Facing Family Challenges

instead of spending money on yourself so much during this christmas why don't you take that money invest it in souls [Music] it goes directly to the field for new churches to get started and instead of spending so much on ourselves let's spend something on somebody else i want to thank you for your gift and for your willingness to give a sacrifice for christmas for christ it means so much souls that will be saved will thank you everyone involved in this program will thank you for your gift and for your willingness to share welcome to my office at the world headquarters of the united pentecostal church international in saint louis missouri usa i'm happy to have my wife with me connie and one of my three children my daughter lindsay so we decided that at this time of the year december it's a time we think about family we try to have special times together to celebrate the birth of the lord jesus christ and take a little time off from work and focus on our most important values which include of course serving the lord and uh loving our family so i thought it'd be good for us to talk a little bit about our family and your family and how families work together of course no family is perfect we all have our pros and cons ups and downs and for some people this is a difficult time of year because of losing a family member or difficulties in your family but in those cases the lord makes up the difference and the church family makes the difference so i'd like for my wife to tell us a little bit about our family well we have of course our three children and they're all married and so there are five grandchildren now and we're expecting more sometime in the future hopefully and i am thankful because our family has always been involved in ministry we've moved around and our first son was born in jackson daniel our second son was born in st louis and lindsay was born in austin but when we landed when i think of family and i think of our our involvement as our family i think of basically our family's been in ministry all all of our kids lives they all they know is ministry and working for god and so as far as our family concerned our children we are still very close to all of our our children um even though everybody lives you know we're not close to most one son is in the city with us so you want to add more to our family yes so our first son is jonathan and he and his wife sarah live in austin texas and have three children jonathan is a computer programmer and assistant pastor in georgetown texas which is the st louis excuse me the austin area and then our second son daniel and his wife kaylee have two children he's a full-time student pastor in houston texas and then our daughter lindsey who's here today lindsey and her husband cullen cressman uh they work at urshan college he is a full-time lecturer and she is full-time as the executive assistant to the vice president so they're all married they're all living for god and they're all serving in ministry and so that's a great blessing i don't know if lindsay wants to add to that i think you all summed it up really well well let's talk a little bit about our our our own personal background upbringing i was raised in korea my parents were the pioneer missionaries of the united pentecostal church international to the country of korea and korea was at that time a very poor and developing country a non-christian country and so for us christmas is a lot different than you think of here it was not commercialized the majority of people didn't really celebrate it at all and if they did it was more or less a secular western holiday not a traditional korean holiday so for us as a minority as christians and of course as pentecostals for us it was a great opportunity to set ourselves apart from the society and and celebrate jesus christ so for us most of the christmas activities such as they were were focused around the church around christmas caroling and and special events celebrating the birth of jesus christ there wasn't really a problem for us of some people thinking christmas is commercialized or pagan no for us christmas was countercultural and celebrating who we are as followers of jesus now as americans in our home we try to have a traditional christmas celebration with presents and so forth a special dinner and i'm very thankful that the ladies ministries would send us a check for the children and we could have special christmas presents at that time of year so it made us feel like we we weren't forgotten but we belong to an international fellowship anything you'd like to add as far as i always remember christmas time a wonderful time with our family we had some of the same traditions of getting together and we'd always have presents at that time and my brother and i both were very good about not opening presents ahead of time we weren't new to that present might be taken away if we opened it ahead of time just as a side note but we enjoyed uh had a lot of wonderful christmas traditions and i was very thankful to be brought up in a christian home that we that was our priority also is to know the importance of christmas what do you think about when you think of christmas lindsey well of course my upbringing is your story as well but specifically regarding christmas like what you said mom my memories of christmas and our family and our traditions there was so much of church involved with that and even though my entire life was as a pastor's kid i know that we would have been there regardless we would have participated in the candlelight services that were very special and intimate with the body of christ those times that we got to give with what we had and really my my greatest memories my happiest memories just those times where it was just our family we got to spend time that maybe we didn't have regularly at other times of the year but taking time to just spend with one another in simple ways or great ways now you lindsey you mentioned uh of course all your life all you've known is ministry when we moved to austin to start the church in april 92 you hadn't been born yet you were born a couple months after we started the church so literally all you know is the fact that i've been a pastor and a preacher and that brings up a question which is not limited to preachers but really to every faithful saint every child of god we're all heavily involved in church we're all heavily involved in ministry we all have some sort of job and i would suggest if you don't you should because every christian should have a place of service in the body of christ and uh of course with coven 19 we haven't been able to have as many church services as we'd like but typically our weekly schedule is full of church services prayer meetings special events and if we're involved in youth ministry or children's ministry and especially in december they're usually special church activities so if we're not careful our whole life could be consumed by doing this and doing that for the church so i think one big question is how do you balance ministry or service in your family life because i am afraid sometimes in our zeal to serve the lord and fulfill everybody's expectation if you're a minister you want to fulfill the expectation of the saints if you are a pastor you know you you want to be there for everyone if you are a lay leader you want to fulfill the expectations of your pastor and of everybody else at the church if we're not careful we could neglect our families and i and i even think that perhaps some kids and some young people have resented the church because they felt there was an imbalance so i'll just tell you a little bit from my perspective but i know my wife will have something to say about this as well because it's very important but i wanted to make sure that we had a balance and i used my calendar for that purpose i would put time in the calendar with my wife date night with our whole family a family night in fact we scheduled monday night is a family night and we did not schedule church activities uh on that night unless it was a family activity where a recreational activity that everybody could participate as a family we had a family devotion on monday nights i would also schedule for just me going out with the kids such as to play racquetball or with each kid occasionally each kid individually take them out to dinner or lunch or something because and i put it in the calendar so that way when demands came i could say well i don't know if i can do this let me check the calendar and then i could say well i have an appointment i wouldn't have to say it's with my wife everybody understands i can't be two places at once and so by setting my priorities in that way it helped me to keep those priorities otherwise urgent matters could override things and we could say well you know if i have to skip something with my family this week even though i promised them i can always make it up next week yeah but that keeps happening and what you think is your priority actually gets pushed off by things that are seemingly more urgent but actually aren't your long-term priorities and we also had in our daily schedule my wife usually prayed with the kids and sent them off to school we usually had family dinner every night and that was a great time to talk and catch up on the day and discuss current events or whatever we wanted to talk about so we also took an annual family vacation and i learned that to have a true vacation i had to take it over a weekend so that i wasn't pressured uh for whatever i needed to do on sunday and we also had other special times such as christmas and thanksgiving and even like a day trip somewhere or a couple of days with my wife different things like that but we had to plan those throughout the year and i do think looking back over it you can't re you don't remember all the daily activities but you do remember special events such as holidays and vacations and to a great extent those special times is what create the memories when you look back on your childhood so i think those special times are very important and i that's one thing that i was very intentional in raising raising our children in a church environment i knew that i wanted to make sure that our kids felt like they were priority over the church people and you're referring to there are times that some children some kids as adults feel maybe some bitterness because they felt like they weren't given the attention as a family and so that was very important to me and i think some of it too when we traveled around i would travel with brother bernard seeing different family dynamics kind of made me start developing these principles that i wanted to see or we wanted to see in our family and one of those was that family was always considered or always they always knew that they were priority and so even balancing things there were many times that there were extracurricular events at church there were times that i needed to be there and he may already be there i would give our children a choice if you know and a lot of times there isn't a choice but i would give them a choice do you want to go with mom or dad or do you want to stay with grandma so that they knew that they weren't forced to be at the church every time the doors were open so i think just some leniency in learning how to pick your battles and balancing all of that but my goal as the mother and the pastor's wife was to make sure that my children knew our children knew that they were priority and when it came to balance they were going to be put at the first to the top of the list and i would add sometimes there were extracurricular activities at school yes and usually we had some sort of church event so you know many times we would just have to make the commitment look we have to be with our children and we just explain other people can take care of other things at church because we're we have a family too and we have to give equal time to our family lindsay you have a perspective not only of growing up in a minister's home but also you're working at a college with kids from all kinds of backgrounds yeah i would just emphasize what's been said now that i'm an adult i'm married i'm navigating priorities and i'm also working with young people who are making big decisions entering into the adult world with lots of different priorities that intentionality is so important knowing that it was on the calendar before the fire needed to be put out before the emergency situation came up and of course there were true emergencies that we had flexibility and that was a great asset a great lesson to learn was flexibility but a lot of times there was something already scheduled for our family and for that reason we were able to truly have the time because i think a lot of times there's an intention um that doesn't is not followed by action oh yes my family is my priority but if you take account of your time you'll see that it's skewed away from the family and so having it on the calendar we knew that that time was guaranteed that time was ours and even looking back or watching family videos of years growing up every year's vacation was not this fabulous you know even out of state trip sometimes it was just like you said dad a day trip or a weekend we just went to a lake close by and attempted to catch a few fish or played around in the mud but i remember those moments because it was time that was taken just for us just for us to spend time together for no other reason we weren't going to travel for you to speak anywhere to do anything involved with worker ministry it was simply to spend time together and as i see young people trying to navigate that and i'm married but i don't have children yet but i'm realizing for myself for my marriage i need to develop these principles now before i have kids that single young adults need to be developing these habits now before they get married before they have kids so that the priorities are in place and followed through you know sometimes there are in ministry genuine emergencies but uh you have to make an exception if it's truly an emergency family will understand but many times it seems to be an emergency to the person that wants your immediate help but you can still schedule or manage that in such a way that you take care of the need but maybe just not as soon as or exactly when they want it so you can't just because they say it's an emergency doesn't mean you should cancel all of your family plans i've learned many times that i could still take an hour to have dinner and then go meet the emergency i didn't have to skip the dinner and i think that made a big difference keeping our family schedule and commitments and special events as much as possible under the circumstances and so i don't have to take the phone call immediately i don't have to rush out immediately i can wait 30 minutes or an hour my kids don't even know there's a problem but i can still meet the problem in a timely fashion so i can do both and then that that goes around the other way too i remember one time one of our kids got into a potentially very serious situation thanks to the lord it we were able to navigate it but it came at just the wrong time i was supposed to go on an overseas trip and so i called the missionary and canceled the trip with profuse apologies and said i just have an urgent situation and i'd already scheduled to be gone so i already had somebody covering the church and so my wife and i just took that one child that one young person and we went out of town on a trip and we worked out that situation and i think it impressed uh the importance that hey you are more important than ministry going overseas on a missions trip you are more important than going to church on sunday taking care of this is the most important thing we can possibly do and you don't try to create those times but you have to be sensitive when those times come [Music] so um so maybe we've been talking about balancing um family and ministry family and church perhaps lindsay you can talk more you know as i said you've all you've known is uh that i was pastor minister and in fact i guess from early on i was district superintendent then even general superintendent uh president of ursuline graduate school so you had a little bit more to navigate even even more than your two brothers because i don't know if you even thought of us being well known because we were kind of a whole missions church so we didn't act like a big church and even when we got bigger it was still more of a missions concept and we didn't really promote the fact that we were involved in other things but obviously you had to know that so uh how do you balance being maybe in a bigger spotlight of your your family being in a prominent role in church well i think of course there's got to be a lot of hard work and how i'm approaching life and how i have to think about things but i would say that a huge part of this is how you both talked with us growing up it prepared me for eventually this position you were voted in let's see my senior year would have been my senior year of high school and so critical point in my life and if i didn't have the right conversations the right world view the right narrative and place in conversation with both of you growing up then i would not have been prepared for this position that still did change our lives because it was different and greater than anything else but you have to realize that everything good you do every action every word every thought is not motivated by the position but it's motivated by well it's motivated by your position as a christian and so that was vital for us growing up is that we did not behave in church because we were the pastor's kid we did not behave at general conference because we are the general superintendent's kids we did not do xyz action because of position in leadership we did xyz action because that's what a christian does you're kind to others you speak to others in love you conduct yourself in a respectful way and so that was that was critical because when we were elected into this position and i went off to college and eventually to bible college and i had a culture shock of realizing that my last name meant a lot more than i realized it meant just like you said i mean we grew up with the whole missions mentality even like you said early parts of my life you were in various leadership positions i understood that in part because you traveled we had conversations regularly about different things and we would attend events with you but it was limited you didn't overly expose us and also our internal conversations as a family we're not all about this position all about that you know small but not small piece of course is a huge piece but there's so much else that you're developing in us as christians and so i had a culture shock of realizing okay this is this huge organization and my dad is now over all of it and he runs the world so to speak and so i appreciate that i had a culture shock because that means that um you know y'all were preparing me but not in a way that i just felt the lead is felt felt entitled yes you know that's what i tried to do this when i was a pastor is towards the kids what lindsay said is i tried never to say you need to do this because you're the pastor's kids even though sometimes i felt that like when they were teenagers and they were making choices and perhaps it was a borderline or a gray area or something i wouldn't insist with the saints but yet i knew some people might question or look down upon it i had to bite my tongue and not say well you need to do this because people are looking at us and i basically had to say we're christians this is these are some of our family values we do some things we don't do some things because it's our family and because we're christians and then when our kids were in a position to make their own decisions i tried to appeal to them and i even had sometimes one of my kids would say well dad i know if you really don't want me to do this i want or if it's going to cause you problems with the church you know and i would always back off and say well no make a decision because you're a christian what would you do as a christian not what i would do as the pastor and i appreciate you thinking about me but that's not really the reason why i want you to make the decision and then on the other hand i would even teach the church yes listen i i want to i want our kids to serve god and uh if you're if you're the teacher of my kids or you're the youth leader and my kids need correction or discipline you know hold them to the same rules and treat them the same way as everybody else they shouldn't be the prima donna i don't expect them to get all the favored roles of singing or drama or whatever treat them like everybody else but don't penalize them because they're in preachers kids so if you're if you do have to correct one of my kids don't say well you're the pastor son you should know better just appeal to them of here's what our church teaches or here's what the classroom rules are i don't want you to penalize my kids either and i want you to treat them the way you want me to treat your kids and so that the same leniency and grace and you know assistance that you want me to help when your kids are in trouble i want you to think the same way about my kids if they have a need and so as much as possible i try to create a normal environment and the same way on the district or national level i did not want to highlight my kids i did not want to penalize them by not involving them but i did not want to give them any kind of entitlement mentality whether it's in the local church or in the district because i felt like ultimately that would be detrimental and what i learned later is it's kind of humorous but as lindsay said her last name so many times my kids say it even at general conference they'd be riding in the elevator with somebody you're gonna give away where are you from well i'm from austin oh austin is that where brother bernard pastor yeah he's he's pastor's one of the churches there well what do you think about father well i think he has a pretty good church and they would go through the whole conversation and never disclose that they're like their last day if they said what's your name jonathan they would never give the last name so i guess that was their way of coping and and their own personality yeah so now you can get by a little bit more because you do have a different last name um well i'd like my life to say more too well i will say one thing i i do appreciate and brother bernard even in the pastoring talking about this is he always communicated over the pulpit to the people just his thought process of you know our family and he never he always made it something that everybody was on the same page you know talking about our kids and and uh you know as far as church and environment you know all of our kids were raised basically in that home missions environment and you know some of the pressures today um that we're dealing with are totally different this year but still that that need to be involved the need for the parents to be the example for the children to see the involvement and you know lindsay you might want to expound on this too we were talking about how important it is and that communication is so important when you're trying to be intentional with raising your family to be absorbed not absorbed just consumed with working for god that that is the basis of your family yeah and you know this applies this is a universal yes truth whether you're in full-time vocational ministry or you're serving in your local church because we're all called to ministry in some way and your children will see you as a leader yes when you're ministering in your local church you're serving but you're also leading if you're the usher i was mentioning to mom you know a little kid's gonna see their dad as the usher he gets to pass the plate you know he gets to walk down the aisle that's you know it's a big deal and so this applies across the board to anyone that it was a narrative a world view that you shaped for us that you you put a frame um of we get to do this this is something we get to do for god this is a lifelong pursuit so we knew that whether we pursued full-time vocational ministry or whether we um went into a secular career but we served our local church to the best of our abilities that was going to be a wonderful end result no matter what because you you shaped this narrative and so when there were more days at the church we were doing this together this was a fun activity i have memories of running around on the um concrete foundation when we were building a new church you know those were probably a lot longer days when we were in the middle of a building program i didn't know i got to run around on concrete all day long and you know play in the dirt and have all this fun so it it matters how you shape the narrative for your kids and not just in your words but in your own actions the way that you display your emotions which the way your heart really is that will come out and your emotions and your actions and your kids will pick up on that and so regardless of full-time ministry or not just this is an adventure this is exciting you're important but we get to do this for god yeah and you you brought a couple of good points both of you that i think two things i learned from my parents that looking back i tried to transmit two very important things the first thing as i mentioned we went to korea when i was eight years old it was a very poor country we didn't have a lot of things that we take for granted here just in living we we we didn't live a poor life but there for just for instance there was no such thing as coca-cola for the first three years that we were there so most of the things we take for granted as far as conveniences and luxuries and normal way of life going out to to eat there was no such thing mcdonald's burger king whatever you like to go out for fast food none of that existed you know so i could just go down the list of what we would consider hardships uh basic utilities were sketchy you know um if my sister and i walked we walk home from school we'd have 50 kids following us yelling at us throwing rocks or snowballs at us so what could have been a very negative experience and so this is the first lesson my parents always treated it like an adventure yeah wow our family gets to do this we're doing it together very few families get to we're watching the church grow we're seeing miracles we're seeing revival and they were honest about well yeah we don't get to do this we don't do that but it's more than compensated we're not a perfect family we've had our disagreements in the distant past and you know if you don't have any disagreements and probably only one person is doing the thinking so you're going to have differences and if you've got strong personalities and mature personalities you may have strong differences of opinion but the key is communication good communication the key is to be able to talk through it loving one another not attacking one another but valuing one another even in your disagreement so how you handle conflict is important and we go through trials i think each one of my kids in different ways went through their own time of severe trial trying to find their identity trying to navigate some crises of life relationships marriage uh finding their way in life the will of god and but but in all of that i think good communication as a family uh praying for one another loving one another even sitting down at special occasions having a family talk and we still do that we go around the room and we get an update and what what are you going through what do you need help with what do you need prayer about can can we give our input as to where you are and we all just talk and as as one family and i think husband and wife needs to do that and maintaining that good good communication is so important and even if you've got a family member that's not in church just keep loving them keep an open line of communication keep involving them and family events you don't you're not saying you approve of some of their choices but you accept them as a person as a member of your family regardless of anything else you agree to disagree on some things and of course you keep praying because i believe there's always a path of restoration if we just continue to trust god well we've covered a lot of topics in a short format but i'd like to ask my wife and also lindsay any bits of advice or encouragement of we're living in such uncertain times it just seems like culture is getting more secular more dysfunctional post-christian and then with coven 19 it just seems like pressures are are so great how can we have a normal christian family a healthy family in a dysfunctional society well i i think one of the the big aspects of um keeping your family intact and together is making it god-centered um everything you do if you will revolve everything that you do as a family around around god around your church keep that involvement there whether you're able to be together as the family of god right now or not you were still in your home a family of god and you are still christians and i think one thing i think is very important in this time those of you that have small children i think it's important right now you don't want to protect them to the point that they can't they can't be connected to the things outside the world but i think at this point you need to protect them and protect what they hear and what they see um it's important for them to know that they've got a feeling of safety and that they're that that everything is okay and you know as us as leaders and we're talking to a lot of our pastors our pastors wives i felt i feel such a s i feel such a strong burden to say it's going to be okay we trust him no matter what so in all of this chaos a big thing is communication talk about things open the door for your family to have these discussions how do you feel about things right now are there things that are really concerning you right now how do you feel about what's going on and then don't be afraid to pray in your home right then you talk to someone on the street i've had people out on the street we start talking about something and i'll say can i pray with you and they say well yes i said well can i pray with you right now and just quietly it does something just to connect with your family those around you don't stop connecting with people and with your family and that's exactly what i was going to say i think the challenge we're facing is disconnection in a highly connected world yes we're in danger of being disconnected from our family members disconnected from the church disconnected from our number one priority our mission to advance the kingdom there's so much going on and so as has already been stated even if you have family members that do not serve the lord even if you're the only one in your family you have an opportunity to love i can say in our family extended family even there have been real challenges real hurdles things that could have caused distance and we've worked in communication and transparency and that desire to no matter what we will stay connected we will love one another even if we don't approve of this or that and so i would just really wrap up what y'all have already said is staying connected and and remembering that our purpose is much greater than this world yes and we ultimately have victory in jesus christ yes it's finished amen if you want a few more ideas or discussion about some of things about marriage and family in the context of spiritual leadership i do have a book called spiritual leadership in the 21st century and it's got a chapter on the leader's family so you might find that to be helpful but i would like to close with prayer because i do believe that our christian families and our ministry families are under tremendous pressure in these days but i believe god has the answer i preached in the general conference sermon but we see jesus we just need a fresh look at jesus christ we need to go to god in prayer and get reassurance and get victory so let's pray together our heavenly father we thank you for your faithfulness we thank you for your grace under every circumstance and right now i want to pray for those who are watching for their families i ask that you administer to them encourage them let something we've said give a spark of hope or encouragement or inspiration or illumination to them lord and right now whenever they're watching this i ask that you would meet them that you would cross the gulf of space and time from where we are to where they are and put your hand upon them let them feel your presence let them know that you love them that you care for them that you're going to bring them through that you're going to minister in their marriage in their family in their ministry that you will supply the needs we ask for your blessing in the name of the lord jesus christ we pray amen amen amen

Channel: United Pentecostal Church International

Views: 4,334

Rating: 4.9238095 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: VcseJAGKR1A

Length: 37min 9sec (2229 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 17 2020