The Balancing Act of Life and Ministry

Your life and ministry is a balancing act and balance in life does not come naturally. Our lives are lived in extremes. Incredible things happen when ministry and life are lived at their fullest. Problems come when one area of our life is lived at an extreme, the others become out of balance.

The Impact of Imbalance

Spending larger amounts of time in one area causes the other areas of our life to become anemic. Few vocations understand this more than the ministry. Our dedication to God and commitment to His church often cause us to have an imbalanced allocation of energy and time resources. Sadly, our families are too often the benefactors of the lesser of the imbalance.

The Value of Time

Someone once said, “Time waits for no one!” How true! We really do only have one life and one chance at making the moments of every single day of that life count. We divide moments between our jobs, families, and ministries, moments we will never get back. Moments that turn hours into days. Days into years and years into lifetimes.

Questions for Reflection

•How do you manage all those moments?

•What are the priorities that you have set to budget those precious moments?

•What rules have you put into place to guard the distribution of those moments?

•Is your life so frenzied that you really have no idea who should get the best of “you”?

Setting Rules for Balance

Having a few rules regarding your time may be the very thing that could hold your marriage together. It could be the precise thing that keeps your children close to you. It could very well be the thing that helps you find a balance to all that life demands of you.

The Importance of Time Budgeting

We all understand what a budget is in finances. Without a financial budget, most end up in debt. This lack of guidelines for how one spends their money causes mayhem in too many families. Problems with finances are the #1 reason for divorce in America.

How sad that all it would have taken was for someone to govern and carefully agree on how to spend the money.

Budgeting Your Time

What about our time? Shouldn’t we budget it too? Scheduling time for each “important commitment” of our life could protect the “important commitments” of our lives. A weekly calendar is a valuable tool for allocating our “time”. Appointments like “Date night with my spouse” or “Spend time with the kids” too often fail to show up on our calendars.

Prioritizing Family Time

They should. The question of balance is really a question of priority. Blocking out and defending time commitments made to our families is our way of telling them that we love them. Nothing you ever give your family will say “I love you” quite like the time you have spent with them.

Making the Commitment

Your life and ministry is a balancing act, so counterbalance them by allotting your time in advance to the most important people in your life.

Doing this says to your family that they are more important than everything else on your calendar. When they know this, they will become more understanding of the time you spend elsewhere.

About Pastor James Smith

Pastor James Smith, Valparaiso, Indiana – Founder of PreachIt.org, OpportunityHope.org, and PastoralHelps.com.

He equips pastors worldwide with sermons, leadership tools, and encouragement, while also caring for orphaned and at-risk children in West Bengal, India through OpportunityHope. Beyond the orphanage and school, OpportunityHope provides clean water wells, livestock, and other humanitarian helps to families and villages in need. Additional books, leadership training, and mentoring resources are available through PastoralHelps.com.