Is taking care of your family idolatrous or biblical?
As I was processing what the roundabout meant for me—was God calling me to exit one specific role at one specific church, or was He calling me to exit full time ministry completely?—an encounter with some old friends rattled me.
They had been married for over twenty years and had been serving in ministry for most, if not all, of that time. They were respected and known in the community. They seemed to have the kind of relationship that others envied: fun, affectionate, and grounded in their faith.
We hadn’t talked since before my family’s move to Japan, so we had a lot to catch up on. After I spent a good 40 minutes sharing highlights from our time in Japan, I asked, “So, how are you guys doing?”
They told me they had divorced.
Jaw dropped. Heart sank. How could this be?
They assured me it was amicable, and that no one was at fault. They had simply grown apart.
Throughout their years together, the husband would discern a call to ministry somewhere, so the family would move in response to that calling. He would bury himself in the busyness of ministry work while she would balance family and career, juggling ministry as a volunteer/pastor’s wife on top of that. This would go on for a few years until he would discern a call to move somewhere else and the process would start all over again.
Discern a calling to go. Heed the call. Uproot the family. Deep-dive into ministry. Rinse and repeat.
This sounded far too familiar.
This sounded like a roundabout.
Was I on this same path? Were my wife and I vulnerable to growing apart as a result of it?
God forbid.
I remembered that when I first discerned the calling to Japan in 2011, I had prayed and asked God why He was plucking me out of my role as prayer ministry pastor and transplanting my family overseas.
The impression I got was, “I’m doing this for the sake of your family.” I didn’t understand this then, but I do in retrospect.
I had been working at a church for five years before the call to Japan. I started out as an admin assistant and worked my way up until I received ministry credentials and the title, “Volunteer Support and Prayer Ministry Pastor.”
Sounds nifty until you imagine the scope of this.
“Volunteer support and prayer” could mean anything from locking up the building after an event to dealing with a full-blown demonic manifestation in the sanctuary during a Sunday service. (Yes, this really happened–I could tag about a dozen FB friends who were there and saw it with their own eyes.)
With a congregation of nearly 2,000, there was always a need, and I took pride in being “the guy” to meet those needs—a spiritual first-responder, always on-call and ready to jump in wherever there was trouble.
I once took a call at 10:30 PM and responded by driving out to South County with another pastor to deal with a crisis that lasted well past 1:00 AM. Another time, I took a phone call at 1:30 AM from a man who was so tormented by his own sin, he needed to confess to me right at that moment. Then there was the time I participated in a Saturday morning event and was ready to go home to take my wife and son to a birthday party when a “ministry emergency” took place. I had to spend about two hours dealing with this, unable (or, more likely, unwilling) to pull out my phone in the middle of it and alert my wife that I was running late.
By the time our second child was born, I kept myself so buried in my work that I was virtually a stranger to him until I resigned from my pastoral role to begin the process of becoming a missionary.
As part of the process, my family traveled to Japan together for six weeks to see if we could adjust to living there. We then attended two weeks of missionary training and orientation in Chicago: the kids would go to child care while my wife and I attended the training, then we’d pick up the kids, get dinner, and all sleep in a single room.
We were together day and night, for the first time in a long time.
Then came our two-year assignment in Japan. The four of us boarded a plane together, landed together, lived in cramped quarters together, rode the trains together, moved to Ofunato together, learned Japanese together (although our kids quickly surpassed us), went to church together, and served tsunami survivors together. We probably spent more time with one another during those two years in Japan than in the preceding nine years of our married life.
Looking back, I see that God did me a favor by sending my family to Japan. He used that time to help me fall in love with my wife and children in a brand-new way.
However, when we returned to California, heeding a sense of call only to face an unexpected transition out of church ministry, the strain of that situation stressed us to the point where I seriously worried if we would make it through with our family intact.
So, when I learned of my friends’ shocking divorce, I knew what I had to do.
I would exit the roundabout of ministry.
1. Loving your family is not idolatry
Years earlier, before my call to Japan, a pastor whom I met at a mutual friend’s wedding asked me what I thought God was teaching me. I replied, “I think He’s telling me not to neglect my own family.”
This pastor began to rail about the “idolatry of the family.”
I’d heard this term before. It’s what church leaders say when they try to pressure you into volunteering more on weekends. They say that putting your family first, before God, is idolatry, defined here as the worship of anyone or anything other than God, or to place one’s trust or faith in anyone or anything other than God.
Yes, there can be such a thing.
When you fear a parent or spouse more than you fear God, you might be idolizing them.
When you find your identity in your children, their achievements, or their behavior rather than in being God’s child yourself, you might be idolizing them.
When you love your parents, spouse, children, or siblings more than you love God (Luke 14:26), you might be idolizing them.
But is it idolatry when you choose to spend more time with your family, being more present for them and attentive to the love and nurture that they need?
The Apostle Paul wrote of the qualifications for church overseers and deacons: “If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?” (1 Tim 3:5 NIV)
In the original text, the Greek word for “manage” is proïstēmi, used throughout the Bible to mean “to set or place before,” “to set over,” “to superintend or preside over,” “to be a protector or guardian,” “to give aid,” or “to care for, give attention to.” It does not convey a sense of lording over your family, telling them to fall in line behind you. Remember, this passage was written by Paul, who is also attributed with writing, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children” (Eph 6:4).
When my first child was born, a mentor gave me the following bit of advice:
“Make sure you spend time with your son. If you choose to prioritize ministry, you’ll keep busy every day, your son will grow up while you aren’t home, and before you know it, he will head off to college when he’s 18 and you’ll wonder where all the time went. Meanwhile, ministry will always be there. However, if you choose to spend time with your son, you’ll enjoy every day with him, you’ll watch him grow up, you’ll send him off when he’s 18, and guess what? Ministry will still be there. Don’t think that God can’t or won’t get things done without you.”
That last point bruised my ego. You mean God doesn’t need me to do His work on earth—that there are other people who are capable of doing what I do? I realized the audacity of seeing myself as a rescuer.
I was forced to confront my own pride.
2. Your own sense of significance can be an idol.
I was finding my identity in what I do “for” Christ instead of in who I am in Christ.
When I prioritized ministry over family, such as with the birthday party incident, it wasn’t a case of me placing God before family. It was me idolizing myself, seeing what I did as being more important than what other people did, finding my own sense of significance in “serving God.”
You ever wonder why Christians like to say we are “used by God?”
I never understood that. If God is Father, does He “use” His children “for His glory”? Imagine if I made my elementary school-aged kids go out and labor “for my glory” while I sat around and did nothing. I’d be locked up for exploiting my own children.
Does God want to “use” His children—or does He want us to spend more time with Him, inviting us to tag along with Him as He does His work? I know that I, as an earthly father, love it when my kids want to join me in whatever I’m doing, even though I know I could complete these tasks without their help.
It’s not about the work. It’s about the relationship.
3. Ministry itself can be an idol.
Yes, God calls us to love others. Yes, God created us do good works which He prepared in advance for us to do (Eph 2:10). Yes, God calls us to the ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:11-21). But when we find our identity in ministry instead of in Christ, we idolize ministry.
When God gave me the vision to go to Japan but made us wait two years before we could actually move there, I learned a hard lesson: that even a vision from God can be an idol if I pursue the fulfillment of that vision more than I pursue God Himself.
I had given ten years of my life to church ministry and missions, battling identity issues on and off throughout, and every time I thought I had gotten over them, I realized that I still had a lot to work through.
The reason my transition out of church ministry was so painful was because my identity had been so inextricably linked to it.
I was the prayer guy. The ghostbuster guy. The guy who sees signs. The guy who went to Japan. “The Duck Pastor.” The American who came to Ofunato. I just couldn’t stop accruing these false identities.
God had to resort to drastic measures to extract me from them.
He pulled me out of any formal ministry roles and left me without any titles to cling to.
