Most pastors would affirm our priority is first to shepherd our family, and then to shepherd the church. Yet, I fear many pastors are laboring so hard to shepherd the church that they neglect their family. The Lord, in His kind providence, challenged me several years ago about this as my neglect in this area had become known. However, it was not another pastor that challenged me. It was an out-of-town friend, who is a pharmacist and faithfully serves as a deacon in his local church, that exposed my neglect. His effort and model to shepherd his seven children both individually and regularly, in addition to their regular family worship challenged me, convicted me, inspired me, and put my pathetic efforts I had made to shame. This faithful father, shepherded his seven children by taking one morning a week to meet individually with each of his children. Seven days in a week–each of the seven children got one morning a week with their dad. They prayed, read scripture, talked, and read a book of that child’s choosing. Inspired by his amazing example, I came home and established a similar model in our home that I have remained faithful to, to this day. Here is the process for how I seek individually to shepherd my four children regularly in addition to our regular time of family worship and some spiritual implications that come from it:
The Process:
• Pick A Day. Monday through Thursday each child gets a day and on his or her appointed day stays up 30 – 45 minutes later than their siblings to meet with me before bedtime. I thought they would be excited about it for awhile, but then grow bored with it. Not so.
Years later, they look forward to that time more than anything, which provides a natural accountability when you are tired from the day and are tempted to skip for that evening.
• Shepherd Their Hearts. We read the passage I am preaching from that week, and discuss it a bit since I have firsthand knowledge of the passage and how I plan to preach it. Then we read a chapter from a book they have chosen to read. At the end, I take time to ask them how they are doing and how I can pray for them. This is a great way to see how they are really doing and teach them ways they can pray for others. Then, I pray for them and take them to bed.
Spiritual Implications:
• You Encourage your Wife. One of the greatest joys to my wife is her watching my efforts with our children to lead our family. The last thing she feels is left out (just in case you were thinking that).
Our wives’ desire for us to make regular, deliberate, and spiritually meaningful efforts to care for our children will mean more to her than we will ever realize or understand.
I find this especially true for wives who are stay at home moms and labor hard in this task of shepherding our children’s little hearts all day with no breaks. • You Set an Example. My efforts with my children have put me in a position to challenge other men in my church to do something similar. It has been amazing the way the fathers in our church have embraced this, and the way it has empowered many of them to see that they can spiritually lead their families with deliberate efforts.
Fellow pastors, the obvious needs to be acknowledged. You cannot challenge the men in your church to do anything you are not making a faithful effort at doing.
Regularly and individually shepherding your children’s hearts is certainly one of those efforts that we must model for the men in our local church. Their failure to do it could be a reflection of your failure to model it. Fellow pastors, leaders, and faithful men in the church, may the Lord use these words to bring a similar awakening that the Lord brought to me, through a dear friend, many years ago. Then, dear brothers, act upon it and start today. Back up what most of us as pastors and fathers acknowledge with our lips, but few actually do.
Published May 21, 2015
