Don't Sacrifice Your Ministry for Your Family

By Craig Thompson I have lost count of how many times I have been warned, “Do not sacrifice your family on the altar of ministry.” I plan to write on that later, but for now, I want to encourage you not to sacrifice your ministry on the altar of your family. I do not deny that many pastors have lost their families because the church became their mistress, but I’ve also seen many pastors lose their ministry because they made their families an idol or simply because they created an unnatural divide between their family life and their ministry life. As a Christian minister you must resist the temptation to separate your family life from your ministry life. You must also resist the temptation to idolize your family. It is true that if you lose your family you will lose your ministry, but what leads you to believe that it is essential for you to spend every waking hour with your wife and kids? The idea of a forty-hour workweek is not necessarily bad, but it is not ...