I suspect that all of us have unspoken fears that we carry around with us—things that loom over us, that we live with, but perhaps don’t speak much about. One of my own biggest burdens and a constant subject of my daily prayers concerns my children. In the Scriptures I see a number of cases where fathers were negligent in parenting their children. Think of David and Solomon—could David had done anything any differently than he did, anything that would have impacted his son’s life and prevented him from wandering from the path of righteousness? What about Eli? From what I can tell it seems that Eli turned a blind eye to his sons’ conduct—Hophni and Phineas were wicked, and the Scriptures don’t indicate that he took any steps to prevent it. I find similar examples in church history. Francis Turretin was a stalwart of Reformed orthodoxy—the poster child for conservative Reformed theology in the seventeenth century. His son, on the other hand, Jean-Alphonse Turretin, advocated some doctrines that were significantly to the left of his father’s views and contributed to the doctrinal demise of the church in Geneva. Perhaps these instances are simply examples of the perennial struggle that fathers have with their children, popularly immortalized in Darth Vader’s mortal combat with his son, Luke Skywalker, or captured in the child’s, “Dad, you never let me do anything I want.”
Regardless of the nature of the conflict, for ministers there is the constant struggle to maintain a proper family-church balance. The minister has two churches that he has to shepherd—his family and his congregation. Both constantly pull at this attention, and the temptation is to see the congregation as the church with the greater need. Hence pastors will drop everything to help people in his congregation, and as a result his family-life suffers. My biggest fear in life is, that as a minister, I will stand at the end of my life and have built a great ministerial legacy—I will have ministered to droves, written many books, and preached thousands of sermons, but my children will not be walking with Christ. For all of my investment in others, I will have somehow failed my children. Granted, some parents do all the right things but in the mystery of Providence, their children nevertheless stray from Christ. I don’t want to look back at my life and regret having ignored my children, even if it’s for something noble like serving the church.
For this reason, I daily pray for several things. First, I pray that Christ preserves my children—that he never lets them stray. Second, I pray that the Lord gives me the wisdom to know when to sacrifice time with my family versus serve the church. Third, I pray that I see my ministry in its proper perspective—I don’t want to be lured by the prospects of ministerial “success” at the expense of losing my children. If I look back upon my life and have all sorts of success but my children aren’t walking with Christ, I will consider my life an utter failure. I understand that such things are ultimately not in my control for a number of reasons, but at least as much as it depends on me, I want to do everything I can to water the tender plants Christ has given me so that in the sunlight of his grace they flourish and grow.
Pray, therefore, for your pastor. I bet he carries similar fears regarding his own children. Intercede on his behalf so that Christ grants him the wisdom to know best how to shepherd his children—when to give attention to his children and when to give attention to the church.