The holiday season can be a blessing and a curse for those in church ministry. On the one hand, it’s a time of incredible opportunity: attendance is up, people come with expectation of experiencing God, and it is fairly easy to come up with sermon and event ideas. On the other hand, it can be a season of intense pressure, easy to neglect personal and family time, and finally the holidays often bring to the surface emotional baggage from our past. Given all of this, our ability to make good decisions is diminished during this season.
Over at the Vanderbloemen blog, they gave three mistakes pastors make during the holidays…here’s one of them:
Neglecting Family And Self-Care - With all of the extra programming on top of all of the usual pastoral responsibilities, it is easy for church leaders to let other areas of their lives suffer. Typically, the family will have to sacrifice a bit of their time together to make room for meetings and various events. But as an example for their community, pastors should emphasize their time for family, even saying no to some events in order to protect that time. We have to remember that our first ministry is to our families and then to the Church. While it may take some creative compromises, how can you set aside dedicated time to your family to walk through this season together in meaningful ways?
Discover the other two HERE
