Mar 08
23
Serving Together
Posted by Stephen23
Tags: event, faith, family, Sunday
We went to an engagement shower this afternoon. A friend of mine, Deb, is getting married in May, and some of her friends took advantage of the fact that she was in town for Easter and organized the event. It was fun. Low-key, friendly, lots of laughter. The happy couple live in Texas, a long, long way from our cold snow, so we see Deb infrequently.
They’re moving to Mexico after getting married, to work on Bible translation for indigenous languages. My sister-in-law, Keren, is in Africa with her family, also working on Bible translation, so we’re already acquainted with the ins and outs of translation work in a rustic, rural setting.
This fueled our conversation on the drive home: how it’s easiest to serve the Lord when you’re single, how a husband-and-wife team can be very effective, and how a family with small children makes it exceedingly difficult to do Christian ministry. The apostle Paul’s discussion on the topic came to mind:
An unmarried man is concerned about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the things of the world, how to please his wife, and he is divided.
1 Corinthians 7:32-34 (NET)
Now, Paul didn’t advocate celibacy. Rather, he set out the pros and cons of marriage. Along the lines of, Marriage is a good thing, but keep in mind what you lose. I thought back wistfully to the days of my youth, when Christian work was so much easier because I was single. Don’t get me wrong: I’m thrilled to be married to a wonderful woman, and I dearly love my three children. The family life I have now is infinitely better than the often-lonely life I led as a single guy. But Paul was right. Along the road to gaining that blissful family life I lost many of the former opportunities to serve the Lord.
It’s not impossible, of course. Keren does it, with children and a husband to care for. My parents did it, with way more children than I have (who were far more disobedient, to boot). The distinction may be between part-time and full-time involvement. My full-time secular job means that there’s little time left over to play with my boys, care for my wife, pay the bills, complete odd jobs around the house, or just relax with a cup of coffee, let alone set aside the hours and hours needed for any ongoing spiritual service. Thus, any Christian service is very part-time.
I could ditch my day-job and go into full-time Christian service, but that implies leaving behind the tangible security of a regular income and venturing out in faith, wholly dependent on God for material provision. Again, this was much easier to do when I was single. If the previous paragraph was about time limitations, this paragraph is about the psychological barriers preventing that leap of faith, barriers inherent in being responsible for the well-being of my family.
Michael Card is a Christian song-writer and singer. At one of his concerts he told how one day he was heading out the door to start a busy concert schedule that would have him away from home for weeks. He stopped and sat on the porch with his kids, and apologized for how his ministry stole away time they would otherwise have as a family, time they would never get back. Michael Card viewed it as part of the sacrifice necessary to his service to God, and yet it was also a sacrifice made by his kids, something they had no say in. Paul was right. To paraphrase another verse, You can’t serve two masters. You either serve God or your family. You can’t do both. It’s a tough call.
