.
6. Enlist Help
It’s important for youth ministers to spend time with students on their own turf; but attending every football game, chorus concert, school play and bowling tournament is impossible. Hopefully you have a healthy team of committed adults helping you accomplish this demand. If you don’t, you are heading for burnout.
If you are still developing a volunteer team, try this: The next time you attend a student’s event, invite a volunteer to go with you. Several years, ago I invited a volunteer to attend a football game with me. While there, he was amazed at how many students he knew—in the stands, on the field, on the cheerleading squad, in the band. He discovered that just attending a Friday night football game expanded his influence and helped his ministry with the students go to a new level. Now, he attends more games than I do—and invites other volunteers to go with him. I’m now free of that time commitment, knowing our youth ministry is well-represented.
7. Keep Record of Your Time and Evaluate
Balancing family and ministry is a process. Try to keep a close record of your ministry hours—including lunch meetings, sporting events or helping a student through a crisis. It will help you identify where your time is going, and you can evaluate and make adjustments along the way.
This is challenging for me. I don’t mind evaluating events, programs and every other aspect of ministry. However when it comes to my schedule, I have a hard time giving an honest evaluation. So, I enlist an accountability partner to make me answer questions such as:
• Have I been consistent with my personal devotion time?
• What does my calendar show are my top priorities?
• Have I cancelled a family commitment and replaced it with a ministry commitment?
• Have I spent more time with youth ministry kids than my own kids?
• Has my adult leadership team had deeper conversations with me than my spouse has?
• Having my spouse answer these is also a good evaluation tool.
When assessing, keep in mind that a leader with an unhealthy personal and family life will have an unhealthy ministry, too.
Finally, it’s a question of planning and priorities. As my pastor and friend Brad Branson told me: “Don’t sacrifice your family on the altar of ministry.”
Balancing ministry and family takes initiative and prayer. As God leads you to make adjustments with your schedules, I pray that you will discover that with healthy family life your ministry experience is more fulfilling than ever before.
