Brian Croft - The Pastors Family: Shepherding Your Family through the Challenges of Pastoral Ministry

E very family must adjust its lifestyle based on the parents profession. A bakers family must adjust to the baker having to be out of the house and at work before dawn, kneading and preparing dough to rise, making pie crust and icings and fillings and biscuits for the first customers. A military family must adjust to not seeing a parent on a tour of duty for weeks and months at a time. A police officers family must adjust to the emotional toll on their loved one from seeing crime up close and personal, day in and day out. Both police and military families must cope with a parent putting his or her life on the line to serve and protect their community and country, not knowing if theyll return home at the end of a tour or shift. A doctors family must adjust to an unpredictable schedule, emergency calls that interrupt family time, and the constant stress that husband and dad experiences from dealing with illness or loss. An executive and his or her family must invest a lot of time and planning into maintaining a lifestyle of keeping clients and colleagues satisfied, dealing with business trips, and attending or hosting dinner parties.

Many other examples are out there among them is the pastors family. Yet the pastor and his family tend to face pressures that span a number of professions. Like the baker, hes up at the crack of dawn, kneading his own heart with prayer and Gods Word to prepare to serve the church. Like the military man and police officer, he often places his well-being on the line to serve and protect others, often not able to give details about the pain and suffering he witnesses on a regular basis. As with the doctor, his schedule is unpredictable, and those late-night emergency calls must be answered. As with the executive, meetings and church functions lead to long hours and fatigue. The pastors life, like that of those in many other professions, is full and busy and tiring.

Two veteran pastors capture this pressure well:

The pastor stands alone, different from the politician, the social worker, the entrepreneur, the engineer, the physician, and the jurist. All these deal with a segment a significant segment of the human enterprise, but the pastor alone steps back from it all, examines it from Gods perspective, and tries to give it all meaning, purpose, and direction. And he accomplishes this without physical power or civil authority. The pastor has only the power of example, the power of trust, the power of respect, and the power of the love of God shed abroad in Jesus Christ.

Anyone who takes pastoral ministry seriously feels the spiritual responsibility and accountability the pastor bears before God for the souls of those entrusted to him. This perspective and weight make the pastors job unique. The pastor feels the multiple expectations of his church, his own family, and the larger community, as well as his own self-imposed demands. The pastor needs a lot of help to think clearly about his life, priorities, and well-being.

This is where Brian and Cara Croft step in to help us. Pastors and their families need a book like this a kind of field manual that speaks to the various demands and expectations they face and provides gospel-centered, family-focused guidance. This book delves into the hearts of each member of the pastors household and offers helpful counsel in shepherding each one according to Gods Word, so that the family can serve together joyfully in the work of the ministry.

Prepare to learn as you join this transparent, insightful, conversational tour of the challenges pastors and their families face in Christian ministry. Were happy to commend not only this book but Brian and Cara as well for modeling so much of what is recommended here. Theyve been not only friends but also examples in this vital area of our lives the pastor and his family.

Thabiti and Kristie Anyabwile
December 2012