Helping Your Family Enjoy Ministry
Kent Hughes
Taking advantage of the perks of ministry is one of the best ways to foster healthy attitudes toward the church and ministry.
—Kent Hughes We moved to College Church when our oldest daughter, now a missionary, was sixteen. Holly hadn't wanted to come. Understandably she felt robbed of her identity, having been uprooted from her school, the friends she grew up with, and all she knew and loved. Inside she was an angry young girl. We knew she was angry and discussed it with her, believing it would soon pass. But within her there was a deeper subterranean river of rage that boiled to the surface after a few months. She had huge resentments against me and the church. I may have been "called"—but she wasn't! Our sweet daughter, who had never had a rebellious day in her life, became secretive and developed some dangerous relationships that threatened to ruin her life. I actually feared that we might lose her. At one point, in fact, I began to question my own fitness for ministry—if I failed in parenting, how could I presume to pastor the church? And what was the cause of this misery? My decision to follow what I believed to be God's call to uproot my happy family and move 2,000 miles to a radically different community and church and engage in a particularly demanding pastorate. The stress of attempting to meet the needs of my congregation and be an effective father repeatedly brought me to desperation. Pressures like this—and many more endemic to the pastoral calling—make ministry homes particularly vulnerable, as horror stories of preachers' kids sadly remind us. What is the answer? There are, of course, no guarantees. Venture into ministry and you venture into risk. But my wife and I have discovered some attitudes and actions that help ...
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