What encouragement would you give a ministry family during a stressful season?

Let me work backwards on this one, actually from the end of the question back to the beginning. So the end of the question is about stressful seasons. Let me say this about stressful seasons. First and foremost, stressful seasons are the norm in a fallen and broken world. There's nothing wrong with you if you're experiencing a stressful season. Your experience of a stressful season presumably is, actually it's even more stressful than usual. But in the calmest seasons, there are many stresses. Life is hard. Romans 8: creation is groaning with the pains of this and we're groaning with it. 1 Peter 4 talks about, don't consider it a strange thing, nothing strange is happening when you suffer trials, even grievous trials. This is what it means. And some of that is true by being a human being in a fallen world; if you are experiencing stress, that's because the world is a stressful place, and hardships and sufferings and temptations and failures and guilts and shames and sorrows will abound in this life. That's what Jesus came to redeem us from.

But there's then a second on top of that. As a Christian, you're going to also suffer a special category of stresses. And particularly if you're a ministry family, you're giving yourself into ministry. You're particularly looking to lean into, how can we move toward people who are struggling with temptations? How can we move toward and be helpful and walk alongside people who are going through significant sufferings? That is going to bring stress upon stress. And sometimes you're going to, if you really care and love the people of God well, then you're going to bear those burdens on your heart all the more. It's going to be more stressful when things go poorly if you love well. It's going to be more stressful when you feel pulled in a hundred different directions.

So my first thought, you've just got this reality: stressful seasons, that's going to be a thing in ministry. Let's expect that. Let's step up into that. That's what Jesus experienced. And if you want just one snippet of Jesus himself moving through a stressful season, just read Mark 6, the list of what he goes through: being rejected in his hometown, seeing no fruit coming, constantly on the move, leading a team that then gets scattered, then his cousin dies, then the guys come back from their missions trips to see him and he has to set aside the grief of having lost his cousin John. And then it's so busy they don't even have time to eat. So he tries to take them on a retreat and then the retreat doesn't go well because everyone shows up looking to be fed and he does a miracle and the disciples are so tired that he has to send them away by themselves and he does the dismissing of the crowd, which would normally be the thing, that's not usually the guy on the stage's job, right? And then he comes out to find them walking on the water and they're doubting. So anyhow, Jesus knows stressful seasons. They're not a shock to him, and our stress actually needs to be and should be a pointer back to, we know the One who bore stress on our behalf. We know the One who was stressed for us, and he's not standing there being like, “Come on, you can do this fight through this stressful season, you're tough enough.” He's the One who is actually going to send his disciples with care out away, and he's going to minister to them when their strength and their motivation and their hope and their encouragement of that day is at a low ebb. We have a Lord who knows us and knows we are weak in the face of stresses. So stressful seasons, that's the most important thing I probably wanted to say.

Let me hit the second piece then. Your family, you're a ministry family. That's got its own challenges too, doesn't it? Usually what we mean by ministry family is a member of the family is in ministry, maybe both, right? If you're a pastor, you may be a pastor's wife, and often that role comes with a significant amount of ministry. Sometimes in a mission setting, everyone is on some level of ministry, but at the very least, different people within the family are going to have different formal ministry roles. But let me ask a couple of questions as you think about the various scenarios that you, your own family, find.

Number one: As the person in ministry, are you ministering to your family? And I say that not to add another burden to you. I know you've got all this ministry to do, but make sure you minister to your family too, which you of course know I imagine and should be doing. But I actually more mean it as, you get to minister to your family, you are allowed to invest in the kingdom coming and the gospel deepening in your wife, in your husband, in your children. You are allowed to see them as a valid center of ministry. You're not neglecting your calling by ministering to your family. And that will look different in different seasons and different jobs. And there'll be challenges and there'll be times when you'll be choosing to go and visit someone in crisis rather than be home with your family. And there's going to be judgment calls that are difficult, but is there a thematic, consistent way in which you are ministering into your family and feeling the freedom to set aside other forms of ministry in order to bring the blessing of the Lord to your family?

Second question for the family: Are you ministering as a family? Are there places where you are inviting your family in? You may have a two-year-old—spoiler alert, two year olds aren't great at doing a ton of ministry—but a two-year-old can be invited even into something as simple as praying with you about a stressful meeting that you have coming up that day or a challenging task you have to complete or something that's been discouraging to you over the past week. You're probably not going to go into great depth with your two-year-old, your four-year-old, but they can be invited to realize you are needy, you are weak, you are looking to honor the Lord in a challenge or a trial or a difficult task, and you want his strength and his help. And what a great way, A) to minister to your children, doesn't have to be a two-year-old, but just simply inviting your family into what you are doing and where are the places that you can together serve and work? Where the opportunities in your church, where the opportunities in some special opportunity that maybe comes only every so often, a church service trip, a missions trip, those sorts of things. What are the things you can do to minister as a family and be brought together in it when so often “How do you encourage a family doing ministry in a stressful season?” so often what that means is we're divided, we're siloed. I'm off doing this, she's off doing that. We never have enough time. It's hard, it's intense, and we're actually pulled into ourselves rather than toward each other. Are there ways we could actually lean into each other and minister together in the stressful season? Are you ministering as a family?

One more question for you as a family: Is your family resting? Are you leading your family to rest as parents, as a father, as a mother? Rest makes a big difference, especially in seasons of stress, and rest doesn't have to be a two-week vacation. Let me do this. Let me ask that same question but in a different way: Are you enjoying the Lord anywhere? That's a loaded way to put it, isn't it? Well, I know I should be enjoying the Lord in all things, right? Yes. What I mean by that is, are you allowing yourself or are you intentionally leaning into the opportunities that you have to enjoy the Lord? And that could mean enjoying and getting to share in the experience of some of the fruits of ministry, or something that you are doing in the stressful season is yielding something beautiful and lovely and growing and the fruit of the Spirit developing somewhere in the church, in the lives of the people you're loving on. It could be something is going really, really poorly, but being able to lament and come to the Lord with that hardship and that sorrow and that disappointment; in a sense, there's a joy in knowing the Lord is still with me in this. He feels this with me. He knows me in the context of this lament that I'm crying out with. It could be family dinner where we just get to share and be together at the end of a long day in the midst of a stressful season. And we have the chance to hear from each other a little bit about what's going on in our day. It could be the good taste of the meal. It could be so many things. It could be a vacation. There's a thousand opportunities every day for each of us to find joy in the Lord, the Giver of all good things, who is with us and who cares for us. Are you finding those joys? Are you resting in what he is giving today?

Last comment I'll make, all the way back to the beginning of the question: What encouragement would you give? That's one of those lovely places where so much of the answer is actually in the question itself. What encouragement would I give? I would say I would give encouragement. And it's okay to need encouragement. It's okay for encouragement to be really helpful. It's okay if the absence of encouragement is a hardship and a place where you feel the grief. So brother, sister, family, it is okay to desire encouragement, and my encouragement to you is that what you are doing in giving of yourselves in ministry really matters. It will echo into eternity in ways you can't even begin to fathom or see the ripple effects of. And the Lord is with you and he's watching over you in your stresses. Let your encouragement come from his protection of you and your ability to rest in him.