Ministry in the evening

By -
All my life I have heard that a healthy family spends quality time together. And, most importantly, they eat their evening meal together. They don't get tempted into letting busy-ness and many activities eat into this mealtime together. (Pun fully intended. Hope you got it.)

Now I am living and ministering in a culture where most quality relational time occurs most naturally during the evening hours.
  • If I want to go out evangelizing 2x2 the best time is the evening
  • If I want to be involved in a small group at church the best time is the evening
  • If we want to minister to our co-workers the least busy time is the evening
A couple months ago I made the jump and started a regularly scheduled evening time of evangelism twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Melodye has always had her women's Bible study on Wednesday evenings. Now she is looking at the possibility of participating in a ministry of our church which will probably occur on Friday evenings.

Suddenly from being together with our children 4 weeknights every week we are down to a single weeknight (Monday) when we are both here and then 2 evenings each where I am here alone with the boys or Melodye is alone with the boys.

What does this mean for our family? Are we caving on an essential principal of family life? Are our children going to become mass murderers because we didn't sit together around the dinner table?

On the other hand, ministry in a Mediterranean culture ("warm" cultures) really does need to be in the evening. If I prioritize my family such that I rule out the primary hours of ministry ... should I be looking for a new job?

Can those evening hours be replaced with more dedicated hours on the weekend? Can we put our boys to bed at 3:30 when they get home from school and wake them up at 2:30 in the morning to spend quality time then? What's a man to do that desperately wants to spend quality time with his family around the dinner table but has accepted a call to ministry that involves not being there a good part of the time?

Lots of questions this time and not too many answers... Feel free to share the wisdom of the ages with me in comments...

Comments

  1. Jen Bowers8:00 PM

    That *is* a hard question. I wonder how this month has been?

    It makes sense to me that other times could replace those traditional evening hours, be it early morning fun, weekend time, or afternoons. Much like a pastor might have Thursday or Monday as his family day or Sabbath, since Sunday is a work day. Or a night-shift working parent carves out non-traditional time to dedicate to his or her kids.

    ReplyDelete
  2. David Hosaflook, the Balkans3:13 PM

    Great question. Asking it myself. Find a way to have the kids do school in the evening? A co-op evening home school, leaving mornings for family time???

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I am very happy you've chosen to leave a comment here. If it's not too much trouble I would really appreciate it if you would either sign in somehow or else identify yourself in your comments so I know who you are... (Not required but appreciated.) Thanks! -Peter

Popular posts from this blog

Mark 2:1-12 (with poetic license)

By -
For those of you unfortunate enough to not have Albanian exposure, here's a quick "glossary of names". Each of the names are typical Albanian names, but each has a special meaning.  Alban="The Albanian", Shpresa="Hope", Kreshnik="Warrior", Gezim="Joy", Bekim="Blessing".  I won't be any more obvious than that... :-) Once upon a time there were 5 friends.  They were born in the same town in the same year, grew up together, went to school together, played on football team together, got in trouble together.  They were inseparable; you almost never saw one without the others.  After they finished high school they found various honest jobs around town and soon one of them, Alban, fell in love with a young lady named Shpresa.  Soon they were engaged and Alban was hard at work building another story on his parents’ home in preparation for the wedding.  But then one day the unthinkable happened.  Alban had been wo
Read more

Protecting What Is Valuable To Us

By -
Image
I've always had this thing for nautical-themed decorations: old fashioned ships wheels, compasses, ship models, pictures with ships and lighthouses - it just feels like "me." Most of my life I've been prancing around the globe and so, necessarily, these decorations have been left in attics and storage boxes and often sent to thrift stores or (sniff) the dump, but I really do enjoy collecting these things and decorating my "man cave" with them. (a similar crystal ship, but not as intricate) I remember one year for a birthday in my 20s my parents brought me a beautiful crystalline ship, crafted in exquisite detail despite its tiny size. They traveled for my birthday and brought it from Pennsylvania to South Carolina (about 12 hours in the car) in a very carefully packed box. When I opened it at my grandparents' home it was perfect in every detail - incredibly fine glass forming each line and railing and porthole. I lived just over a mile away and so when t
Read more

I WILL NOT be cheated! (Random personal thoughts on forgiveness)

By -
I WILL NOT BE CHEATED! I WILL NOT BE MADE A FOOL OF! I WILL NOT BE TAKEN ADVANTAGE OF! I WILL NOT LET ANYONE TAKE WHAT IS MINE! (including my rights!) A peak into the soul of a controlling man... A recipe for bitterness and a brittle heart... I wasn't always this way. I remember as a teenager working on a repair job with my uncle. He stepped off the ladder next to where I was working on the floor and stepped squarely on my fingers with his workboots. It hurt! But my response was reflexive - I apologized for getting in his way and almost making him fall... The other people in the room laughed at me (who apologizes when it is their fingers that got stepped on?!) but it seemed quite natural to me... I remember maybe the day (?) when this attitude took root in my heart. I was in seminary but visiting at a relative's home. I had just had my car repaired and the mechanic had really hung me out to dry, overcharging and then not doing the job. I had worked myself up into a bit of a tiz
Read more