Serving public, living private

I think I was blushing. At least my ears felt hot. The church potluck crowd, lively on a normal Sabbath, filled our fellowship hall with more chatter and laughing than I'd ever noticed before. I found only a moment of relief in the foyer before an elderly deacon rounded the corner.

He looked me up and down carefully, thoughtfully, grinning like a proud grandfather. "You know, somehow I just can't imagine you shaped like a pear!"

I mumbled something silly, threw my hands up in the air, and headed for the women's restroom. Behind me I could hear Chad, a young man who'd just joined our church family, chuckle as he and my husband stepped into the hall way, "Well, one doesn't generally think of the pastor and his wife doing that sort of thing."

The women's restroom didn't offer me much privacy. "Hey, how long had you been trying?" "Were you pregnant at the church picnic?" "Oh, child, I've known for a month.' It was those smells that bothered you at the wedding." "Let me see if you're showing yet."

As I backed up against the cold tile wall, I realized that for the moment my life was church property. If our members didn't already know more about me than I did, they all seemed to want to find out. With my privacy peeling away, I wondered if I should let them in their curiosity gape at me, if I should go into hiding, or if I should just tell them all it was none of their business.

But I couldn't do any of it. I loved our people. They were our friends. They had allowed us into their families. They had given us pieces of their privacy. Now they were eager to share in ours.

Of course I was aware that some people are just plain nosy. To them, privacy is for sale. Information is a commodity. The pastor's family news isn't the only gossip they market. Everyone in their world stands the risk of losing privacy. Those around them either become victims of their prying or are forced to give them limited access.

But I knew our members. They weren't the kind to poke into our private lives. They weren't normally nosy people. They were precious friends; their interest was natural. It's just that right then there were too many of them, too close, too involved.

They were unaware of the cycle we ourselves had begun by offering to become involved in their lives on the level of their most personal, spiritual needs. And we were unprepared for the expo sure that naturally resulted when they wanted to return the personal interest.

Ministry is a personal work. It happens best within loving relationships. It involves people in one another's lives. It offers the hand of "a true friend." 1 It enters into the feelings of others, weeping with those who weep, rejoicing with those who rejoice. It means mingling with people, desiring their good, showing sympathy, ministering to their needs, and winning their confidence. 3 The openness of such relationships is the channel through which God's truths are most easily taught and best understood; it is the vehicle of God's love.

A call to ministry (which comes to every Christian) is a call to show sensitivity, to be responsive, to befriend, and to allow the Spirit to work. A call to pastoral leadership involves modeling minis try and leading others to share in it. The personal nature of ministry shouldn't be surprising, considering Christ's invitation for us to love one another (John 15:12). What is often surprising, though, to the pastor's family after a people-saturated week is that such a simple work as loving people can be so exhausting when it is public. It's one thing to love selected friends. It's another to love the needy, the difficult, the peculiar, the stranger, the crowd.

Over the past several decades, research in group dynamics has established that an individual is capable of success fully maintaining only a handful of close relationships and a few dozen acquaintances. But the demands of public minis try seem to deny any limit to one's social capacity. Even in the smallest congregation, the pastor's family finds their lives open to a crowd of extended church family, former church members, community members, and people simply passing through. The sheer numbers, even without the inevitable personal needs represented, can be overwhelming.

However, by accepting a commitment to personal ministry, I offer to become involved in people's lives. By accepting a call to lead others in ministry, I invite them to be a part of my life—at least to follow, at most to share. In one way or another, I relinquish some degree of personal privacy in order to follow God's call.

But I can't sacrifice all of my privacy. If ministry is personal work, I must have something personal to give such as emotional stability, social support, physical energy, and spiritual resources. The quality and depth of my personal life is what provides substance and security to my public life. The protection of my family life, the treasury of close friends, the strength of my personal identity, and private spiritual renewal must quietly, privately reinforce my life if I am to have anything at all to offer the public.

The protection of family life

Forty minutes from our home and out of the reach of anyone we know or who knows us is a beaver's pond and a field for our Frisbee—a backdrop for being nothing more than a family. At Potato Creek State Park nobody calls our dad Pastor Larry. Nobody knows they're watching preacher's kids fight. Nobody seeks my attention—except my children. We're just another family and glad for it.

We don't mind being a family in the foyer after church. We don't mind sharing our home with Sabbath guests. But we're like any other family. We need time together. We need to get to know each other in a way the public will never see us. We need the opportunity to see ourselves as—well, a normal family.

We need the privacy to disagree with each other and the time to reconcile. We need a place to be kids with our kids, away from the public stage. We need the time to be friends with one another without competition. Then when I go back out to meet the crowd, it's with the reminder, the protection, that there are special people who love me in a way no one else can and whom I value more than anyone else does.

But unfortunately, the pastor's family life is often the first property to be sold to the public. Living on display to so many, we sometimes find it easier to blame nosy church members or "glass houses" for our family's lack of privacy than to draw clear lines between what we lovingly share with others and what we wisely hold to ourselves.

Yes, come have sundown worship with us—the kind three preschoolers put on—and share in our family's closeness. No, we choose not to answer the telephone during our family times. Yes, we deeply appreciate your interest in our children. No, we'll relate to our teenage daughter based on what we feel she needs, not what others think. Yes, we want to share the joy of our first child with you. No, our intimate life is a treasure for only us to know.

Occasionally we have to state our family's limits and let people know what is ours and what is theirs. Most of the time we simply need to acknowledge the privacy we need and enjoy it.

Then there are the times that, having drawn lines for others, we thoughtlessly sell our privacy ourselves. Family dinner discussion centers on routine church life. The telephone rings and the household halts. The family calendar becomes the church's first-come, first-served free-for all. And what the church people will think becomes the basis for decision-making. Without realizing it, we give the church license to move into our home and absorb our family. We give away our privacy when in reality nobody is asking for it.

I'm not saying that creating a private family life is simply a decision to space our family from the church. Sometimes the church deserves to be dinner conversation—for the family's sake. Sometimes the telephone deserves priority —for others' sake. Often the calendar is full. Sometimes what people think matters. And because of God's call, often others need us. But we should relinquish pieces of our privacy only after we've weighed our priorities and given our permission.

Controlling what we can is important because many factors beyond our control can affect our family's privacy. These include the personality of the church, the relationships church members had with the previous pastor's family, the ministry level of the church, the size and makeup of the community, and our housing.

At times, too, a person's family may need extra privacy: when they are experiencing grief, major changes, illness, stress from the church, stress in family relationships. A pastor's family in crisis needs even more assurance than usual that they share the same needs as other families. They need time and space to deal with their personal lives. They need to know that they can get help. They need the opportunity to heal so that they can return to a stronger, more sensitive ministry.

A treasury of close friends

Never before had anyone asked me how my relationship with the Lord was doing. I didn't know Darlene that well. She was a new Christian with little spiritual experience herself. And now she was a member of our church besides. Darlene was an unlikely friend.

But I took the risk and responded honestly to her probing. In return I discovered a precious source of spiritual encouragement, wisdom, and personal support. I'm told she's a rare jewel. But I didn't find her friendship myself; God gave her to me.

Pastoral life is filled with people, but not all of them are friends. In fact, some people believe that none of them should be. It takes only one move to teach us that friendships may not live beyond the changes. It takes only one painful experience to reveal that pastoral leadership and friendship don't mix easily.

But leadership in a vacuum of loneliness can be just as painful. While the isolated pastor's family may give the appearance of maintaining personal privacy, they more likely have already lost their privacy to the demands and expectations of the pastor's public role. No one is close enough to them to know what they need. No one is friends enough to share what is happening in their personal lives. They exist before the public with little personal support; they serve at tremendous personal cost.

Close friends can be one constant in the changing scenery of pastoral life. They must be selected with the same wisdom I ask my children to use in selecting friends. They require an investment of my time and attention. They pose a risk. But in return, I can allow close friends to see my personal life—who I am without my titles and roles. They can be more objective than I can be. They can hold me accountable in a way the public can't. They understand me better, their observations are more honest, their love is more unconditional than the public's.

But where does one find them—those rare, precious jewels? By the New Testament account, those who minister are to be ministered to by those they serve (2 Cor. 8; Rom. 16; Luke 8:1-4). By Paul and Timothy's example, those who minister together can serve one another (Phil. 2:22; 2 Tim. 2:2-4). Friendship isn't a New Testament word, but the model of mutual, supportive relationships is a New Testament concept. Personal ministry for others can begin a cycle of blessing that returns to fill the natural need for human companionship, acceptance, and personal strength.

Unfortunately, the early church model isn't always a reality. Church members may not be prepared to minister to the pastor's family. The leadership role may isolate the family from those who otherwise would be friends. The transient lifestyle may make close friend ships difficult or temporary at best. But if the personal support I need to balance my life doesn't seem readily available, God knows how to build it.

That's because the most valuable treasury of close friends is really His collection. He knows the relationships that will urge me toward Him and make my ministry more useful. He knows who will honor my friendship. He can protect me from those who won't. He can lead me to those who will. And when I feel I've been betrayed, He can heal me enough to en able me to reach out once again.

In answer to my needs, God keeps my treasury full of friends. Some are church members, some aren't. Some are long distance, some are nearby. Some are family members, some are like family. Some seem to have come quite by accident, some have been His special providence. Some come for a time, some seem to be forever. Whatever place each one takes in my life, I'm reminded that God sees my personal need and fills it.

The basis of my personal identity

Who am I? The pastor? The minister's wife? The preacher's kid? The career Sabbath school leader? The church builder? The marriage counselor? When church life fills a lot of my free time, provides most of my social life, and uses almost all of my energy, it's easy for me to build my identity on it. But if church-related tasks are stripped away and the professional roles are laid aside, who am I? When I'm standing alone with my thoughts, my attitudes, my character, my commitments, my relationships —how do I define myself?

Laurie was uncomfortable as a pastor's wife, and she seemed to be doing her best to test the strength of my self-concept.

"You're just traditional, so it's easy for you to be comfortable being a good pas tor's wife and doing what your husband wants you to do. I guess you're trying to help him be successful."

My mouth went dry. Traditional? Comfortable? Successful? I needed more than a telephone conversation to defend who I was.

In fact, it took me months of turmoil to reject her label and to rethink the ministry I'm involved in. Yes, I do many things pastors' wives are expected to do; most fit my natural talents. Yes, I support my husband and combine my gifts with his, but that's because we joined our lives and I can't help but be involved in his. But no. Finally, no. I'm not doing all this because I'm a pastor's wife. I've accepted a life of ministry because I'm God's child. Above all else I've sought to do His will.

Personal identity is a fickle thing if I base it primarily on the tasks I accomplish, the affirmation I receive r the people I'm related to, or the roles I fill. It is secure, meaningful when I build it on how God sees me and the plan He has for me. He's the only one who can answer the question as to who I am. He knows the raw material He put into me. He knows exactly what I can become.

If I don't go to Him first for my personal identity, I'm in danger of letting others determine who I am. What they want me to be may meet their needs, it may give me a sense of satisfaction, it may even be ministry. But their conflicting expectations and overwhelming needs and my inability to meet the demands may also riddle me with frustration, guilt, and anger. In the process, I may sell to others the personal territory that God and I are responsible for: the plan He has for my life. Usually I will sell myself cheap, too, because others—even when they love me and appreciate my ministry—will invariably rate me less than what God knows I'm worth.

The fact that He gives me identity is a promise that He is building me from the inside out. The building of my identity is His work, not my own. I am to follow His plan, not someone else's. The protection He gives my personal life gives direction and value to my public life.

Personal spiritual renewal

But that confidence only comes when I've nurtured and protected the most private precinct of my life: my personal relationship with the Lord.

"Come . . . rest awhile" (Mark 6:31) was Christ's invitation to the disciples to care for their personal lives. It included a change of pace and scenery, physical rest for their exhaustion, fellowship with those closest to them. But it was more than time in which to crash. Christ modeled the ultimate need I have in tending to my personal life: deep, restful communion with God.

More than anything else, a private re treat with God puts my public ministry in perspective. I'm reminded that all my work is limited. I need rest because I get tired, my resources run out, my courage fails. And while I rest, I'm reminded the work is actually His. Otherwise, who would be caring for the needs in my absence?

In the quietness of His presence—in the still, small voice—I find protection for the ministry I offer Him: I discover who I am and what He wants me to be. I find the direction to lead my personal life, the wisdom to protect my family life. I learn how to balance my personal needs with others' endless demands. I receive the extra resources I need in order to give myself to more people, the emotional energy to offer personal ministry to the public. I find the closest Friend of all. And through it all I revive the experience I'm busy leading others to.

Standing alone with God is the only way I will remember that, however pubic and high my calling, just like those to whom I minister, I'm still a sinner much in need of a personal Saviour's grace.