CONTENTS

• FEATURE STUDY: TIME PRESSURE

Try to imagine how life might have looked to a certain minister a few weeks ago. Let's look in on his life during the week of April 15. With the April 15 IRS filing deadline approaching, he has blocked out the day to complete the annual chore of reporting his income to the government. He's far to frugal to hire an accountant. He claims it wouldn't be good stewardship.

After several false starts, he finally gets into the swing of things mentally and the telephone rings. A frantic voice on the other end of the line pleads, "Can you help me? My marriage is falling apart." He leaves form 1040 to deal with a pressing human problem. Two or three other emergencies arise during the day and he finally concludes that he will have to file an extension form with the government.

He arrives home in time for supper, but leaves before dessert and brushes off his children's request for help with homework, because he must attend a committee meeting at the church. He sits through a two hour meeting, taken up mostly with a debate on repainting the classrooms. Finally, the chief antagonist wearies of the debate and moves to table the project. The motion is quickly agreed to and a motion to adjourn quickly follows. When he arrives home, the children have already been tucked in bed. He has no time to hear their prayers.

The next morning his desk is covered with memoranda to complete various tasks and respond to numerous requests. The adult education coordinator wants him to read through a proposed new curriculum and get back to him with recommendations. The treasurer wants him to call the electric company and find out why the bill was so high last month. Then there's a note on the answering machine from the secretary. One of her kids has the flu and she won't be able to come to work today. An elderly member needs some help moving her refrigerator. There's a sermon to prepare, a Bible class to teach, a bulletin to get out, shut-ins to visit, a couple waiting in the secretary's office for an hour of counseling, prospects to see and numerous interrputions.

He gets behind on his schedule and arrives home for supper an hour late. He has done this three nights in a row, which frustrates his wife and children. His wife has begun to resent the demands made on his time by church members and then feels guilty because she resents it. Perhaps she could handle it on an occasional basis, but the pattern repeats itself week, after week, after week.

If you are a minister or a minister's wife, you can probably relate to the problem I'm describing. If you are not, we could simply change the names of the various time constraints and it might well describe your life as well. Is there any thing we can do to deal with time pressure?

I am going to share some parts of that story with you. Twenty years ago I felt stressed by time constraints. Things have not gotten better in twenty years in terms of external pressure. If anything, the external pressures have been ratcheted up to a higher level.

Let me tell you a little about the two of us. My wife, name is Ann and we have been married more than 37 years. Sometimes I jokingly say we've been happily married 20 years, and that's not really too much of an exaggeration. When we married, I had been preaching for a small rural church in Central Texas for about two years. At the time of our wedding, I had returned to school for graduate study. We entered our marriage with great dreams and aspirations. As we look back on things now, we know that some of our dreams and aspirations were not entirely well motivated.

During those early years, I assumed certain premises, which would later place a strain on our marriage. I assumed that my ministry with the church was the most important work in the whole world. My ministry with the church (not necessarily my relationship to God) took priority over everything else. My wife would have to understand that I have given myself to the church. I used some wonderfully sounding rhetoric about "wearing myself out in God's service" and "hiding behind the cross." I really made myself sound noble.

Ann didn't quite see things that way. She had a strong desire to serve God, but she thought something was wrong when I would willingly leave the office to help Mrs. Jones move her refrigerator, but didn't have time to fix the leaky faucet in our own home. Sometimes she thought her husband was so heavenly minded that he was of no earthly use. Is it really selfish to want a screen door repaired, when it has been hanging on one hinge for six months? Is it really selfish to want to go out to dinner once in awhile - and not just to a fast food place, but to a place that has tablecloths and metal knives and forks? And doesn't God expect her husband to be there occasionally to help with children's home work and take care of discipline?

The problem escalated as my opportunities in ministry increased. During a single year in the seventies, I literally flew from one end of the country to the other fulfilling speaking engagements and took a trip to the Holy Land. I was just getting ready to fly to a speaking engagement in the state of Washington when my daughter begged me not to go. When I got back, the children posted signs on the door which read, "Welcome home, Daddy." I thought that was great, but I didn't realize the children were really saying, "We would like to see more of you."

Ann didn't hang out any welcome signs. I remember one occasion when I fulfilled a speaking engagement in New York. At the time, I was living in Kansas City. While I was in New York, I received a call from Texas asking me to fly there and conduct a funeral service. I knew that death was expected and I had committed myself to conduct the funeral, but little did I realize I would be in New York when the call came. I flew to Texas and I didn't realize the family back in Kansas City didn't have sufficient funds to buy groceries for those two or three extra days. Ann was counting on my honorarium in New York to do that. I had a check in my pocket, but it didn't do them any good. The pantry was empty.

About that time I took on an extra work assignment. I was asked to teach part time in a school. My commitment to the church wouldn't allow me to use that time for class preparation. The church deserved my full time efforts. So I sat myself up a schedule to study between the hours of 10 at night and 1 in the morning, four nights a week. I don't have to tell you what kind of fatigue that produces and I also don't have to tell you that our sex life wasn't much.

During that period of time, I began to sense that something wasn't right. Ann attempted suicide on one occasion. That got my attention. I resigned my ministry and took on a new less demanding role with another church, but instead of helping things out, our marriage got worse. Ann began a secular job and greatly reduced her own involvement with the church. After all, the church was responsible for her own unhappiness. She became so disenhanted with me that she actually prayed that God would take my life in an accident on the freeway. That would take me to heaven and get her out of her misery. We were living in two different worlds - strangers to one another, but living in the same house.

My assignment at the new church did not include pulpit responsibities, unless the pulpit minister was away. One Sunday, he was gone and I filled the pulpit. Ann was sick and didn't make it to church that day. I came home and sat down in the living room. I remember picking up the comics section of the Sunday paper. She asked me how the sermon went, but I was so deeply engrossed in Beetle Bailey, I didn't even hear her.

An hour or so later, one of the children said, "Mama is packing her suitcase." I checked and sure enough she was. We talked all afternoon and for the first time I began to hear the bitterness that she felt. (She had tried to verbalize it before, but I had always dismissed it as a temporary complaint). We sort of hung on to our relationship for the next six months. Very little communication took place between us. I had begun to make some feeble attempts at communication, but she was trying to work up the courage to ask for a divorce.

One evening a series of circumstances took place that forced us to bring the real issues out into the open. We both knew then that we would either have to take some serious steps to repair our relationship or the marriage was over. At that time I asked, "Are you planning to leave?" In matter of fact tones, she said, "I plan no change in the family unless you want it that way."

We entered counselling. It was very expensive, but you get what you pay for. I'm convinced that there is even something therapeutic about paying a counselor. If a fellow thinks he can fix my car under a shade tree, I usually question his competence, but if he charges me an arm and a leg at the garage, at least I hope he knows what he's doing. Counseling seems to work the same way.

The process of opening communication was very difficult. Sometimes it would break down in hostility and tears. Learning to be honest with each other and learning to accept each other's feelings without judgment was very difficult. Slowly, we began to make progress and one day we said, "We'll lose a battle here and there, but we're not going to lose the war."

Both of us came to realize that we were selfish. I'm still selfish. It's the greatest battle I fight. The difference is that today I know I'm selfish and I can recognize it when it occurs and take steps to deal with it. Little by little, in the twenty years since those events occured, we have learned how to communicate. We can get beyond superficial communication and deal with some of our deepest feelings. Our ability to communicate has not only affected our marriage, but our relationship to the church and our relationship to people in general.

I pray to God that I will never have to repeat that bitter experience, but it is gratifying to know that we have come through it in a healthy way. Transforming our family life from a destructive life pattern to a healthy family life pattern required us to learn better ways of coping with time pressures.

Now, as well as then, I believe God has the primary claim on my life. Paul wrote,"Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God -- this is your spiritual act of worship." (Romans 12:1). Earlier in Romans, Paul discussed the concept of voluntary slavery. In Romans 6, he contends that every one is a slave to something. Some people are slaves to the flesh and some voluntarily make themselves slaves to Christ. "Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey -- whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?" (Romans 6:16). Jesus put it this way, "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" (Matthew 10:37).

My mistake in understanding the absolute Lordship of Jesus was assuming that my work with the local church constituted the sum total of my responsibility to Christ. In reorienting my assumptions I came to realize that relating to my family is also a part of my responsibility to Jesus. To this point, I have used the full time church worker as an example of the person who struggles with time pressure. I chose that example because that's what I do. However, the principle applies in any situation. Some people voluntarily choose jobs that isolate them from the family because they believe God has given them the responsibility to function as an economic provider for family needs. Years ago, I knew a store owner, who never attended church because he kept his store open while we were conducting services. He could even quote scripture in defense of his decision. "If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever" (1 Timothy 5:8). He failed to see that in making economic provision for his family, he was failing to make spiritual provision.

The Bible makes it clear that God holds us responsible for our family relationships. You cannot have a strong relationship with the Lord and neglect your family. In a section on husband and wife relationships, these instructions are given to Christian husbands. "Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers" (1 Peter 3:7). Peter is saying that God "wired" wives up a little differently from husbands. He wants husbands to make it their business to understand their wives' nature, to respect them and treat them with consideration. Why does he do these things (1) Because his wife is his co-heir in the gracious gift of life and (2) because he doesn't want his prayers to be hindered. If that doesn't convince a husband that relationship building with his wife is a part of his divine service, then I don't know what will. He's saying that you can't stay on praying terms with God if you don't put forth the effort to get along with your wife.

That verse finally got through my thick head and I began to realize that I am not compromising God's work if I make family time a priority in my life.

• It means lots of time spent together in the family setting. Once my young son came to my bedside very early in the morning. I was irritated because he woke me up and I scolded him, but I didn't realize he was really saying, "Daddy, I need you." We cannot build the kind of relationship that we need with our families without making wives and children high on the list of time priorities.

• We must take the time to communicate. Ann and I started making things better when we started communicating. We talked about everything that affects our lives - God, church, children, our likes and dislikes, her flowers, her dream house that's she'll probably never have but wants anyway, friends - every concern that touches our lives.

• It means taking some time to play together. Our children are all grown and gone from home, but when I think back to the really rich experiences of our family, when we were all together, it usually involves some kind of recreational adventure.

• Romance. The children are important, but every husband and wife need to spend time doing things together. When Ann and I were in counseling, our counselor said to me one day, "Norman, a woman never loses her need to be courted. If she's a hundred years old, she still wants to be courted." Many years ago, when our children were little, a lady gave my wife some advice. She said, "Once in a while you need to get a baby sitter, go to a motel and just enjoy the day together. You may think that's too expensive, but it's cheaper than counseling." I wish I had listened. Eventually, we paid the money for counseling. I might add, it's also cheaper than divorce lawyers. Fortunately, we didn't enrich those fellows any.

NEXT WEEK'S FEATURE ARTICLE: "PEACEFUL CO-EXISTENCE WITH IN-LAWS"